Top Studios and Concert Halls

Billie Holiday – Lady In Satin

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums

  • A vintage Columbia Red Label pressing with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom
  • Dramatically richer, fuller and more Tubey Magical than practically all other copies we played, with breathy vocals and rosiny, fairly smooth strings
  • There may be amazingly good sounding original pressings, but we’ve never run into one and we have our doubts about the existence of such a magical LP – where could they all be hiding?
  • “I’m a Fool to Want You” on this very copy may just send chills racing up and down your spine
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lady Day herself said that this session was her personal favorite.”
  • If you’re a fan of Lady Day, this Columbia recording from 1958 surely belongs in your collection.

On the better copies both the sound and music are absolutely breathtaking. They reproduce clearly what, to our minds, are the three most important elements in the recording — strings, rhythm, and vocal — and, more importantly, the are reproduced properly balanced with one another.

The monos, as you might expect, balance the three elements well enough, but the problem with mono is that the vocals and instruments are jammed together in the center of the soundfield, layered atop one another. Real clarity, the kind that live music has in abundance, is difficult if not impossible under the circumstances. Only the stereo pressings provide the space that each of the elements need in order to be heard.

Naturally, the vocals have to be the main focus on a Billie Holiday record. They should be rich and tubey, yet clear, breathy and transparent. To qualify as a Hot Stamper, the pressings we offer must be highly resolving. You will hear everything, surrounded by the natural space of the legendary Columbia 30th Street Studio in which the recording was made.

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Beethoven / Symphony No. 5 / Ansermet

More of the Music of Beethoven

  • A vintage London pressing of this superb performance of Beethoven’s legendary 5th, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • 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
  • The texture on the strings is captured perfectly – this is an area in which modern pressings fail utterly, and without good string reproduction, especially in the lower registers, a Beethoven symphony is simply not a pleasurable experience on highly resolving equipment
  • Clear, transparent, natural – throw this one on your turntable and your ability to suspend disbelief will require practically no effort at all
  • Guaranteed to put to shame any Heavy Vinyl pressing of orchestral music you own or your money back

Everything sounds so right on this record, so much like live music, there is practically nothing to say about the sound other than you are there.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. Practically none of them will ever begin to sound the way this record sounds. Some of the worst of them can be found here.

Quality record production is a lost art, and it’s been lost for a very long time. (more…)

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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Kind of Blue on a Killer 70s Red Label Pressing

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this Red Label pressing has Demo Disc sound – sound that’s guaranteed to make you want to take all of your remastered pressings and dump them off at the Goodwill
  • After auditioning a Hot Stamper Kind of Blue like this one – a pressing that captures the sound of this amazing group like nothing you have ever heard – you may be motivated to add a hearty, “Good riddance to bad audiophile rubbish and the audiophile reviewers who can’t hear the difference!”
  • KOB is the embodiment of the big-as-life, spacious and timbrally accurate 30th Street Studio sound Fred Plaut was justly famous for (particularly on this side two)
  • Space, clarity, transparency, and in-the-room immediacy are some of the qualities to be found on this pressing (also particularly on side two)
  • It’s guaranteed to beat any copy you’ve ever played, and if you have the new MoFi pressing, please, please, please order this copy so that you can hear just how screwy the sound of the remaster is
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “KOB isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence.”
  • If you’re a fan of the music Davis, Adderley and Coltrane were playing circa 1959, this album clearly belongs in your collection

The Labels of Kind of Blue

The 6 Eye label domestic stereo pressings win our shootouts, in the case of Kind of Blue without exception.

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Weber / Overtures / Ansermet

Decca and London Pressings Available Now

  • Glorious sonics throughout this early London pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years), with an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • 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
  • It has the Decca / London sound we expect from Ansermet, the Suisse Romande orchestra, and the amazing Victoria Hall they recorded in — rich and spacious, with lovely texture to the strings
  • These sides are open, airy and sweet, with a lovely extended top end and spaciousness for days

This record is exceptionally dynamic. If you like listening to your records at realistic levels — the only way to fly to our way of thinking — then you had better watch your levels! The huge bottom end makes those dynamic passages a thrill to experience. Make sure your VTA is carefully adjusted — a big deal with us these days — and you will be in for the ride of your life.

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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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Don’t Let the Cover Fool You

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mendelssohn Available Now

UPDATE 2026

After years of putting it off, we eventually got around to doing a shootout for the album, the results of which you can find here.

Many years ago we had played the record, liked it, and then completely forgotten about it.

Demo disc quality. This record has the same kind of amazing sound as the Chabrier disc on London, but it’s much more rare, perhaps because the cover did not do much to sell the album.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better Mendelssohn 4th. 

We admit we foolishly did not expect much from a mid-60s London with a cover this plain.

It’s hard to get excited about an album with such a generic cover, but hearing the recording we were forced to confront our silly prejudices and recognize the greatness of James Lock‘s work for Decca in 1965.

It even beats the famous Solti on Blueback, which has a cover to die for (shown below). However, like many of the Londons and Deccas we’ve played over the years, the sound of that pressing is awful.

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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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Rimsky-Korsakov / The Tale of Tsar Saltan / Ansermet

More of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov

  • This London stereo pressing boasts big, bold, dynamic Tubey Magical Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • No question this is a Demo Disc quality recording – it’s rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings
  • Here is the kind of depth and three-dimensional soundstaging that the recordings by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande are famous for
  • We would love to be able to find Ansermet’s Scheherazade on London, but as you may have read on the blog, the right stampers of that record are almost impossible to find these days, although that has not stopped us from trying
  • No question this is a Demo Disc recording – it’s rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings
  • The Speakers Corner pressing of Ansermet’s famous recording is mediocre, with many faults, all discussed here
  • We would love to be able to offer our customers Ansermet’s Scheherazade on London (not Decca!) vinyl, but as you may have read on the blog, the right stampers of that record are almost impossible to find these days, although that has not stopped us from trying

James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from 1957 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

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