_Composers – Mozart

Mozart / Symphonies Nos. 40 & 41 on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This was our take on the record way back in 1998 when we first started to carry it. This is our current favorite performance on record, but of course we prefer the vintage pressings of the recording as they clearly sound better. We prefer the best Decca pressings, but the Londons can be quite good as well, just not as good. In other words, they can’t win shootouts, but they will easily beat whatever other pressing you may have of the recording. (More on Decca Vs. London here.)

This is one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas. When they released this title on Heavy Vinyl in 1998, it became one of the few Speakers Corner classical recordings we carried and recommended. 

We knew it sounded good, but up until recently [recently being 2010 or so], when we started collecting and playing the better vintage Deccas and Londons, we sure didn’t know it could sound as good as the best of those pressings do.

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

Transparency

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’t 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 group — including those that pass themselves off as 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 is capable of making records that sound as good as the vintage ones we sell.

UPDATE 2025

The guy who cut this pressing at some point this century did a great job — it sounds like a vintage record, and better than any of the vintage pressings of the title we have ever played — but we don’t know who it is because he wasn’t credited on the jacket for his mastering!

Perhaps we should be more clear and say that it is the Big Name mastering engineers who can’t seem to cut a good record these days,

Once you hear our Hot Stamper pressings, 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 newer ones.

This allows the faults of the current reissues to become much more recognizable, to the point of actually being quite obvious. When you can hear the different pressings that way, head to head, there really is no comparison. (more…)

Side One Had Tubey Colorations Missing from Side Two

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

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. 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 godawful.

There are some amazing Bernstein recordings out there, but the amount of work it takes to find the one that sounds good is overwhelming — how can such great recordings be mastered so poorly so often?

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 lifelike as one might wish.

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

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Are You a Soundphile? I Used to Be One

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

About 30 years ago I got hold of a Japanese pressing of Marriner conducting Haydn’s Toy Symphony and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and was blown away by the absolutely phenomenal quality of the Haydn. Listing the record for sale, I raved:

DEMO QUALITY SOUND! This is the best sounding Toy Symphony you will ever hear!

…all the little toys that play along with the music just JUMP out of the speakers. The recording is so transparent and the toys are so well miked it’s like hearing the work for the first time, or live.

Now we know definitively that this is clearly not true, assuming yoy have one of our Hot Stamper pressings of the EMI original. They are better in every way than the Japanese pressing, which is the one purporting to have audiophile sound.

If this sounds familiar to you, I’m guessing this is not your first visit to the blog or our site. There is almost always a vintage pressing with superior sound when compared to the audiophile pressings made from the same recording.

The problem is: You just don’t know which vintage pressing will have superior sound. Maybe they all will. Maybe none of the copies you own will. There is one, but how do you find it?

In order to get that answer, you have to know how to do carefully controlled shootouts, and not just once, but more often than not a number of them over a period of years. Whatever answer you may come up will most likely be provisional, not definitve, because that’s the only way the process of discovery can work when applying scientific methodologies to the solution of a problem like “which pressings sound best on record X?”.

We did the shootout in 2022 and found out that the best of the original EMI pressings are quite a bit better, a classic case of live and learn, as well as one of the hundreds of breakthrough discoveries we’ve made over the years. That’s what happens when you are in the business of playing records and then selling the best of them to audiophiles looking for superior sound.

I believe I had at least one or two UK EMI pressings to play against the Japanese ones, but all the details of how I came to this conclusion — a proto-shootout, carried out long before I knew how to do a real one — are lost to the mists of time.

Keep in mind that my stereo was dramatically less revealing back then. Also I had not learned how to clean records properly. Those two facts, combined with the underdeveloped listening skills that go with them, helped me to arrive at the wrong conclusion.

No, the Japanese pressing, specifically targeted to audiophiles, or “soundphiles” if you like, is not superior to a properly mastered and pressed UK LP.

If you have more than a handful of Japanese pressings in your collection, you can be sure that there is still plenty of room for improvement in your audio system.

