Demo Discs for Orchestral Percussion

Hi-Fi a la Espanola / Fennell

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • An original Plum Label Stereo Mercury pressing (the first copy to ever hit the site) with a huge, powerful and tubey Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • Both of these TAS-approved sides boast an abundance of energy, loads of rich detail and texture, superb transparency and excellent clarity – the very definition of Demo Disc sound
  • Don’t expect to see anything but the real FR pressing when you get this one home — the RFR pressings are not remotely as good and did not even qualify for the lowest Hot Stamper grade on both sides
  • We owe a debt of gratitude to Harry Pearson for championing records such as this one – who is fit to carry his mantle today? (Besides us of course!)
  • We have been working up a shootout for this title for a very long time — after hearing how dubby and veiled the Classic Record pressing of the album was, we knew only the real thing would be worth doing

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Gershwin – Concerto In F / Cuban Overture / Wild / Fiedler

More of the Music of George Gershwin

  • Both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing were giving us the big and bold Living Stereo sound we were looking for on these wonderful orchestral pieces, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • 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
  • If you love the sound of a big bass drum, the Concerto in F is the work for you, and the engineers know how to capture both the bass and the space surrounding it
  • 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 just does not exist on modern repressings
  • Everything that is wrong with the low-res Classic reissue – boosted mids, strings lacking in texture and sheen, etc. – is nowhere to be found on these superb sides, overflowing with Living Stereo Tubey Magic from 1962
  • This is yet another Must Own orchestral recording from 1962
  • For a more complete list, the highest quality recordings of piano concertos that we’ve auditioned to date can be found here

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Rachmaninoff – Symphonic Dances / Johanos

More Hot Stamper Pressings of Rachmaninoff’s Music 

  • With incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on both TAS-approved sides, this original Turquoise label pressing of this orchestral spectacular is practically as good a copy as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Exceptionally (and unusually) quiet for a Vox pressing too – noisy vinyl is the rule and not the exception
  • It’s an extraordinary recording, and so wonderful on this pressing that after playing it, you may agree with us that few other classical Demo Discs are in its league
  • The bottom end of this record is powerful and solid like no other classical LP we’ve played in a very long time – this is the way to record tympani!
  • Other orchestral recordings with powerful drums can be found here
  • The sound is dynamic, lively and big – jumping out of the speakers and bringing the power and the vibrant colors of the symphony right into your listening room

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Herrmann – The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann

More of the Music of Bernard Herrmann

  • This early British London pressing gives you plenty of blockbuster sound for those who can play a record like this good and loud, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sonics on both TAS-approved sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • On the better copies, you will hear the power of the orchestra come to life right in your very own listening room
  • The soundfield is big, open and transparent, with the kind of wall to wall and floor to ceiling spaciousness that may just leave you in awe
  • A superb Phase 4 recording by Arthur Lilley, taking advantage of the legendary acoustics of Kingsway Hall
  • If like us you’re a fan of blockbuster orchestral recordings, this is a killer album from 1974 that belongs in your collection.

The soundfield is big, open and transparent, with the kind of three-dimensionality most orchestral recordings simply fail to reproduce. The brass here is weighty and powerful, and you can really hear the pluck of the strings on the harp.

Taxing the Limits

An orchestral dreadnought such as this requires mastering and pressing of the highest quality. It taxes the limits of LP playback itself, with deep organ notes (listen for the famous Decca rumble accompanying the organ if you have the deep bass reproduction to hear it); incredible dynamics from every area of the stage; masses of strings playing at the top of their registers with abandon; huge drums; powerful brass effects everywhere — every sound an orchestra can produce is found on this record, and then some. (You will hear plenty of sounds that defy description, that’s for sure. Some of the time I can’t even imagine what instrument could possibly make such a sound!)

Harry Pearson put the Decca pressing of this title on his TAS List of Super Discs. (We take issue with that choice below.)

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Rachmaninoff – Symphonic Dances / Johanos

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rachmaninoff’s Music 

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both TAS-approved sides, this original Turquoise label pressing of this orchestral spectacular is doing just about everything right
  • Fairly quiet for a Vox pressing too – noisy vinyl is the rule and not the exception
  • It’s an extraordinary recording, and so wonderful on this pressing that after playing it, you may agree with us that few other classical Demo Discs are in its league (particularly on side two)
  • The bottom end on side two of this record is powerful and solid, and side one is not far behind in both those areas – this is the way to record tympani!
  • The sound is dynamic, lively and big – jumping out of the speakers and bringing the power and the vibrant colors of the symphony right into your listening room (also particularly on side two)
  • True, side one earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we still guarantee that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, because every one of those that we played was opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite / Ansermet

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

  • Both sides of this original London pressing of CS 6538 had the big, lively and rich sound we’d been waiting for, earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus grades or close them
  • It’s also remarkably quiet — at the high end of Mint Minus Minus — a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Everything that we listen for in a great classical recording can be heard on this copy – it’s immediate, dynamic, very low distortion, spacious, and alive
  • The bass deserves special mention here – you rarely hear recordings from the 50s and early 60s, the kind of LPs that were mastered with tubes, of course, having this kind of truly deep, punchy bass

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Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique / Argenta

