Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now
We described a Hot Stamper pressing of Symphonie Fantastique (LSC 2362) we put up not long ago this way:
The size and power of a large orchestra in Living Stereo sound. The hall is huge, the brass solid and powerful, the top and bottom extends properly, the stage is wide and clear — what more can you ask for?
So open and spacious, with gorgeous, richly textured strings — this is the VIVID sound we love from the Golden Age!
Classic Records and Their Abysmal String Tone
Of course, this was always the most obvious shortcoming of the Classic Records RCA remasterings — just not obvious to the audiophile press or the audiophiles who bought the records. None of them seemed to notice how the strings of the new pressings never sounded remotely the way they had on the originals and early reissues (reissues which were, unsurprisingly, sometimes better).
Classic’s pressings had bass and dynamics, no one could deny it, but the strings were unusually shrill and smeary, and the hall practically non-existent. (We chalked it up to the bad transistor cutting equipment Bernie was using back then, but how could anyone know for sure what was really going on? All we knew was that most of the classical titles they released did not sound good, so there was simply no need to investigate further.)
We found out some years ago that there was a new series of recuts coming from Acoustic Sounds. Based on their dismal track record, I will be very surprised if they are much better than mediocre.
UPDATE 2024
We finally got one in and put it in a shootout. The results: a passable-at-best side one and a bad sounding side two.
In other words, really not worth the vinyl it’s pressed on. Almost any White Dog or Shaded Dog will beat it (although it should be noted that there are plenty of vintage pressings of the album that don’t sound much better than mediocre. Still, on side two it should be no contest.)
Monteux Is The Man
According to the biographical sketch in Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Monteux “was never an ostentatious conductor … [he prepared] his orchestra in often arduous rehearsals and then [used] small but decisive gestures to obtain playing of fine texture, careful detail and powerful rhythmic energy, retaining to the last his extraordinary grasp of musical structure and a faultless ear for sound quality.” – Wikipedia
Further Reading