Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sarah Vaughan
Sonic Grade: F
An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing, recorded in 1956 and remastered, badly, in 1999.
The Speakers Corner version of this record is awful. It’s bright and GRAINY.
If you want a good Sarah Vaughan record, try the album just called Sarah Vaughan that Speakers Corner put out in 2004.
More of the Music of Oscar Peterson
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Oscar Peterson
Sonic Grade: F
More vinyl dreck from Speakers Corner. I played this record back in the ’90s and was astonished at how bad the sound was.
They eventually realized that the tapes they had available to them should never have been used. The newer version has been remixed from the three-track masters. It may be fine, it may not, we will never bother to get one in and play it, but if you do decide to buy one, make sure to have a return guarantee.
Nothing this label does can be trusted.
It’s an Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and yet another Disastrous Heavy Vinyl release that proves this label had no shame.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition. The CD I have is dramatically better.
If you put your faith in what Speakers Corner said about their process and bought this crappy remaster, I hope you learned at least one lesson from your mistake: never believe anything an audiophile label has to say about anything.
Cut from original master tapes, pure analog mastering on Neumann VMS 80
Superior sound quality
More of the Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Reviews and Commentaries for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concertos
For some background, in 2005 we were still selling Heavy Vinyl. We were fans of DCC and Cisco and carried many of the Speakers Corner remasters.
But things were starting to look grim. With every improvement to our playback system, these modern reissues seem to be falling further and further behind.
In the late-’90s, Classic had released some Mercury titles which we’d auditioned and disliked immensely. In 2005 it was Speakers Corner’s turn to have at the Mercury catalog, and they went a different way, finding a “new sound” for the legendary recordings, completely unlike any vintage pressing we’d ever heard.
This was very upsetting. I felt the need to say something.
By 2007 it was clear that Heavy Vinyl was a lost cause and had no business being sold by any audiophile record dealer who cared about sound quality, most especially me. And that was the end of it. This Mercury was one of the records that helped me see the error of my ways.
Part 1 of this discussion of Speakers Corner’s Mercury Series can be found here.
A blog entry on the site from 2005 about the new Mercury reissue series that was coming out noted that:
I am expecting the new Rach 3rd (90283) later this week, and will report my findings as soon as I have a had a chance to evaluate it.
[A few weeks later I followed up with this:]
The news on 90283 is here. It came today. Are you ready? In one sentence:
The most opaque, dull and lifeless 180 gram reissue in the history of the world.
My blog entry from 2005 continues below, transcribed practically word for word.
I hope it’s becoming clear to people now that this series is an enormous fraud perpetrated against all right thinking (right listening?) audiophiles. I can’t imagine a worse sounding record. It makes the most opaque ’70s Phillips or London LP sound positively transparent next to this thick piece of crap. I pulled out my late label copy, far from the best sounding pressing I’ve ever heard, and it killed the new version. The trumpets sound like they’re playing from under a pile of blankets on this 180 gram LP. The sound is so bad it defies understanding.
And the sad thing, in some ways the saddest aspect of this very sad affair, is that I can safely predict right now, with absolutely no fear of being proved wrong, that every major record dealer will rave about it. Mark my words. Every one. Except me of course. But I’m not one of the majors. Thank god I don’t have to sell crap like this to make a living.
And every audiophile who reads a rave review in a dealer’s catalog or on a website should take it for precisely what it is: a naked grab for his money, nothing more, nothing less. It’s all about the money. It’s not about the sound. It’s not about the music. It’s just about money.
Any record dealer who would stoop low enough to take money for a record this bad is telling you something very important about his business: he either can’t tell a good record from a bad one, or he doesn’t care. Either one would make me take my business elsewhere. How do these guys stay in business? (Maybe the fact that most of their catalogs are now given over to equipment explains it.)
And you should be outraged at this kind of fraud. If you give money to retailers who so obviously have nothing but contempt for you, you share in the blame. You’re keeping these guys in business. It makes me think of the scene in Network where Howard the veteran newscaster talks directly to his audience:
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’
I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’
After playing this new Mercury, I was filled with questions.
What is to become of the record business?
Do we really need records that sound worse than the worse sounding CDs, at twice the price?
Should record dealers really be selling this crap?
Are audiophiles really being fooled by it?
Is it that easy?
Forget easy: How is it even possible?
When a record is this bad, doesn’t everybody hear it?
And if not, why not?
Hey folks, I’m just trying to find you some Better Records. That’s how I see my job. The current crop of companies producing new records — with a few exceptions like Cisco, S&P, even the new MoFi — are not making my job very easy, I can tell you that. [This is embarrassingly wrong of course. The bulk of the records put out by these labels did not stand the test of time.]
I don’t know what these other guys selling this crap are trying to do. It sure doesn’t have much to do with better records.
So back to the Mercuries.
Speakers Corner has a pretty spotty track record when it comes to making records. Some of their stuff is just junk. (Steely Dan, The Planets, We Get Requests — I could name fifty bad to truly awful sounding records they’ve made over the years.) We actually created a section for some of them, but there are so many I couldn’t find the time to list them all.
