Top Engineers – John Crawford

Shostakovich / Symphony No. 5 in Living Stereo

More Living Stereo Titles

  • An early Shaded Dog pressing of this wonderful recording with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound or close to it from start to finish
  • 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 spectacular Demo Disc recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the sound we love
  • We guarantee that this original pressing resolves musical information like no other copy you’ve heard
  • The best copies are not harsh or shrill the way so many copies are – our Shootout Winners give you all the size and energy as well as the smoothest possible strings
  • The RCA has a bit more of the vintage Living Stereo Tubey Magical sound from back in the day compared to the London with Kertesz, which, although a bit more modern, is every bit as good

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Don’t Waste Your Money on this Schubert Recording with Munch from 1962

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

Some audiophiles buy albums based on their labels. For example, this Shaded Dog pressing from the Golden Age of RCA Living Stereo might appeal to a certain kind of audiophile who treasures original LSC pressings.

More than that, he might limit himself to the most sought-after 1S Indianapolis pressings. Hooray! What could be better?

However, many records from this era simply do not sound good, and this is one of them. We have never heard a good sounding copy of LSC 2522, and we’ve played plenty of them over the decades that we’ve been selling Golden Age Classical records.

Are You a Fan?

If you’re a fan of Living Stereo pressings, have you noticed that many of them – this one for example – don’t sound very good?

If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have. But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare LSC pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?

When vintage RCA Living Stereo records don’t sound good to us, we put them on this list and they go into our hall of shame. We don’t make excuses for them. We call a spade a spade. The same goes for records being made today.

Some audiophiles buy albums based on their labels. For example, this Shaded Dog pressing from the Golden Age of RCA Living Stereo might appeal to a certain kind of audiophile who treasures LSCs on the original label.

More than that, he might limit himself to the most sought-after 1S Indianapolis pressings. Hooray! What could be better?

However, many records from this era simply do not sound good, and this is one of them. We have never heard a good sounding copy of LSC 2522, and we’ve played plenty of them over the decades that we’ve been auditioning Golden Age classical records for sale.

This Shaded Dog might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve played, broken down by label.

  • London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
  • Mercury records with weak sound or performances
  • RCA records with weak sound or performances, including many on the coveted Shaded Dog label

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Don’t Waste Your Money on this Living Stereo with Munch from 1962

More of the Music of Franz Schubert

Some audiophiles buy albums based on their labels. For example, this Shaded Dog pressing of LSC 2522 from the Golden Age of RCA Living Stereo might appeal to a certain kind of audiophile who seeks out clean copies LSCs on the original label.

More than that, he might limit himself to the most sought-after 1S Indianapolis pressings. Hooray! What could be better?

However, many records from this era simply do not sound good, and this is one of them. We have never heard a good sounding copy of LSC 2522, and we’ve played plenty of them over the decades that we’ve been auditioning Golden Age Classical records for sale.

This Shaded Dog might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve played, broken down by label.

  • London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
  • Mercury records with weak sound or performances
  • RCA records with weak sound or performances, including many on the coveted Shaded Dog label

(more…)

Beethoven and Richter – Our Favorite Performance on Vinyl

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

  • A stunning copy of this wonderful concerto performance that boasts a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one, and reasonably quiet vinyl for a Shaded Dog from 1961
  • This pressing has the real Living Stereo magic in spades, but unlike most of the RCA concerto recordings, Richter, the brilliant soloist featured here, is not overly spotlighted, hence the much more natural “concert hall” sound
  • The piano is part of the orchestra, and properly sized, allowing the contributions of the other musicians to be heard more clearly, laid out as they are so elegantly across a huge and deep Boston Symphony Hall stage

In orchestral music, when it comes to clarity there is nothing close to the sound of the live performance, but some records, this one especially, give you the sense that you are hearing it all. Audio may be an illusion but it can be a very convincing one.

The spaciousness and three-dimensionality of the recording are also exceptional. Through the efforts and skill of the RCA engineers, that striking openness in the recording is somehow combined with an electrifying immediacy in the sound of the piano, no mean feat. One rarely hears both, except of course live (and not always even then).

There may be other performances of merit, but I know of no recording of this music with better sound. If you are demonstrating naturalistic sound, not bombastic Hi-Fi spectacularity, this pressing more than qualifies as a Demo Disc.

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12s Is Killer on Fiedler’s Gaite Parisienne from 1959

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This listing for a 12s/12s pressing is from 2008. In 2004, we liked 11s/10s quite a bit.

Our favorite performance of Gaite Parisienne is the one from Readers Digest. (Don’t bother to look for it on our site. We never have any stock as it is too hard to find and usually too noisy for most audiophiles.)

12s Hot stampers. The best sounding copy I’ve ever heard.

Jim Mitchell is famous for pointing out that many of the RCA’s that were re-recorded a few years later are inferior to their earlier counterparts.

This record is no exception.

LSC 1817 is an amazing record.

This record is merely good, with depth, soundstaging, nice string tone, etc., but not the kind of sonic fireworks to be found on the 1954 2-track recording that RCA first did of the work.

A very good Sabre Dance as a bonus, check it out. It’s the lead off track on Destination Stereo (LSC 2307) for good reason: it sounds great.

Click on this link to read more reviews and commentaries for Gaite Parisienne.

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