The Skeptical Audiophile

More of the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing from Cisco / Impex / Boxstar.

Pretty bad, on a par with the shrill crap Classic Records has been dishing out for years, but in the opposite tonal direction: dull and dead as a doornail.

I often mention on this blog that Cisco’s releases (as well as DCC’s) had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system. We discuss that subject on the blog in more depth here.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record loving friends at Better Records.

Further Reading

Sibelius / Finlandia – Live and Learn

More of the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Years ago we noted how much worse the Classic Records pressing of our then current favorite Finlandia sounded when compared head to head with our best RCA Shaded Dog pressings.

We wrote:

Classic Records ruined this album. Their version is dramatically more smeared and low-rez than our good vintage pressings, with almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have in such abundance.

Woops.

Turns out the RCA pressing we used to like was not as good as we thought, something we discovered to our chagrin in 2014.

Our current favorite pressing is this one on a budget Decca reissue label. Go figure. When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1970, but that’s precisely what it is.

Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our Moderately Helpful Advice concerning the pressings of Finlandia that tend to win shootouts.

Further Reading

Finlandia – Striving for Orchestral Clarity with Decca and Failing with RCA

The original RCA Living Stereo pressings we played in our 2014 shootout were not competitive with the best Deccas and London reissues.

Is the original the best way to go? In our experience with Finlandia, not so much.

The budget Decca reissue you see here is yet another wonderful example of what the much-lauded Decca recording engineers were able to capture on analog tape all those years ago. The 1961 master tapes have been transferred brilliantly using “modern” cutting equipment (from 1970, not the low-rez junk they’re forced to make do with these days), giving you, the listener, sound that only the best of both worlds can offer. [Not true, see Two Things below.)

When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1970, but that’s precisely what it is.

Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts

Side One

Correct from top to bottom, and there are not many records we can say that about. So natural in every way.

The brass is HUGE and POWERFUL on this side. Not many recordings capture the brass this well. Ansermet on London comes to mind of course but many of his performances leave much to be desired. Here Mackerras is on top of his game with performances that are definitive.

The brass is big and clear and weighty, just the way it should be, as that is precisely the sound you hear in the concert hall, especially that part about being clear: live music is more than anything else completely clear. We should all strive for that sound in our reproduction of orchestral music.

The opening track on side one, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, is one of my favorite pieces of orchestral music. Mackerras and the London Proms make it magical.

Side Two

The richness on this side is awesome. So 3-D, with depth and transparency to rival any recording you may own.

Two Things

When you hear a record of this quality, you can be pretty sure of two things: one, the original is unlikely to sound as good, having been cut on cruder equipment.

[I no longer subscribe to this view. There are many original pressings mastered in the ’50s that are as hi-rez and undistorted as anything made after them.]

Live and Learn, I say.

And two, no modern recutting of the tapes (by the likes of Speakers Corner for example, but you can substitute any company you care to choose) could begin to capture this kind of naturalistic orchestral sound. [Mostly still true.]

More of the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Sibelius / Finlandia – Classic Records Reviewed

Sonic Grade: F

Classic Records ruined this album. Their version is dramatically more smeared and low-rez than our good vintage pressings, with almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have in such abundance.

[This turns out not to be true, as we discovered to our chagrin in 2014.]

In fact their pressing is just plain awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered, and should be avoided at anything other than a nominal price.

Our current favorite pressing is this one on a budget Decca reissue. Go figure.

If you’re tempted to pick one up for a few bucks to hear how badly mastered their version is, go for it. If you actually want a record to play for enjoyment, don’t bother — it’s a complete waste of money.

It is yet another example of a record that has no business being on the TAS List.

Most audiophiles (including audiophile record reviewers) have never heard a classical recording of the quality of the best Living Stereo pressings like those we sell. If they had, Classic Records would have gone out of business immediately after producing their first three Living Stereo titles, all of which were dreadful and described as such by us way back in 1994.

I’m not sure why the rest of the audiophile community was so easily fooled, but I can say that we weren’t, at least when it came to their classical releases.