You’ll notice that we only carry a small fraction of the 100+ classical titles Speakers Corner has done, about fifteen at last count. They do better with Jazz; there we sell about twenty five of the better titles. Overall score? I would say one out of four is about right. Not bad. Not good, but not bad.
But better than the originals? That’s a preposterous claim that’s hardly worth responding to. But I had a few things on my chest I wanted to get off, hence today’s screed.
So why do we carry them? Well, some of them may be decent. I may not ever know though. They are so damn expensive due to the current exchange rates that I may not review them at all, as there is simply no profit in these records anymore.
Buyer beware obtains, but at least I’m honest about it, unlike some audiophile record dealers who want to hype these Mercuries as the Second Coming of Golden Age Vinyl. That, they definitely are not. (The First Coming was good enough for me, as you know. I am firmly on record as saying that the RCA, Decca, Mercury, London, etc. originals are the best sounding records ever made, bar none, and nothing I’ve heard has provided a shred of evidence to the contrary.)
Reports from ears I trust are not good, but that’s just on the Ravel disc. The originals are a fortune, the CDs don’t cut it, so what’s a mother to do?
More of the music of Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
More Classical Recordings Featuring the Violin
Sonic Grade: B?
One of the better Speakers Corner Deccas. We were impressed with the Speakers Corner pressing when it came out back in the day. We’ve come to learn that it is such an exceptional recording that even their second rate remastering of it was still capable of resulting in a very good sounding record.
One of the ways you can tell how great a recording this is is simply this: as soon as the needle hits the groove you are immediately involved in the music, listening to each of the lines created by the five preternaturally gifted players, all the while marveling at Schubert’s compositional skills.
More of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt
Sonic Grade: C+
The Fjeldstad has long been one of our favorite performances of Peer Gynt here at Better Records.
This record is handy for VTA set-up as well, a subject discussed below in our listing from 2010.
The sound is excellent for a modern reissue*, but in the loudest sections the orchestra can get to be a bit much, taking on a somewhat harsh quality. (The quieter passages are superb: sweet and spacious.)
So I adjusted the VTA a bit to see what would happen, and was surprised to find that even the slightest change in VTA caused the strings to lose practically all their rosiny texture and become unbearably smeared.
This is precisely why it’s a good heavy vinyl recording for setting up your turntable.
If you can get the strings to play with reasonably good texture on this record you probably have your VTA set correctly.
VTA
Correct VTA adjustment for classical records (as well as all other kinds of records) is critical to their proper reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).
Yes, it may be time consuming, it may in fact be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound or your records once you have taken the time to correctly set the VTA, by ear, for each and every record you play.
We heard the improvement on this very record, and do on all the classical LPs (and all other kinds of records) we play.
The Big Caveat
As for the asterisk (*) in the first line above, it concerns the caveat “…for a modern reissue…” What exactly do we mean by that? Allow us to reprint what we wrote about another Heavy Vinyl classical pressing, one that we used to like.
We cracked open the Speakers Corner pressing of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan in order to see how it would fare against a pair of wonderful sounding Londons we were in the process of shooting out a while ago. Here’s what we heard in our head to head comparison.
The soundstage, never much of a concern to us at here at Better Records but nevertheless instructive in this case, shrinks roughly 25% with the new pressing; depth and ambience are reduced about the same amount. Similar and even more problematical losses can be heard in the area of top end extension.
But what really bothered me was this: The sound was just so VAGUE.
There was a cloud of musical instruments, some here, some there, but they were very hard to SEE. On the Londons we played they were clear. You could point to each and every one. On this pressing it was impossible.
Case in point: the snare drum, which on this recording is located toward the back of the stage, roughly halfway between dead center and the far left of the hall. As soon as I heard it on the reissue I recognized how blurry and smeary it was relative to the clarity and immediacy it had on the earlier London pressings. I’m not sure how else to describe it – diffuse, washed out, veiled. It’s just vague.
This particular Heavy Vinyl reissue is more or less tonally correct, which is not something you can say about many reissues these days. In that respect it’s tolerable and even enjoyable. I guess for thirty bucks that’s about the most you can hope for.
But… when I hear this kind of sound only one word comes to mind, a terrible word, a word that makes us recoil in shock and horror. That word is DUB. This reissue is made from copy tapes.
Copies in analog or copies in digital, who is to say, but it sure ain’t the master tape we’re hearing, of that we can be fairly certain. How else to explain such mediocre sound?
Yes, the cutting systems being used to master these vintage recordings aren’t very good; that seems safe to say. Are the tapes too old and worn? Is the vinyl of today simply not capable of storing the kind of magical sound we find so often in pressings from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s?
To all these questions and more we have but one answer: we don’t know. We know we don’t like the sound of very many of these modern reissues and I guess that’s probably all that we need to know about them.
If someone ever figures out how to make a good sounding modern reissue, we’ll ask them how they did it.
Until then it seems the question is moot.
