_Conductors – Monteux

Ravel / Daphnis et Chloé / Monteux

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • Boasting an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two, this original London pressing of CS 6147 was giving us the sound we were looking for on Ravel’s Masterpiece
  • The sound is big and rich, lively and open, with an abundance of depth and huge climaxes that hold together
  • The voices in the chorus are clear, natural, separate and full-bodied — this is the hallmark of a vintage Golden Age recording: naturalness
  • We know of no other recording of the work that does as good a job of capturing such a large orchestra and chorus
  • Of course, Monteux is a master of the French idiom – his performance of the complete ballet is definitive in our opinion
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

Both sides here are big, with the space and depth of the wonderful Kingsway Hall that the LSO perform in. John Culshaw produced the album, which surely accounts for the huge size and space, not to mention quality, of the recording. The sound is dynamic and tonally correct throughout.

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RCA Produced this Amazing Budget Reissue in 1976

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

This review was written in 2011 shortly after our first Hot Stamper shootout for the work.

It still holds up though — I wouldn’t change a thing, other than to add a few links to help audiophiles and record collectors gain a better understanding of the shortcomings of received wisdom when it comes to finding that small subset of pressings capable of offering significantly higher sound quality.

Conventional record collector thinking generally works fine most of the time, but Monteux’s recording of the 6th Symphony in 1955 is a good example of the standard advice for finding better pressings turning out to be completely wrong.

For more on this subject, including the solution we came up with to fix the problem, click here.

Our Original Review

Presenting a first for Better Records: a White Hot Stamper copy of this CORRECTLY remastered version of LSC 1901, which just happens to be a recording from the earliest days of stereo, 1955! It’s guaranteed to KILL any and all original Shaded Dogs, as well as the more common reissues; White Dogs, Red Seals, Victrolas, Classic Heavy Vinyl, you name it, this pressing will beat the pants off of it and in the process show you precisely what is wrong with each and every one of them.

Over the past twenty years we’ve played hundreds of early RCAs and we have sure never heard one sound like this, with so much richness, Tubey Magic, LIFE and CLARITY.

Where is the cutter head distortion, congestion and frequency limiting that ruins so many of the early pressings?

Mostly — I’m tempted to say completely — gone. We’ve played at least three Shaded Dogs of LSC 1901 since 2011 and all three were AWFUL.

The size and scope of this recording is enormous, with the orchestral sections clearly staged wide and deep. Where is the old tube smear and compression and opacity? It must not be on the tape, because I hear no trace of it.

This copy is cut clean, its dynamics intact, which just goes to show how much better the master tape must be than we’ve been led to believe by the original Shady Dogs and the hacks at Classic Records.

The lower strings are especially textured and rich. That’s the Living Stereo sound we love!

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Tchaikovsky / Symphony No. 6 on Shaded Dog

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

We’ve played at least three Shaded Dogs of LSC 1901 since we started doing shootouts for this recording and all three were awful.

The only version of this wonderful performance from 1955, one of the best we know of, is this very late reissue that we discovered more than twenty years ago, a sleeper of a record if ever there was one.

Years ago we described a Hot Stamper pressing this way:

The size and scope of this recording is enormous, with the orchestral sections clearly staged wide and deep. Where is the old tube smear and compression and opacity? It must not be on the tape, because I hear no trace of it.

This copy is cut clean, its dynamics intact, which just goes to show how much better the master tape must be than we’ve been led to believe by the original Shady Dogs and the hacks at Classic Records (note: their Heavy Vinyl reissue is awful).

RCA managed to cut this record amazingly well decades after the tape was first recorded, not for audiophiles, but for music lovers. Maybe that’s the secret.

When you hear how good it sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1976, but that’s precisely what it is. Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts.

UPDATE 2025

Some of our newer commentary for the Gold Seal pressing we like goes like this:

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Tchaikovsky’s None-Too-Impressive 6th Symphony on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, twenty years or more, but I remember it as none-too-impressive, playing into my natural prejudice against the earliest Living Stereo recordings and Classic Records themselves.