Grieg / Peer Gynt – Speakers Corner Reviewed, with Handy VTA Advice

Sonic Grade: C+

The Fjeldstad has long been one of our favorite performances of Peer Gynt here at Better Records.

This record is handy for VTA set-up as well, a subject discussed below in our listing from 2010.

The sound is excellent for a modern reissue*, but in the loudest sections the orchestra can get to be a bit much, taking on a somewhat harsh quality. (The quieter passages are superb: sweet and spacious.)

So I adjusted the VTA a bit to see what would happen, and was surprised to find that even the slightest change in VTA caused the strings to lose practically all their rosiny texture and become unbearably smeared.

This is precisely why it’s a good heavy vinyl pressing for setting up your turntable.

If you can get the strings to play with reasonably good texture on this record you probably have your VTA set correctly.

VTA

Correct VTA adjustment for classical records (as well as all other kinds of records) is critical to their proper reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).

Yes, it may be time consuming, it may in fact be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound or your records once you have taken the time to correctly set the VTA, by ear, for each and every record you play.

We heard the improvement on this very record, and do on all the classical LPs (and all other kinds of records) we play.

The Big Caveat

As for the asterisk (*) in the first line above, it concerns the caveat “…for a modern reissue…” What exactly do we mean by that? Allow us to reprint what we wrote about another Heavy Vinyl classical pressing, one that we used to like.

We cracked open the Speakers Corner pressing of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan in order to see how it would fare against a pair of wonderful sounding Londons we were in the process of shooting out a while ago. Here’s what we heard in our head to head comparison.

The soundstage, never much of a concern to us at here at Better Records but nevertheless instructive in this case, shrinks roughly 25% with the new pressing; depth and ambience are reduced about the same amount. Similar and even more problematical losses can be heard in the area of top end extension.

But what really bothered me was this: The sound was just so VAGUE.

There was a cloud of musical instruments, some here, some there, but they were very hard to SEE. On the Londons we played they were clear. You could point to each and every one. On this pressing it was impossible.

Case in point: the snare drum, which on this recording is located toward the back of the stage, roughly halfway between dead center and the far left of the hall. As soon as I heard it on the reissue I recognized how blurry and smeary it was relative to the clarity and immediacy it had on the earlier London pressings. I’m not sure how else to describe it – diffuse, washed out, veiled. It’s just vague.

This particular Heavy Vinyl reissue is more or less tonally correct, which is not something you can say about many reissues these days. In that respect it’s tolerable and even enjoyable. I guess for thirty bucks that’s about the most you can hope for.

But… when I hear this kind of sound only one word comes to mind, a terrible word, a word that makes us recoil in shock and horror. That word is DUB. This reissue is made from copy tapes.

Copies in analog or copies in digital, who is to say, but it sure ain’t the master tape we’re hearing, of that we can be fairly certain. How else to explain such mediocre sound?

Yes, the cutting systems being used to master these vintage recordings aren’t very good; that seems safe to say. Are the tapes too old and worn? Is the vinyl of today simply not capable of storing the kind of magical sound we find so often in pressings from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s?

To all these questions and more we have but one answer: we don’t know. We know we don’t like the sound of very many of these modern reissues and I guess that’s probably all that we need to know about them.

If someone ever figures out how to make a good sounding modern reissue, we’ll ask them how they did it.

Until then it seems the question is moot.

Back in 2011 we stopped carrying Heavy Vinyl and other Audiophile LPs of all kinds. So many of them don’t even sound this good, and this is the kind of sound that just bores us to tears.

This record is disappointing in a number of ways that we believe are important to the proper presentation of orchestral music.

If you own a copy, listen for the things we’ve identified in the sound that came up short.

Here are some of the other records that we’ve found are good for testing the specific qualities that the Speakers Corner pressing lacks.

Sibelius / Finlandia / Mackerras

More of the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings We’ve Discovered with Demo Disc Sound

[This review is from a good ten years ago or more. Our current favorite pressing of Finlandia with Mackerras is this one, on a budget Decca reissue. Go figure.]

