Performers

Bruch & Mozart / Violin Concertos / Heifetz

Hot Stamper Pressings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings Featuring Jascha Heifetz

  • Heifetz’s lively performance of these wonderful violin concertos debuts on the site with excellent Living Stereo sound  throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing
  • This is right at the top of all the recordings Heifetz made for RCA in the glory days of Living Stereo — there may be titles that are comparable, but we have yet to hear a violin concerto recording that can surpass it
  • Both of these sides are exceptionally relaxed and spacious, with the rich, textured sheen of the violin that Living Stereo made possible in the 50s and early 60s clearly evident throughout these pieces
  • It’s simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more real than practically all of the other copies we played
  • LSC 2652 is one of the hardest Heifetz titles to find with the original Shaded Dog label, and quite a few of the copies we paid premium prices for turned out to have marks or other problems in the vinyl
  • Skip the Red Seal pressings from the 70s — the ones we played were bright, screechy, thin and missing just about everything that makes the early pressings so amazingly good

(more…)

Beethoven / Haydn / The Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings Featuring Jascha Heifetz

This is a lovely sounding pressing of cello and violin, with smooth, natural, tonally-correct sound and correctly-sized instruments, something you don’t hear often on recordings with Heifetz. They tend to have huge violins and small orchestras.

In these chamber works perhaps the engineers had an easier time of getting it right.

The sound is transparent, spacious and three-dimensional in the best Living Stereo tradition.

If you love the sound of violin and cello, played by virtuosi of the highest order, this is the record for you.

Side One

Beethoven: Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 1

Side Two

Haydn: Divertimento for Cello and Orchestra 
Rozsa: Tema con Variazioni

This is an older classical/orchestral review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

(more…)

Bach / Suites For Solo Cello No. 2 & No. 5 / Starker

More of the music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

  • An early Mercury label pressing of Starker’s legendary 1963 recording of Bach’s sublime music for solo cello with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
  • Suite No. 5 takes up all of this superb Double Plus side two, and we guarantee you’ve never heard it sound this good
  • True, side one earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we are very confidant that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, especially one by Speakers Corner, because every one of those that we played was opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes
  • Some Mercury pressings from the 50s have absolutely amazing sound
  • Speakers Corner mucked up the sound of this Mercury like you would not believe

(more…)

Sibelius – Audiophiles Should Avoid These Stampers

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

More Stamper and Pressing Information Gratis

We had two copies with 10s/10s stampers and both of them ended up at the bottom of the rankings.

Note also that our 1s side one did not win the shootout, although the sound was still quite good and better than most of what we played.

There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with obvious shortcomings.

Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve played, broken down into the three major labels that account for most of the best classical and orchestral titles we’ve had the pleasure to play.

  • London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
  • Mercury records with weak sound or performances
  • RCA records with weak sound or performances

We’ve auditioned countless pressings in the 36 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 records 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 records that actually do sound the best.

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 heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed as suitable for an audiophile. Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre.

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

(more…)

The Grieg Piano Concerto – With a Correctly Sized Piano for a Change

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

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

This Shaded Dog pressing has exceptionally lively and dynamic sound on side two, which earned an A++ grade and plays quietly to boot.

The sound is BIG and BOLD enough to fill up your listening room and then some.

The piano is clean and clear, the strings are rich and textured.

And his performance of this work is superb, as is his performance of the shorter coupling works on side two (which actually have the best sound here). 

This is wonderfully recorded music. It has a very natural orchestral perspective and superb string tone.

It also boasts a correctly-sized piano, which is quite unusual for Rubinstein’s recordings in our experience.

Some of the titles we’ve auditioned that had noticeably over-sized imaging can be found here.

(more…)

Beethoven / Violin Concerto / Heifetz – On an Outstanding White Dog Pressing

More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

More Recordings Featuring the Violin

  • Our outstanding vintage pressing of this brilliant Living Stereo recording — from 1956! — boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Heifetz’s violin is immediate, real and lively here – you are in the presence of greatness with this recording
  • The orchestra is wide, tall, spacious, rich and tubey, yet the dynamics and transparency are first rate
  • White Dogs and Shaded Dogs can both sound quite good on this title – just avoid the Red Seals and later pressings if you are looking for the best sound

The reproduction of the violin here is superb — harmonically rich, natural, clean, clear, resolving. What sets the truly killer pressings apart is the depth, width and three-dimensional quality of the sound, as well as the fact that they become less congested in the louder passages and don’t get shrill or blary.

The best copies display a Tubey Magical richness — especially evident in the basses and celli — that is to die for.

Big space, a solid bottom, and plenty of dynamic energy are strongly in evidence throughout. Little smear, exceptional resolution, transparency, tremendous dynamics, a violin that is present and solid — the best copies take the sound of the recording right to the limits of what we thought possible.