UPDATE 2025

Having heard some amazingly good sounding ones since this review was written many years ago, we are no longer prejudiced against the “earliest Living Stereo releases.” Many of them have superb sound.

The original is not good either in our experience. The only version of this wonderful performance from 1955, the best we know of, is this very late reissue that we discovered more than twenty years ago, a sleeper of a record if ever there was one.

When you hear how good it sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1976, but that’s precisely what it is.

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

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Tchaikovsky / Symphony No. 6 / Monteux

More of the Music of Tchaikovsky

  • This RCA Gold Seal released in 1976 (AGL1-1522) features STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout
  • Tonally correct from top to bottom and as transparent as practically any vintage recording we’ve heard, the combination of clarity and Tubey Magic here is hard to beat
  • This copy is cut clean, and its dynamics and energy are fully intact, which just goes to show how much better the master tape must be than we’ve been led to believe by the original Shaded Dogs pressings and the awful Bernie Grundman pressing released by Classic Records
  • Not all of these later pressings sound like this one, so if you want to find your own, good luck, you sure aren’t likely to run across one of this quality, and the way we know that is that of all the copies that we played, this one was clearly the best
  • If you’re a classical music aficionado, this recording from the earliest days of stereo in 1955 belongs in your collection.
  • When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from the 70s, but that’s precisely what it is
  • Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts

This Hot Stamper copy of this correctly remastered version of LSC 1901 (which just happens to be a recording from the earliest days of stereo, 1955!) is guaranteed to kill any and all original Shaded Dogs, as well as the more common reissues; White Dogs, Red Seals, Victrolas, Classic Heavy Vinyl, you name it — this pressing will beat the pants off of it and in the process show you precisely what is wrong with each and every one of them.

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Dvorak / Symphony No. 2 – Hard to Recommend on Living Stereo

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

I have never heard a copy of LSC 2489 sound better than decent. We would say the sound quality of this Dvorak title is most likely to be passable at best. True, we haven’t played all that many copies, but the copies we did play were either unimpressive or not good at all.

It certainly is very unlikely to have the wonderful sound of the best Living Stereo pressings that you can find on our site, each of which has been carefully evaluated to the highest standards.

If you can get one for cheap, under five bucks say, go for it. Otherwise we recommend that you pass if what you are looking for is audiophile quality sound.

Perhaps the poor recording quality (I’m guessing; obviously I’ve never heard the master tape) explains the poor sound of the Classic Records remastered version from 1994.

Not that that stopped anybody from buying those awful 180 gram pressings! They may have been mastered by one of the greats, Bernie Grundman, but he was well past his prime when he was working for that awful label, as we explain here.

Have You Noticed?

If you are a fan of Living Stereo pressings, have you noticed that many of them – this one for example – don’t sound good?

If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have. But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare LSC pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?

I would say RCA’s track record during the 50s and 60s is a pretty good one, offering (potentially) excellent sound for roughly one out of every three titles or so.

But that means that odds are there would be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.

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Berlioz / Symphonie Fantastique / Monteux

More Living Stereo Recordings

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sides, this original Shaded Dog pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Monteux and the Vienna Phil’s performance of this orchestral spectacular
  • An outstanding pressing, with gorgeous Golden Age Tubey Magical strings and lovely hall acoustics
  • This is our favorite performances of Berlioz’s masterwork
  • Ansermet’s recording for Decca (CS 6025) is also a favorite, but when you play the best of them against the top Shaded Dogs, the differences are clear and so is the winner, the RCA
  • 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?
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

This is a piece that’s difficult to squeeze onto two sides of a single LP, clocking in as it does at around 45 minutes, which means that the mastering engineer has three options when cutting the record: compress the dynamics, lower the level, or filter out the deep bass.

The RCA mastering engineer for this pressing managed to hold on to the powerful dynamics captured by the Decca (as far as I know) recording team, seemingly without doing harm to dynamics, levels or deep bass. How, I have no idea.

