Classic Records – Rock, Pop, Vocals, etc.

Labels With Shortcomings – Classic Records – Rock, Pop, Vocals, etc.

I’ve Got the World on a String on Classic Records Vinyl

More of the Music of Louis Armstrong

More Pop and Jazz Vocals

Sonic Grade: B (probably)

I first heard this album on the wonderful Classic Records pressing from the ’90s. I remember really enjoying the music and liking the sound of Bernie Grundman’s remaster very much. We reviewed and recommended the album (along with Under the Stars) in our old paper catalogs.

I have no idea what I would think of their version these days — well, to be honest I do have some idea of what I would think of it — but their version is at least good enough to make the case that Russell Garcia’s orchestral arrangements and Louis Armstrong’s sublime skill at interpreting The Great American Songbook are a match made in heaven.

Further Reading

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Bernie Grundman’s Work for Classic Records in Four Words

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now

Hard, sour, colored and crude.

Oh, and airless. Make that five words.

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing of Balalaika Favorites, but I remember it as unpleasantly hard and sour.

Many of the later Mercury reissues — some pressed by Columbia, some not — had that sound, so I was already familiar with it when their pressing came out in 1998 as part of the just-plain-awful Mercury series they released.

I suspect I would hear it that way today. Bernie Grundman could cut the bass, the dynamics, and the energy onto the record.

Everything else was worse 99% of the time.

The fast transients of the plucked strings of the Balalaikas were way beyond the ability of his colored and crude cutting system.

In addition, harmonic extension and midrange delicacy were qualities that practically no Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing could claim to have.

Or, to be precise, they claimed to have them, and whether audiophiles really believed they did or not, Classic Records sure fooled a lot of them, along with the reviewers that vomited out the facile and reductive superficialities that pass these days for audio journalism.

The better your stereo gets, the worse those records sound, and they continue to fall further and further behind with each passing year.

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The Lonely Hours on Classic Records

More of the Music of Sarah Vaughan

Classic Records remastered this album back in the day, and I can see why: the average pressing on Roulette is borderline unlistenable.

Of course we didn’t know that when we started this shootout. We had found a nice sounding copy and subsequently went on the hunt for more. Little did we know how wide the variation in sound quality we would find on the original Orange Label pressings.

There was simply no denying that many of the copies we played were just too thin, shrill and pinched in the midrange to be of any interest to our audiophile customers.

As mediocre as Bernie’s Classic cutting may be, it’s still better than the average Roulette original one might throw on the turntable.

And you can forget the monos completely; they were by far the worst sounding of them all.

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Famous Blue Raincoat – How Do the Various Vinyl Versions Sound?

More of the Music of Jennifer Warnes

More of the Music of Leonard Cohen

What’s interesting about the Cypress LPs is that they come two very different ways. Most of them are ridiculously thin, bright, grainy and digital sounding. This explains why some audiophiles in the past have preferred the Canadian pressings: they are smoother and fuller.

However, compared to the good stamper domestic versions they are dull and lifeless.

The Classic 180 gram reissue that came out a number of years ago was somewhere in between the good stamper originals and the bad stamper originals. The better sounding Cypress pressings absolutely MURDER it.

As far as the new Cisco 45 RPM pressings are concerned, we’ve never bothered to crack one open and play it. It’s been quite a while since Bernie cut any record that we thought sounded good, and some of his recent work has been unbelievably bad (the Doors box comes readily to mind), so we’ve never felt motivated enough to make the effort.

He cut many versions of this record as you probably know, some of which have turned out to be Hot Stampers, but that was a long time ago.

Does the Audio World really need another Heavy Vinyl Debunking entry from us? If Heavy Vinyl pressings are giving you the sound you want, you sure don’t need to be wasting your time on our site.

Those sacred cows get slaughtered pretty regularly around here.

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