A shocking Stereo Treasury sleeper with a superb Shaded-Dog-beating side one. Side one is nearly White Hot – it’s exceptionally transparent and dynamic. Real Demo Disc sound and music on side one – spectacular works played with feeling.

This is yet another wonderful example of what the much-lauded Decca recording engineers were able to capture on analog tape all those years ago. The 1960 master has been transferred brilliantly using “modern” cutting equipment (from 1970, not the low-rez junk they’re forced to make do with these days), giving you, the listener, sound that only the best of both worlds can offer.

Side One

More spacious than practically any other copy we heard thanks to an extended, correct top end.

This side was also very dynamic, and it gets loud in the right way, never harsh or screechy.

Correct from top to bottom, and there are not many records we can say that about. So natural in every way.

The brass is HUGE and POWERFUL on this side. Not many recordings capture the brass this well. (Ansermet on London comes to mind of course but many of his performances leave much to be desired. Here Mackerras is on top of his game with performances that are definitive.)

Side Two

Good clarity and top extension, with full-bodied, textured strings. Gets a little hot at its loudest but manages to stay under control and enjoyable throughout.

The opening track on side two, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, is one of my favorite pieces of orchestral music. Mackerras and the London Proms make it magical.

The Search for Finlandia

On a well-known work such as this we started by pulling out every performance on every label we had in our backroom and playing them one after another. Most never made it to the half-minute mark. Sour or thin brass on the opening salvo of Finlandia? Forget it; onto the trade-in pile you go.

(If you have too many classical records taking up too much space and need to winnow them down to a manageable size, pick a composer and play half a dozen of his works. Most classical records display an irredeemable mediocrity right from the start; it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. If you’re after the best sound, it’s the rare record that will have it, which makes clearing shelf space a lot easier than you might imagine. If you keep more than one out of ten you’re probably setting the bar too low if our experience is any guide.)

A few days went by while we were cleaning and listening to the hopefuls. We then proceeded to track down more of the pressings we had liked in our preliminary round of listening. At the end we had a good-sized pile of LPs that we thought shootout-worthy, pressings that included Shaded Dogs, Deccas, Londons, Stereo Treasury’s and Victrolas — representing most of our favorite labels from the Golden Age.

This Decca took the top prize. It beat every recording on every pressing we could get our hands on to throw at it. That’s our shootout in a nutshell.

Schumann and Grieg Piano Concertos / Lupu / Previn

More of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

xxxxx

A superb UK Decca pressing of this wonderful classical masterpiece with Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
Both sides boast full brass and an especially clear, solid, present piano, one with practically no trace of vintage analog tube smear
Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief will require practically no effort at all
Back in the days when the TAS Super Disc List meant something, this record was on it and deservedly so
The London pressings of the same album can be very good in their own right, but they don’t win shootouts – only the best of these Decca pressings do, a subject we discuss in some of these listings
Our two favorite recordings of the Grieg Piano Concerto are this one and Rubinstein’s for RCA in 1962
There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the Best Performances with the Highest Quality Sound, and this record certainly deserve a place on that list.

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Grieg / Peer Gynt Suites – Were We Wrong? Probably

Advice – What to Listen For on Classical Records

Below are the notes for a later pressing we played many years ago. I doubt if we would like this pressing much now.

It sounds like it lacks Tubey Magic, as well as weight in the lower registers, and we are much less tolerant of those kinds of shortcomings now than we were then.

Our review from 2008

Fiedler is wonderful here, which is to be expected. What’s unusual about this Red Seal is how good the sound is. It’s extremely transparent and tonally correct.

It sounds to me like a flat transfer.

Some tubey colorations would be nice, especially in the louder passages.

The sound also lacks a bit of weight in the bottom end.

But these faults are mostly made up for by the tremendous clarity and freedom from distortion that this pressing has. I doubt if the Shaded Dog has those qualities.

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Living Stereo Tubey Magical Sound from 1959 Like This Is Hard to Beat

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

This is a fairly old discussion of the album. Our latest thinking about it can be found here.

As much as I like Fjeldstad’s Peer Gynt on Decca/London with the LSO, I have to say that Odd Gruner-Hegge (love that first name!) and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra turn in the better of the two performances. To these ears theirs is more lyrical; it flows more naturally both within and between the individual movements.

