James Walker, Producer – Reviews and Commentaries

Bizet / Carmen Fantasie on Speakers Corner Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Georges Bizet Available Now

Speakers Corner remastered this title back in the 90s and did a decent enough job. I would guess my grade would be about a “C.” We carried it and recommended it at the time. I doubt if I would have very many kind things to say about it now. We’ve played an enormous number of superb classical records in the last ten years or so, raising the bar quite a bit higher than it used to be.

To illustrate what we don’t like about these Heavy Vinyl pressings, even when they’re good, or at keast decent as in the case of this title, we have reproduced our review for the Speakers Corner pressing of The Tale of the Tsar Saltan, a record we had played in a long ago shootout against the vintage Londons we had on hand.

We cracked open the Speakers Corner pressing in order to see how it would fare up against our wonderful sounding Londons. 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.

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The Firebird on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stravinsky Available Now

This is probably one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas.

We haven’t played a copy of this pressing in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s give it a “B” for sound with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds about the grade.

Come to think of it, it’s somewhat misleading to say that we change our minds at all.

Most of the time we are forced to raise our standards, or, to be more pedantic, have our standards raised by simply hearing better sounding pressings than the ones we had previously auditioned. This is an insight that came to us by doing regular shootouts, answering a question that we, along with every other serious audiophile, never thought to ask: “How high is up?”

It’s also one that, like so many other big questions in this crazy hobby of ours, can never be satisfactorily answered.

Back to this Heavy Vinyl Pressing. We can’t be sure if we would still agree with what we wrote when this record came out, but here it is anyway.

“Excellent sound with a wonderful performance from Ansermet.”

Currently our favorite Firebird is an early pressing on Mercury with Dorati conducting. Our opinion is very unlikely to change concerning the best combination of sound and performance for that work. The record is simply a monster on the right pressing.

We have never heard an especially good sounding London or Decca of Ansermet’s performance, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We tend to avoid judging records we have not played and we encourage the audiophile community to do the same.

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This Pressing of Carmen Had Dry Strings on One Side, Rich Strings on the Other

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

My notes for side two on a copy we recently auditioned read:

Could use more tubes.

Strings could be a bit smoother.

Needs a bit more weight down low.

My notes for side one:

Side one had all of this and more!

Some Common Issues with Londons and Deccas

Many London and Decca pressings lack weight down low, which thins out the sound, easily heard in the lower strings, which sound washed out.

On some sides of some copies the strings are dry, lacking Tubey Magic. This is decidedly not our sound, although it can easily be heard on many London pressings, the kind we’ve played by the hundreds over the years.

If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange that so many moving coils have these days, you will not notice this tonality issue nearly as much as we do.

Our 17Dx is ruler flat and quite unforgiving in this regard. It makes our shootouts much easier, but brings out the flaws in all but the best pressings, exactly the job we require it to do.

Here are some other records that are good for testing string tone and texture.

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The Best Espana on Record?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The part down below about Londons numbered from 6400 to 6500 being superior is not something we would agree with any longer.

UPDATE 2021

Ansermet’s performance of Espana is still our favorite — nothing in our experience can touch it, musically or sonically.

As of 2022 we slightly prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.

Both are wonderful and both belong in any serious audiophile collection of orchestral music.

We created a special section for recordings of this quality. Classical and orchestral records that we’ve auditioned and found to have the best performances with the highest quality sound can be found here.

This has been a favorite recording of ours here at Better Records for a very long time, since at least the mid-’90s or thereabouts. We’ve mentioned how much we like the sound of Londons with catalog numbers ranging from about 6400 to 6500 or so (which are simply Decca recordings from the mid-’60s), and this one (CS 6438) is one of the best reasons to hold that view.

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What We Think We Know about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

In our opinion this is the best sounding Beethoven 6th Symphony ever recorded. It is the most beautiful of them all, and has long been my personal favorite of the nine Beethoven composed.

Ansermet’s performance is clearly definitive to my ear as well. The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time; more amazing sounding recordings were made there than any other hall we know of.