Heifetz is a fiery player. On a good pressing such as this one, you will hear all the detail of his bowing without being overpowered by it. As we listened we became completely immersed in the music on the record, transfixed by the remarkable virtuosity he brings to such a difficult and demanding work. (more…)

Ritual Fire Dance – Side One Had Tubey Colorations Missing from Side Two

More Columbia Classical Recordings

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

An undiscovered gem from 1967 on the 360 Columbia label.

Side two of this record blew our minds with its White Hot Stamper sound.

Musically and sonically this record is nothing short of wonderful.

Who knew? You could play fifty vintage piano recordings and not find one as good as this.

Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart — these shorter pieces and excerpts were composed by those with the greatest gift for melody, men who’ve produced works that have stood the test of time, enchanting audiences over the centuries with works of such beauty and charm.

Here at Better Records we have never been fans of Columbia classical LPs. Years ago we noted that:

Columbia classical recordings have a tendency to be shrill, upper-midrangy, glary and hard sounding. The upper mids are often nasally and pinched; the strings and brass will screech and blare at you in the worst way. If Columbia’s goal was to drive the audiophile classical music lover screaming from the room (or, more realistically, induce a strong desire to call it a day record-playing wise), most of the time one would have to grant they’ve succeeded brilliantly. Occasionally they fail. When they do we call those pressings Hot Stampers.

To be clear, the fault more often than not has to be in the mastering, not the recording. We’ve raved about so many great copies of titles in the past, only to find that the next three or four LPs we pick up of the very same titles sound just godawful. There are some amazing Bernstein recordings out there, but the the amount of work it takes to find the one that sounds good is overwhelming — how can such great recordings be regularly mastered so poorly?

Side One

A++, with a huge, rich, sweet, natural sounding piano. The more you listen the more apparent it becomes that, as natural as it may seem at first blush, there are still some old school tubey colorations that make the sound not quite as “accurate” and real as one might wish.

And the confirmation of that finding comes as soon as you flip the record over.

Side Two

A+++, with a piano that really DOES sound real. Tubey colorations are gone. It’s clear and clean and solid the way a piano really sounds in recital. The transparency is simply amazing — you are there. There aren’t many solo piano recordings that sound this right. When you hear one, it’s shocking how good it can be.

A case of good tube mastering? On the best sides of the best pressings, absolutely.

More on the subject of tubes in audio here.

Testing with the Piano

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how pianos are good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).
  • We like them to be solidly weighted.
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile record reviews we read.

Other records that we have found to be good for testing in order to improve your playback, as well as your critical listening skills, can be found here.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

(more…)

Grieg – Watch Out for Shaded Dogs with 12s Stampers

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

More Vinyl Arcana to Help You Find Better Records

One set of stampers for the Shaded Dogs we played in our most recent shootout sounded consistently subpar, 12s/12s.

The sound was blary on both sides. (More records with blary sound here.)

Although the Shaded Dog originals with the right stampers will always win our shootouts, the White Dog reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good.

This Shaded Dog might be passable on an old school audio system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

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

(more…)

Beethoven / “Kreutzer” Sonata & Bach / Concerto For Two Violins / Heifetz

Hot Stamper Pressings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings Featuring Jascha Heifetz

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sides, this original Shaded Dog pressing of these classical violin performances will be very hard to beat
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This copy had the balance of clarity and sweetness we were looking for in the tone of the violin, and the orchestra sounds amazing – so rich and full-bodied
  • These sides are doing pretty much everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • Although the Shaded Dog originals, now that we know which stampers are the best, will always win our shootouts, the White Dog reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performance coupled with the highest quality sound. This record has earned a place on that list, beating out Heifetz’s other performance for RCA, LSC 2377

If you want a recording that is going to put your system to the test, this is that record! That violin is real. The piano is also very well recorded, and the balance between those two instruments on this recording is perfection.

(more…)

Tchaikovsky – Now That’s the Way a Piano Should Sound!

The Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

Album Reviews of the Music of Tchaikovsky

I don’t know of another recording of the work that gets the sound of the piano better. On the better copies, the percussive quality of the instrument really comes through.

Without question this is a phenomenal piano recording in every way.

It’s amazing how many piano recordings have poorly-miked pianos. The badly recorded pianos are either too distant, lack proper reproduction of the lower registers, or somehow smear the pounding of the keys into a blurry mess.

Are they badly recorded?

Or is it a mastering issue?

Perhaps a pressing issue?

To be honest, it’s probably all three.

On the best copies the rich texture of the strings is out of this world — you will have a very hard time finding a DG with better string tone. This record does not have the shortcomings of the average DG: it’s not hard, shrill, or sour.

DG made plenty of good records in the 50s and 60s, then proceeded to fall apart, like most labels did. This is one of their finest. It proves conclusively that at one time — 1962 to be exact — they clearly knew exactly what they were doing.

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how good pianos are for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term)
  • We like them to be solidly weighted
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile reviews we read

Other records that we have found to be good for testing and improving your playback can be found here.

Further Reading

(more…)