Joy

The Oslo Phil also gives me more of a sense that they are feeling the joy in the playing of these works; I do not get quite the same feeling from the LSO. As we worked our way through more and more Living Stereo copies, the Oslo Phil.’s enthusiasm and love for the music became recognizably stronger, and, as one would expect, more agreeable and involving.

Our preference for this performance is of course a matter of taste; we cannot be sure you will feel the same. No doubt you have a version of the Fjeldstad on hand for comparison purposes, perhaps the Speakers Corner pressing (which we used to like quite a bit), but any will do. I expect that playing a handful of select movements from the two performances back to back will show this one to be superior.

To be fair, both are superb. A sizable group of other recordings were auditioned, but we found no others that were comparable in terms of both sound and performance.

The Sound

In comparing the sound I would call it a toss-up, perhaps with the tie going to the Fjeldstad. The Decca is bigger and clearer, but has some aspects to the miking that strike me as infelicitous. The brass in places seems to jump out and call attention to itself, which never happens on the RCA.

Although less of a Demo Disc, the sound of the Gruner-Hegge performance was slightly more involving, or is it the performance that draws you in? As usual, separating the sound of the music from the music itself is no easy task, if it is even possible at all.

Side One

Rich, tubey, yet open and clear, with lovely string textures, especially in the lower strings, as would be expected of any Living Stereo recording from 1958. Anitra’s Dance (sounding very much like a movement from Scheherazade) is superb here and would qualify to demo your system with, assuming you have the system a large orchestral recording such as this requires.

As the record plays the top end extends and the space of the hall becomes more clear and 3-D.

Side Two

The opening is exciting and sounds amazing on this copy — it doesn’t get any better than this folks!

The top is extremely open and clean yet the strings are never bright nor shrill. So transparent and spacious.

The last movement has some Wagnerian touches. The string tone of the lower strings is hard to fault, and the overall sound at the end is lively and exciting without ever crossing the line into hi-fi-ishness. This is the mark of an exceptionally good record!

Rarity

It has taken us years of serious searching to come up with the pile of copies we were able to play in our shootout. To find a copy of this record in anything but beat condition has been difficult and time-consuming to say the least. The powerfully dynamic Hall of the Mountain King is at the end of side one and unless you have a very well-cared-for copy the inner groove distortion will be painful indeed.

By the way, none of the better copies in the shootout were quieter than this one. Mint Minus Minus is going to be as quiet as these pressings get.

Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl and the Loss of Transparency

We review yet another mediocre Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl reissue.

We recently gave the Heavy Vinyl pressing from Speakers Corner, the same one that we had previously recommended back in the ’90s, a sonic grade of C+.

To our ears now it has many more shortcomings than it did back then, which we discuss below.

So often when we revisit the remastered pressings we used to like on Heavy Vinyl we come away dumbfounded — what on earth were we thinking? These are not the droids sounds we are looking for. Perhaps our minds were clouded at the time.

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed some light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of modern remasterings.

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is TRANSPARENCY. Modern records are just so damn opaque. We can’s stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a whole — including those that pass themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the ones we sell. Once you hear this Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the new ones, where the faults of the current reissues become much more recognizable, even obvious. When you can hear them that way, head to head, there really is no comparison.

A Lost Cause

The wonderful vintage disc we are offering here will surely shame 100% of the Heavy Vinyl pressings ever made, as no Heavy Vinyl pressing — not one — has ever sounded especially transparent or spacious to us when played against the best Golden Age recordings, whether pressed back in the day or twenty years later.

Many of the major labels were producing superb classical records well into the ’70s. By the ’90s no one, and we really do mean no one, could manage to make a record that compares with them.

Precisely the reason we stopped carrying The Modern LP Pressing — it just can’t compete with good vintage vinyl, assuming that the vinyl in question has been properly mastered, pressed and cleaned.

This is of course something we would never assume — we clean the records and play them and that’s how we find out whether they are any good or not. There is no other way to do it — for any record from any era — despite what you may have read elsewhere.