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Mozart – Clarinet Quintet / Vienna Octet

More of the Music of Mozart

  • You’ll find lush, sweet and rich Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this early London pressing of these famed compositions
  • Both sides of this pressing of CS-6379 are open, high-rez, and spacious, with depth like you will not believe and some of the least shrill string reproduction we have ever heard for this music
  • Clear and transparent and natural – your ability to suspend disbelief requires practically no effort at all

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Couperin / Mozart / Corelli / Britten – Music For Strings / Janigro

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings in Living Stereo

  • You’ll find KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound or close to it throughout this vintage Shaded Dog pressing of these superb classical compositions
  • 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 was simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more REAL than practically all of what we played
  • The rich, textured sheen of the strings that Living Stereo made possible in the 50s and early 60s is clearly evident throughout these pieces, something that the Heavy Vinyl crowd will never experience, because that sound simply does not exist on modern records

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London Records Takes You on A Journey Into (Potentially Very Good) Stereo Sound

Decca and London Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This was written a very long time ago!

1958 just happens to be one of the All Time Great Years for Analog Recordings, as can be seen from this amazing group of albums, all recorded or released that year.

INSANELY GOOD vintage Decca sound from 1958 — bigger, richer and more Tubey Magical than 9 out of 10 (or more!) records we’ve ever played from the pre-’60s early stereo Golden Age. How they got this one so right is beyond me.

We were sorely tempted to grade it White Hot, but chose instead to err on the side of modesty and call it A++ to A+++ or better (which is practically White Hot when you think about it).

Can it be that THIS was the first stereophonic sound music lovers of the world were exposed to on LP? (Stereo tapes may have existed in 1954, but they had to wait until 1958 to be transferred to vinyl.)

Could we possibly have fallen so far in only fifty years?

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Mozart – VTA and Balance

More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

What to listen for ask?

Dry sound.

Some of the copies lacked the richness to balance out the clarity and were dry sounding. There is a balance to be found.

The right VTA will be critical in this regard.

When you have all the space; the clearest, most extended harmonics; AND good weight and richness in the lower registers of the cello, you are where you need to be (keeping in mind that it can always get better if you have the patience and motivation to tweak further).

For more advice on setting your VTA properly, please click here.

On the other side of that coin is smear, usually from too much tubey richness. Again, finding the balance is key.

Here are some other records that are good for testing string tone and texture.

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Mozart’s Quintet / Trio Is a Great VTA Test Disc

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now

CS 6109 is a handy record for VTA adjustment.

Listen for fullness and solidity, especially in the piano, although a rich, full sounding clarinet is a joy here as well. 

Some of the copies we played in our shootout lacked the weight and solidity to balance out the qualities of transparency and clarity.

The resulting sound is less natural, with the kind of forced detail that CDs do so well, and live music never does. There is a balance to be found.

The right VTA will be critical in this regard. When you have all the space; the clearest, most extended harmonics; AND good weight and richness in the lower registers of the piano, you are where you need to be (keeping in mind that it can always get better if you have the patience and drive to tweak further).

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Falla / Ritual Fire Dance – Entremont

More Classical and Orchestral Pressings

  • Philippe Entremont’s delightful 1967 release, here with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides of this Stereo 360 pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • 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 wonderful pressing is solid and weighty, with less smear, situated in the bigger space, with more energetic performances
  • These sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present piano and plenty of 3D space around it
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case
  • Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief requires practically no effort at all
  • Here are more than 100 classical and orchestral discoveries we’ve made over the many years we’ve been auditioning records
  • We are happy to share these titles with those whose focus is on the wonderful music and sound they contain, rather than their cost, rarity. collectibility or resale value

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Mozart on Wonderful Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now

Sonic Grade: B?

A fairly good Speakers Corner Decca reissue, probably.

Not sure if we would still agree with what we wrote back in the 90s when this record came out, but here it is anyway. 

One of the best of the Deccas. I raved about this one years ago when it came out. If I had to pick a record to demonstrate how wonderful Decca recordings are, musically and sonically, this would be an easy choice.

These wonderful concertos — some of the greatest ever composed — should be part of any serious classical collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Kenneth Wilkinson was probably the engineer for these sessions in glorious Kingsway Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

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