Lower Sound Quality Pressings

Bruch & Mozart Violin Concertos – Were We Wrong?

Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now

Many years ago we wrote the following review for LSC 2472:

Superb sound. The violin is wonderful on both sides. The Mozart is absolutely gorgeous; the best I’ve ever heard it.

The orchestra on the Bruch side gets a little congested in the louder passages, which is typical for records of this era.

Laredo plays these pieces beautifully. The Bruch is an especially romantic work and his violin sings sweetly and with deep emotion throughout. The Mozart is more spritely and he plays it with the light touch it requires. You will have a hard time finding a better violin concerto record. This ranks with the best of them.

UPDATE 2024

More recently we got in a nice 1S/1S pressing that sounded thick and dark, even after a good cleaning.

Were we wrong years ago? Hard to say. That copy from many years ago is gone.

Three things to always keep in mind when a pressing doesn’t sound like we remember it did, or think it should:

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Don’t Waste Your Money on this Living Stereo from 1959

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

The sound of the copies we’ve played of LSC 2293 with Piatigorsky performing these two works for cello have never impressed us with their sound.

They are tonally natural but the acoustic is much too dry for our taste.

Perhaps Radio Recorders was not the ideal place to record this music.

Or we got unlucky with the copies we’ve played. Either way, we are not going to pursue this one. It’s a title that is very unlikely to sound right on high quality modern equipment.

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.

1959 was a phenomenal year for audiophile quality recordings – as of 2025 we’ve auditioned and reviewed more than one hundred and seventy titles, and there are undoubtedly a great many more that we’ve yet to discover.

We think there are close to 50 that belong in any audiophile record collection worthy of the name.

Our Pledge of Service to You, the Discriminating Audiophile 

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Sorry, This Album of String Quartets Is Not As Good As We Thought

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now

UPDATE 2024

About ten years ago we were under the impression that the domestic Philips pressing you see pictured had exceptionally good sound, sound that would be difficult to beat.

Well, that just goes to show how little we knew about the sound of the various recordings of this music back then.

We needed to do a lot more homework, and the reason we started playing other recordings of these two string quartets is simply that the Philips record we liked so much was too hard to find on the domestic pressing.

The imports could be found, sure, but they sounded like a lot of Philips pressings — overly smooth, smeary, lifeless, recessed and veiled, like the Golden Imports Philips had made in the 70s. It was in those bad old days of the early 70s that Philips set about ruining the sound of phenomenally good Mercury master tapes. They should never be forgiven for it.

I bought one and fell in love with it, for both its music and its sound, a classic case of me not having any idea what I was missing.

How clueless was I? I was almost as clueless as the guy who thought the MoFi pressing of Star Wars and Close Encounters was a true audiophile Demo Disc. As foolish a MoFi fan as I was in the late-70s, even I knew was a piece of phony junk that record was.

Now there are dozens of outfits that make it their business to ruin phenomenally good master tapes by dint of their incompetent remastering, a story we never tire of telling.

Breaking Through

The key to our breakthrough was the rediscovery of a record we had played many years before, all the way back in 2005, and had simply lost track of in the ensuing years: LSC 2413. (It’s easy to lose track of rare Shaded Dogs. They’re not usually sitting in the bins of your local record store. Out of sight, out of mind.)

The best pressings of LSC 2413 are dramatically better sounding, and the performances are equal to or better than any we know.

Recently we finally got hold of another copy of the rare Philips pressing above and found to our dismay that the sound was not nearly as good as we remember it from our shootout years ago. The copy that came in was flat and badly lacked the presence and Tubey Magic of the Shaded Dog pressings we played of the RCA.

As the best of the RCA pressings demonstrate beyond all doubt, 1960 was a great year for classical and orchestral recordings. (What the shameful modern masterng engineers operating today do to such wonderful recordings is another thing altogether.)

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Beethoven Symphony No. 7 – This London with Solti Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

In our survey for the work, we played a number of the better known recordings from the top conductors and orchestras around the world.

Here is what we heard when we dropped the needle on an early pressing of CS 6093, released in 1959.

Our notes read:

  • Awful,
  • so dry,
  • steely,
  • crude,
  • bad

In other words, it just sounded like an old record. The world is full of records that don’t sound very good. As a matter of fact they undoubtedly make up the bulk of large record collections.

And if you just happen to be the proud owner of a big record collection, how can you possibly find the time to play more than a small fraction of it in any given year. Or even over the course of a decade for that matter.

The fact is that you can’t. Which, on the upside, means that, as far as you know, all your records sound great!

No need to buy another copy of whatever title you care to name. What for? You haven’t played it in twenty years and probably won’t get around to pulling it off the shelf for a spin for at least another twenty.

Here’s hoping your kids like old records because they are going to end up with an awful lot of them.

Back to the Beethoven 7th. What a beautiful cover!

But what good is a beautiful cover when the record sounds as bad as this one does?

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French Overtures with Ansermet Had One Awfully Good Sounding Side in 2009

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jacques Offenbach Available Now

Reviewed back in 2009 in our pre-shootout days.

This Minty London Blueback LP has a WONDERFUL Tubey Magical Super Hot Stamper side one.

I have never heard this music sound better. Of course Ansermet is exactly the right conductor for these light and colorful orchestral pieces; the performances are uniformly superb.

But as audiophiles we want to make sure the sound is what it should be, and here side one does not disappoint. The string tone is perfection. I defy anyone to find a Heavy Vinyl reissue with string tone even remotely as good. In my experience there is simply no such record.