Back in 2011 we stopped carrying Heavy Vinyl and other Audiophile LPs of all kinds. So many of them don’t even sound this good, and this is the kind of sound that just bores us to tears.
This record is disappointing in a number of ways that we’ve found are important to the proper presentation of orchestral music.
If you own a copy, listen for all the things we’ve identified in the sound that we found fell short.
Here are some of the other records that we’ve discovered are good for testing the specific qualities that the Speakers Corner pressing lacks.
More of the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66
Sonic Grade: C
We were very impressed with the Speakers Corner pressing of this album when it came out on Heavy Vinyl in 2001. We simply could not find a vintage pressing that could beat it. I actually took it over to a good customer’s house so that he could hear how much better the album sounded on Heavy Vinyl when played head to head with whatever vintage pressing he might have.
I’m sure you can see where this is going. I Could Not Have Been More Wrong. His copy smoked mine right from the get-go. I wiped the egg off my face, wrote down the stamper numbers for his copy, and proceeded to get hold of some good early pressings so that I could hear the album sound as good as his copy did.
Eventually — eventually in this case being at least five years and maybe more — we felt we had this album’s number and knew which pressings tended to have the goods and which ones didn’t. All that was left was to do the shootout so that we could actually be sure, or sure enough, keeping in mind that all knowledge about records is provisional.
The Speakers Corner pressing is decent, not bad, but by no stretch of the imagination would it ever be able to compete with any Hot Stamper pressing found on our site.
Most pressings of this album are grainy, shrill, thin, veiled, smeary and full of compressor distortion in the louder parts.
This is hardly a recipe for audiophile listening pleasure.
But there are good sounding pressings. You must have to work to find them.
More of the music of Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)
More Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Antonin Dvorak
The one recording of this work that seemed to us to have the best balance of sound and performance was conducted by Istvan Kertesz. His recording with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1961, his debut for Decca as a matter of fact, is the one that ended up winning our shootout of a dozen pressings or so.
You may be aware that Speakers Corner remastered this recording in the ’90s. We carried it and recommended it highly back in the day when we carried Heavy Vinyl pressings. We probably would not like it as well now that we have much higher standards — and much better equipment — than we did in those days.
I will be happy to give them credit for knowing which recording of the work was most deserving of remastering. They make a lot of mistakes, but they did not make one here.
Unsurprisingly, we prefer a later mastering of the recording though, not the original.
Here are more reviews of music conducted by Kertesz, a man whose work we very much admire.
As a general rule, this Heavy Vinyl pressing will fall short in most of the following areas:
More of the Music of Blood, Sweat and Tears
Reviews and Commentaries for Blood, Sweat and Tears
Sonic Grade: F
An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and a Heavy Vinyl Disaster if there ever was one (and oh yes, there are plenty).
When this record came out back in 2007, we auditioned one and were dumbfounded at the quality of the sound. We noted:
This is the worst sounding Heavy Vinyl Reissue LP I have heard in longer than I can remember.
To make a record sound this bad you have to work at it. What the hell were they thinking?
Any audiophile record dealer that would sell you this record should be run out of town on a rail.
Of course that will never happen, because every last one of them (present company excluded) will carry it, of that you can be sure.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, out comes a record like this to prove that no matter how negative you are about the quality of audiophile record production these days, things can always get worse, and they have.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition in that regard.
More of the music of Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Recordings Available Now
A decent enough Speakers Corner Decca.
The Heavy Vinyl reissue of this title is not bad, but like a number of reissues, it lacks the weight found on the early London pressings.
(Classic Records pressings rarely had that problem. Just the opposite in fact. The bass was boosted most of the time, especially the deep bass, but for some reason the lower strings are never rich the way the best vintage pressings can be.)
I remember this Speakers Corner pressing being a little flat and bright. (I admit that I haven’t played it in years so I could easily be wrong.)
The glorious sound I hear on the best London pressings is not the kind of thing I hear on 180 gram records by Speakers Corner, or anybody else for that matter.
They do a good job some of the time, but none of their records can compete with a vintage pressing when that vintage pressing is mastered and pressed properly.
The best pressings of this UK London Stereo Treasury from the Seventies will beat the pants off of it. That ought to tell you something, right?
A budget reissue that is clearly superior to the best that modern mastering has to offer?
It happens all the time. It’s the rule, not the exception.
The second symphony is a work that audiophiles should love. It shares many qualities with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, which you will surely recognize.
It also has some lovely passages that remind me of the Tale of The Tsar Saltan, another work by the same composer.
If you like exotic and colorfully orchestrated symphonic sound, you will be hard-pressed to find better.
More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Reviews and Commentaries for the 1812 Overture
Our catalog from the ’90s recommended this Heavy Vinyl Decca pressing from Speakers Corner.
We haven’t played a copy of this record in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds. 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.
Excellent, one of the best of the Deccas. Better sound by far than the Classic with Reiner, although of course the original of that record is quite good [actually it is not].
You may get better results if you reverse your polarity when playing this record. It’s been a while since I did it so better to check it yourself and see how you like it each way. (more…)