We hear complaints from time to time about hard-left/ hard-right staging, but the right pressing, properly cleaned, then played on the right equipment and all the rest, will allow you to hear the ROOM in the middle, the real space the musicians are in.
It’s the same with some of The Beatles twin track stereo stuff — there is a room there.
(And sometimes there was actually “no room” there but Norman Smith could make you think there was one.)
The sound may be stuck in the speakers at your house, but over here the music is floating in the real space of the studio, from left to right, and that includes the middle. (Records with stuck in the speakers sound can be found here — audiophiles with good systems would be wise to avoid them.)
Speaker placement is critically important in reproducing the size and space of recordings. No matter how expensive your speakers may be, if you stand them up against a wall (or stick them in the corners of your sound room) they will struggle to recreate the space that’s on your recordings.
This Kessel record really doesn’t have a problem with hard-right / hard-left sound, but some Contemporary titles do and I just thought I would get that off my chest.
Modest equipment (as well as not-so-modest equipment, especially if it’s modern) has one helluva time finding the ambient information on most recordings, just one more reason why we don’t recommend cheap tables and inexpensive phono stages.
A Top Kessel Title
Barney Kessel comes out SWINGIN’ on this 1962 album — he is up for this gig! The energy you hear in his playing is partly the Hot Stamper pressing of course. When you get a record that has all of its dynamics and transients intact, the musicians just come alive in a way that the typically compressed, dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl reissue cannot begin to communicate. We HATE that reissue sound; it’s the main reason we stopped carrying them.
Where is the life of the music you ask? It’s on the kind of Hot Stamper pressings you are reading about right now. The band is cookin’, and because the pressing is so transparent, so open and spacious, you can hear each and every player’s contribution clearly and effortlessly. The cool air of the studio surrounds every instrument. They’re in a nice-sized room and you can really hear the sound bouncing around, just as you would if you were sitting in with the band.
And what would a good Contemporary be without Tubey Magic, especially on the guitar. Man, we love that sound. And check out the deep bass while you’re at it. No Half-Speed mastered audiophile pressing EVER had bass like this.
Further Reading