More Imported Pressings on Decca and London

  • With two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this copy of this orchestral spectacular (the first to hit the site in over two and a half years) is certainly as good as we have ever heard
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “big and spacious with textured strings”…”fully extended from top to bottom”…”tubey bass and brass”…”huge and open”…”rich and transparent”
  • We love the performance of The Paris Conservatoire Orchestra under Argenta, and this original London pressing shows you just how well recorded that performance was back in 1958
  • The sound is clear and open and wonderfully smooth and the bottom is big — the tympani and lower strings are powerful and dynamic
  • You will have a hard time finding better sound in the lower registers for this work — most of the pressings we’ve played were simply too anemic to take seriously
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how stunning 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
  • It’s worth noting that this is the only copy from our shootout that will make it to the site this time ’round – all of the others had far worse issues that rendered them unacceptable for listing, so those of you hoping for a Nearly White Hot or Super Hot copy with audiophile surfaces and no marks that play are going to be almost as disappointed as we were

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Tchaikovsky / Nutcracker Suites 1 & 2 / Ansermet

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Nutcracker Available Now

  • A superb copy of Tchaikovsky’s classical masterpiece with top quality sound from first note to last
  • If you have never experienced a vintage pressing of a Roy-Wallace-engineered Decca Tree recording from Victoria Hall, this is your chance to hear sound that puts practically everything else to shame
  • The notes for the last shootout winner read “I think this is my favorite [compared to the complete ballet (2203). It has more room, more glow and more sweetness, and it’s the most dynamic.”
  • A record like this lets you get lost in the world of its music, and what could be more important in a recording than that?
  • This is an AMAZINGLY well recorded performance of one of the most famous ballets – probably THE most famous – ever committed to analog tape
  • Enchanting music and sound combine on this copy to make one seriously good Demo Disc, if what you are trying to demonstrate is how relaxed and involved vintage analog can make you feel

There is certainly no shortage of Audio Spectaculars available on the site. A record such as this, so rich, natural and effortless, has distinctly different qualities that we feel are every bit as vital to the serious audiophile’s enjoyment of Tchaikovsky’s music.

Ansermet breathes life into this ballet as only he can and the Decca engineering team led by Roy Wallace do him proud.

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Bob and Ray / Throw a Stereo Spectacular

More of the Music of Bob and Ray

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish, this TAS-approved Living Stereo pressing will be very hard to beat, practically impossible even
  • Originally produced as a sampler record for the Living Stereo line, it is an absolute MUST OWN for serious audiophiles looking to take their system to the next level
  • Our reference copy here at Better Records is so vital to our operation that it would not be for sale at any (well, almost any) price
  • It has long been my personal favorite test disc, as well as one of our three best cartridge tweaking and turntable setup discs
  • 4 stars: “The gleefully cacophonous Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band takes the prize for providing the most unusual musical selection, but the overall program is extremely diverse [and] the comedy and music are enjoyable.”

Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular just happens to be our favorite Test Disc, eclipsing all others in the areas of naturalness and difficulty of reproduction. Any tweak or new room treatment — we seem to do them almost weekly these days — has to pass one test and one test only: The Bob and Ray Test.

This record has the power to help you get to the next level in audio like no other.

Six words hold the key to better sound: “The Song of the Volga Boatman.”

For the purpose of mounting new carts, our favorite track is “The Song of the Volga Boatman” on Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular (LSP 1773). It’s by far the most difficult track we know of to get to sound right.

There are about twenty places in the music that we use as tests, and the right setting is the one that gets the most of them to sound their best. With every change, some of the twenty will sound better and some will sound worse. Recognizing when the sound is the biggest, clearest, and most balanced from top to bottom is a skill that has taken me twenty years to acquire.

It’s a lot harder than it looks. The longer you have been in audio, the more complicated it seems, which may be counterintuitive but comports well with our day-to-day experience extremely well.

All our room treatments and tweaks must pass The Bob and Ray Test. It’s the one record we have relied on more than any other over the course of the last several years.

Presenting as it does a huge studio full of brass players, no record we know of is more dynamic or more natural sounding — when the system is working right. When it’s not working right, the first thirty seconds is all it takes to show you the trouble you are in.

If you don’t have a record like that in your collection, you need to find one. It will be invaluable to you in the long run.

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Varese / Arcana, Ionisation and more / Mehta

More Decca and London Pressings

  • This wonderful orchestral spectacular returns to the site after a 2+ year hiatus, here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on this vintage London pressing
  • Both sides are open, high-rez, and spacious, with depth like you will not believe – this recording of the LA Phil is truly spectacular (and we say that about very few LA Phil recordings outside of this one)
  • Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief will require practically no effort at all

Superb sound for this crazy 20th Century music, featuring wild and wacky works which rely almost exclusively on percussion (not one, not two, but three bass drums!). My favorite piece here may be Ionisation, which uses real sirens (the Old School ones cranked by hand) as part of Varese’s uniquely specialized instrumental array.

The speed of the percussion is also critical to its accurate reproduction. No two pieces of electronics will get this record to sound the same, and some will fail miserably. If vintage tube gear is your idea of good sound, this record may help you to better understand where its shortcomings lie.

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