There is a richness to the sound that exceeds all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least.

It’s as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass and the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

We have a section of classical recordings that we nominate for the best performances with top quality sound, and this record is of course one of its founding members.

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Delibes / Coppelia / Ansermet

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Decca Available Now

Many years ago we wrote:

Very good sound for the Coppelia Ballet Highlights from the Master Ballet Conductor, with only a few slightly bright passages marring an otherwise wonderful recording.

UPDATE 2020

I doubt we would have any trouble with the bright passages these days. Better cleaning and better playback would have solved that problem, probably. Of course, this copy is long gone, so no one can ever really know if it was bright or not. I’m guessing, not.

Ernst Ansermet conducted some of the best sounding records ever made — here are some of the ones we’ve reviewed.

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Listening for Dry Strings on Espana

 Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

On many copies the strings are dry, lacking some of the Tubey Magic heard on the better copies.

This is decidedly not our sound, although it can easily be heard on many London pressings, the kind we’ve played by the hundreds over the years.

If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange that so many moving coils have these days, you will not notice this tonality issue nearly as much as we do.

Our 17Dx is ruler flat and quite unforgiving in this regard.  

It makes our shootouts much easier, but brings out the flaws in even the best pressings, exactly the job we require it to do.

We discussed the issue in a commentary entitled Hi-Fi beats My-Fi (if you are at all serious about audio).

Here are some of the other records we’ve discovered that are good for testing string tone and texture.

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This Tale of the Tsar Saltan Was Off the Charts

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

Many years ago we played a London pressing of The Tale of Tsar Saltan with an AMAZING side one. It was so good we gave it our rare 4+ grade. We freaked out when we heard this side – it took the sound beyond anything we had ever experienced for the work.

It’s so rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings – wow!

We figure about one out of a hundred sides earn our Four Plus grade – you can’t get much more rare than that.

UPDATE 2026

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and what it takes to discover them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it changes our appreciation of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question might have been “How high is up?”

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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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Letter of the Week – “This is the best classical recording I have ever heard.”

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

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

One minute into The Tale of Tsar Saltan I knew this was a winner of the highest order. I was not prepared for the low end whomp factor as you call it.

The tonal balance of this wonderful recording is off the charts. the triangles just seem to float in the mix with a delicate presence that works so beautifully with the rest of the orchestra.

The strings and brass have this immediacy to them that feels like the orchestra is in the room with you.

This is the best classical recording I have ever heard both musically and sonically. So glad I fortunate to own this masterpiece!

Thanks
Rob

Dear Rob,

Fantastic news, we liked that pressing of The Tale of Tsar Saltan too. Thanks for your letter.

BTW, don’t try to play your Heavy Vinyl classical pressings for a while, it might just be too big a shock to your (nervous, not stereo) system!

TP

Ha! I just never realized how much I have been missing or accepting, until I played this album : )
Rob

Rob,

Nobody does.

Nobody can know what they are missing until they hear it.

This explains every audiophile forum and every idiotic review by Michael Fremer and his uninformed/misinformed colleagues. These people simply don’t know any better because the approach they have taken to finding and auditioning records produces consistently inaccurate results.

We explain — for free! — how anyone can find better records here.

If you want to know what you’re missing, there is only one approach that works, and it involves two things that have made the modern world what it is today: empirical findings based on the use of the scientific method.

Any other approach is doomed, not to failure, but to mediocrity.

We are the only record dealers who use the scientific method, and that one fact, more than any other, explains why we can sell the best sounding pressings in the world. We alone are able to show you what you have been missing. Or, put another way, the second- and third-rate sound you have been living with because you didn’t know anything could be better.

We didn’t know much better either until about twenty-odd years ago.

Before that, we had raved about the Speakers Corner pressing of the Tsar Saltan. Its shortcomings are glaringly obvious to us now, but they weren’t back then. We didn’t have the stereo, we didn’t have the cleaning system, and we didn’t have the critical listening skills to be able to recognize its manifold faults.

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