_Conductors – Martinon

Don’t Waste Your Money on this Prokofiev Symphony No. 5

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The copies we recently auditioned of LSC 2272 were crude and congested in the loudest passages. Cleaning did not seem to help. There may be better sounding copies of the album out there in record land but we are not going to spend any more time looking for them, especially considering the prices Living Stereo pressings now command on the used record market.

Please consider taking our advice and giving this one a miss.

There are quite a number of other vintage classical releases that we’ve run into over the years with shortcomings such as these.

For fans of vintage Living Stereo pressings, here are some to avoid.

Some audiophiles may be impressed by the average Shaded Dog pressing, but I can assure you that we here at Better Records are decidedly not of that persuasion.

Something in the range of five to ten per cent of the major label Golden Age recordings we play will eventually make it to the site. The vast majority just don’t sound all that good to us. (Many have second- and third-rate performances and those get tossed without ever making it to a shootout.)

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Dvorak – Slavonic Dances / Martinon

More of the Music of Dvorak

  • Martinon and the LSO’s lively performance of Slavonic Dances debuts on the site with big, rich and Tubey Magical Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing
  • These sides are clear, full-bodied and present, with plenty of space around the players, the unmistakable sonic hallmark of the properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage analog LP
  • We’ve been trying to get this shootout going for many years – some of the pressings we’ve come across have been absolutely some of the best sounding Living Stereo titles we’ve ever played
  • If we ever create a Living Stereo Top Ten, this album will be a serious contender of the honor
  • This record will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does. The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed. Everyone else will just enjoy the hell out of it.
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music

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Ibert / Saint-Saens / Bizet – Divertissement / Danse Macabre & more / Martinon

More of the Music of Saint-Saens

  • With two excellent Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy of these wonderful orchestral works that sounds remotely as good as this vintage London Blueback pressing
  • These sides are clear, full-bodied and present, with plenty of space around the players, the unmistakable sonic hallmark of the properly mastered, properly pressed vintage analog LP
  • The presentation of the orchestra is wide, tall, spacious, rich and tubey, yet the dynamics and transparency are first rate

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A Good, But Not Really All that Great Pressing of Daphnis et Chloé with Martinon

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

LSC 2806 is not a bad sounding pressing — with grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it belongs in our section for good, not great sounding LPs — but there are other recordings which are substantially better in every way.

Our current favorite is the Decca recording with Monteux from 1959.

We’ve auditioned countless pressings in the 37 38 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands.

This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made, through trial and error. It may be expensive and time consuming, but there is simply no other method for finding better records that works. If you know of one, please write me!

We are not the least bit interested in pressings that are “known” to sound the best.

Known by whom? Which audiophiles — hobbyists or professionals, take your pick — can be trusted to know what they are talking about when it comes to the sound of records.

I have never met one, outside of those of us who work for Better Records. I remain skeptical of the existence of such a creature.

We’re looking for the pressings of albums that do sound the best.

You know, when you actually play them.

If you’re an audiophile with an ear for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve ever heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed to you as an audiophile. Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre, and a great many are just awful.

And if we can’t beat whatever LP you own or have heard, you get your money back.  It’s as simple as that.

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Music Of Berlioz / Martinon

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

  • You’ll find big, dynamic and tubey sonics throughout this early Stereo London pressing of CS 6101, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • This is kind of record that Decca’s reputation as the purveyor of the world’s greatest orchestral recordings rests on
  • If you want to hear some exciting French orchestral music played by one of the great orchestras under the direction of the amazing Jean Martinon, you will have a hard time finding a record that delivers the goods better than this one

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Another “Problematical” Classic Records Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing of these works by Shostakovich, but I remember it as nothing special.

Like a lot of the records put out by this label, it’s tonally fine but low-rez and lacking space, warmth and above all, Tubey Magic.

I don’t think I’ve ever played an original or a Victrola reissue that didn’t sound better, and that means that the best grade to give Classic’s pressing is probably a D for below average.

The Classic Records pressing can currently be found on the TAS list, but we don’t think it has any business being there, along with a great many others, far more than we could ever find the time to play and review.

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This Blueback of Le Cid Was Just Awful

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

Don’t buy into that record collector/audiophile canard that the originals are always the best sounding pressings.