Maybe it’s the gorgeous Living Stereo strings and hall acoustics that let us forget about the possibility of compromises in other areas.

Of course this was always the downfall of the Classic Records RCA remasterings. Their records had bass and dynamics, no one could deny it, but the strings were usually shrill and smeary, and the hall a fraction of the size the vintage pressings had.

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 — no less than LSC 2446, Scheherazade — and put it right into a shootout.

The results: a mediocre side one, a bad side two. 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 on those two labels that don’t sound much better than mediocre. Still, no matter what early vintage pressings you have, on side two it should be no contest.)

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Symphonie Fantastique in Living Stereo – “So Sweet and Tubey”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

The size and power of a large orchestra in Living Stereo sound. Maybe it’s the gorgeous Living Stereo strings and hall acoustics that let us forget about the possibility of compromises occurring in other areas.

So open and spacious, with gorgeous, richly textured strings — this is the VIVID sound we love from the Golden Age. 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? 

Here are the notes from our shootout winning copy from our last go around for the RCA.

Side One

  • Big and tubey brass and bass
  • Very lively and transparent and spacious
  • So sweet and tubey

Side Two

  • Huge and tubey and lively
  • So big and 3-D
  • Deep rich bass
  • Huge peak is the least distorted

That last point is a good one. There is distortion at the climax of the work on side two. It is there on every copy. On some copies it will be worse than on other copies.

You want a pressing with the least amount of distortion on that peak but one that is also dynamic and lively.

This is the reason we do shootouts. We’re listening for how each pressing handles that problem in the recording and then using that metric, along with many others, to grade them.

The copy that had the best sound on side two was the most dynamic and the least distorted, as well as having all the other good qualities we noted.

That is what you are paying for when you buy a White Hot Stamper pressing. You’re not buying a perfect record, there’s no such thing.

Rather, it’s the one that comes closest to perfection as can be found.

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Ravel / Daphnis et Chloé – Good, Not Great on Decca Jubilee

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available now

The Decca budget reissue you see to the left had passable sonics. It would probably be competitive with the top five percent ot Heavy Vinyl pressings that we’ve played over the last 30 years. Some of those would earn grades of 1.5+, which turned out to be the case here.

We play every pressing we can get our hands on because you never know just how good one of these budget reissues can sound until you clean it up and give it a spin.

Most don’t pan out — maybe one out of five is any good — but that’s just the nature of the best when it comes to collecting top quality records.

Most OJC pressings of jazz albums aren’t very good, but the best ones clearly are because they win our blinded shootouts.

If you want the best sound, you had better have your mind open to the idea that the originals are not the only ones that were mastered correctly. There are currently 175 records we’ve identified as sounding better on a reissue pressing, and that number probably represents less than half of the ones we’ve encountered over the many years we’ve actively been doing shootouts.

The commentary for the amazing sounding Decca originals below describes just how wonderful they are, worlds better than anything you can find on Heavy Vinyl.

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Audiophiles Should Give Monteux’s Surprise and Clock Symphonies a Miss

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joseph Haydn Available Now

None of the pressings we played of this RCA (LSC 2394) were remotely competitive with Fjelstad’s recording for RCA from 1959.

The sound of the RCA Shaded Dog we played was consistently compressed and veiled, a case of the “old record” sound we find on far too many vintage pressings.

The world is full of old records that just sound like old records. We’ve suffered through them by the tens of thousands.

Our website, as well as this blog, are devoted to helping audiophiles find pressings that don’t sound anything like the millions of run-of-the-mill LPs that have been stamped out for the last seven decades.

Even a million dollar stereo can’t make the average record sound good, and the more accurate and revealing the system, the more limited and lifeless the average record will show itself to be.

The White Dog pressing was even worse. It was hot, dry and flat. Who wants to play a record that sounds like that?

Only an old school audio system can hide the faults of pressings such as these. The world is full of those too, even though they might comprise all the latest and most expensive components.

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