With vintage classical records there are always trade-offs of course. Here the loudest passages suffer from some mild compressor distortion, so common on these early pressings. A small price to pay for sound this lovely I say.

The Zampa overture by Herold is probably the best sound on the album — it’s gorgeous!

Side two is not quite as good. We rated it A Plus, with real weight and energy but a bit too much compression and distorton in the loud passages to be completely satisfying.

UPDATE 2025

Nowadays we would never list a record for sale as a Hot Stamper pressing with a grade of 1+ on either side.

And, more importantly, the grades we awarded these two sides were just estimates.

We did not put this copy in a shootout with a batch of similar pressings.

We played the record, liked what we heard on side one, liked what we heard on side two a bit less, and offered it to our customers with the description of the strengths and weaknesses you read about.

We could not have begun to conduct a shootout for this early London. Back in those days we simply could not find enough copies of such a rare title to make such a thing happen.

As for the compressor distortion on side one that we heard, it’s entirely possible that with better cleaning and better playback that the distortion we thought we heard would disappear. Blaming the record is rarely the ideal approach for making progress in audio.

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A Scheherazade that Lacks Power in the Brass and Richness in the Lower Strings? No Thanks

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

One of the most dynamic Scheherazade‘s on record. The brass really blasts through in this recording. 

Of course the question is how does this recording stack up to the famous Reiner. Well, I’ll tell you.

The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra is not in the same league with the CSO, that’s well known. Dorati may be every bit as talented as Reiner, but he doesn’t have the players at his disposal capable of pulling off demanding material such as this.

But the orchestra acquits itself well here. The first violinist is quite good. That’s not the problem.

What lets the side down is the Mercury recording team, who fail to adequately present the weight of the orchestra in the lower midrange and below. One thing I noticed recently when playing an original LSC 2446 was how rich and powerful the sound was in the lower strings and in the brass relative to later pressings of the same title and other recordings of the work.

That opening movement of Scheherazade needs power down there and the Mercury simply doesn’t have enough of that power to qualify it as one of the top sounding Mercs.

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This Blueback Was Somewhat Opaque and Crude – Does that Surprise You?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn Available Now

Presenting our latest findings from 2023:

For our most recent shootout, the original we played earned grades of 1.5+ on both sides, a grade that is the absolute minimum for a Hot Stamper pressing to be listed on the site now.

Our best reissues killed it.

The 3D/3E stampers of our early Blueback copy can probably be beaten by others — assuming there are others — but this is just not a good bet for us when it comes to Mendelssohn’s famous Third Symphony, not when there are so many other pressings with superior sound.

Our favorite performance with top quality sound is made from the same recording you see here, but on a certain budget reissue that has much better sound.

It’s very possible that the Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl pressing from 2003 pictured below would beat the original we describe. We make no claims that it doesn’t, or wouldn’t.

Our claim would be that a properly-mastered, properly-pressed version of the album is very unlikely to be bested by something from Speakers Corner, or any other label making records during the last thirty years.

What I would have played against the Speakers Corner pressing in 2003 would have been an original London Blueback, and maybe a Stereo Treasury or two. Both of them would have been obvious choices, and I was stuck making obvious choices because I simply did not understand enough about classical records at the time to do otherwise.

I confess I knew very little about the recording of the 3rd symphony back in those days, and I certainly didn’t know how good some of the right reissues could sound.

Obviously we needed to do a great deal more research and development, which we began to undertake over the course of the next twenty years in a much more serious way, making one discovery after another.

And that all happened out of the love for great sounding music on vinyl, and, every bit as importantly, because we get paid to do it.

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RCA’s Daphnis et Chloé with Martinon from 1965 Is Another “Good, Not Great” Title

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

LSC 2806 is not a bad sounding pressing — with grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it belongs in our section for good, not great sounding LPs — but there are other recordings which are substantially better in every way.

Our current favorite is the Decca recording with Monteux from 1959.

We’ve auditioned countless pressings in the 39 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 pressings 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 the pressings of albums that do sound the best. You know, when you actually play them.

Woops

I take that back. I have met one, a certain Robert Brook. He has been conducting his own shootouts for a few years now and has made his findings available on his blog, The Broken Record. This is information you should consider trustworthy.

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 ever heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed to you as an audiophile. Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre, and a great many are just awful.

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

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Verve Released this Awful Sounding Mel Torme Album in 1960

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings Available Now

Smeary and dry. As far as we can tell, based on the sound of this copy, Swingin’ on the Moon is not an album worthy of a Hot Stamper shootout. If we hear a better one down the road, we would certainly be open to the possibility.

If you want a better sounding moon-themed album, Sinatra made a very good one.

This particular Mel Torme album came out in 1960, along with a great many wonderful titles from the Golden Age of vacuum tube recording. Although we love the cover, this unfortunately doesn’t happen to be one of the better releases from that year.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find this one in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of the records on the list may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an audiophile record hall of shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.

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Delibes / Coppelia / Ansermet (Stereo Treasury)

More Orchestral Music Conducted by Ernest Ansermet

  • Very good sound from the Master Ballet Conductor, with all FOUR sides of these vintage London STS pressings earning Hot Stamper grades or BETTER – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Recorded in Geneva’s exquisite Victoria Hall in 1957, this is a top performance from Ansermet and the Suisse Romande, the best we know of
  • This Stereo Treasury barely qualified as a Hot Stamper, earning mostly 1.5+ grades. It fell well short of the best pressings we played, but it’s still a good sounding record, with a fabulous performance.
  • If you buy it, you can listen for the qualities that we heard when we played it ourselves.

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