This original Blueback pressing — true, we only had the one, so take it for what it’s worth — was a complete disaster: shrill, with no top or bottom to speak of, the very definition of boxy sound.

Our current favorite for sound and performance is the one Fremaux conducted for EMI in 1971.

It had been on the TAS List for some time, but we confess we didn’t bother finding out how good it was until about five years ago when it became clear to us what a wonderful conductor Louis Fremaux could be.

Here are some other Hot Stamper pressings of TAS list titles that we like.

Back to London

The sound of the London original you see above was much too unpleasant to be played on high quality modern equipment. There are quite a number of others that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings.

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If You Own This Classic Records Pressing, I’ll Bet It’s Pristine

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical Masterpieces Available Now

If I were in charge of the TAS Super Disc list, I would not have put this record on it.

Here are some others that we do not think qualify as Super Discs.

When Classic Records was blowing out its unsold inventory through the Tower Records Classical Annex in Hollywood many years ago — apparently they had run into some financial trouble — this was a title you could pick up for under ten bucks. I remember it being $7, but my memory may not be correct on that point. Whatever the price, it was cheap.

And even at that price it seemed nobody really wanted it.  Which is as it should be. Heavy Vinyl or no Heavy Vinyl, a bad record is a bad record and not worth the bother of sitting down and listening to it.

If you own this record, my guess is it is pristine.

If you played it at all, you played it once and put it away on a shelf where it probably sits to this very day. Good records get played and bad records don’t. If you have lots of pristine records on your shelves, ask yourself this question: Why don’t I want to play them?

You may not like the implications of the answer: They aren’t very good.

And that means you should never have bought them in the first place. But we all make mistakes.

Owning up to them may be hard, but it is the only way to make any real progress in this hobby.

The One Out of Ten Rule

If you have too many classical records taking up space and need to winnow them down to a more manageable size, pick a composer and play half a dozen of his works. You may be surprised at how lackluster the sound is on the majority of them.

Most classical records display an irredeemable mediocrity right from the start.

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The Vintage Vinyl Sound You Won’t Find on Modern LPs and CDs

Classical Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Here is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. 

It’s also proof positive that Decca’s choice of Kingsway Hall as a recording venue was a good one. The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy.

If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are so consistently unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them. In our experience, no CD and no Heavy Vinyl pressing ever sounded like this.

The richness of the strings, a signature sound for Decca in the Fifties and Sixties, is on display here for fans of the classical Golden Age. It’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years (and this of course includes practically everything pressed on Heavy Vinyl).

It may be a lost art, but as long as we have these wonderful vintage pressings to play, it’s an art that is not lost on us. I don’t think the Decca engineers could have recorded this music much better than they dhave here — it has all the orchestral magic one could ask for, as well as the clarity and presence that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records.

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Shostakovich – Symphony No. 1 / The Age Of Gold Ballet Suite / Martinon

More of the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich

  • This superb pressing boasts better than Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side one for the symphony
  • Side one of this copy was so much better than every other side we auditioned we were tempted to call it 3.5 (A+++ – A++++), but we don’t do that anymore, so let’s just say you won’t believe how good side one of this pressing sounds
  • The Symphony No. 1 concludes over the first inch of side two and the sound here is excellent as well, with many of the same sonic attributes, as rightly befits a true Golden Age Classic from 1959
  • The Age of Gold Ballet Suite found on side two of this record is one of the best recordings we know of the work, if not the best
  • Recorded in Kingsway Hall with the London Symphony, this Decca licensed title has orchestral sound to rival the anything you’ve heard
  • “This is an example of what art as recorded sound should strive to be. A triumph for all participants.”

Our Story

The first copy of the album I got my hands on and needle-dropped blew me away with its big, open, clear, solid orchestral sound. Close to three years later, when we had enough copies to do this shootout, sure enough it won. That rarely happens — in a big pile of records there’s almost always something better than whatever we’ve heard — but it happened this time.

Imagine if I had played one of the bad sounding or noisy ones to start with. It’s unlikely I would have been motivated to pursue the title and consequently the shootout we just did would have never happened. Lucky for us all that that first copy was so good.

These sides are “real” sounding, with a clean bottom and clean lower mids. Little to no smear. The sound is full-bodied and rich, yet clear and clean, and spread out on a huge stage – it’s yet another example of proper orchestral reproduction.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage.  (more…)