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Speakers Corner Has a “Winner” in Espana

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

Sonic Grade: B

One of the better Speakers Corner Deccas.

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.

This is a Speakers Corner Decca 180 gram LP reissue of the famous Argenta performance, a recording which can sound positively amazing on the right original London, but only about 2 out of 10 copies actually do sound amazing.

And where in the world are you going to find 10 clean copies of a record that’s almost 40 years old?

This pressing gets you most of the way there, on reasonably quiet vinyl, for a lot less money.

UPDATE 2025

This Speakers Corner title may be good, but our Hot Stamper classical and orchestral pressings will be dramatically more transparent, open, clear and just plain REAL sounding, because these are all the areas in which Heavy Vinyl pressings tend to fall short in our experience.  For more on that subject, see here and here.

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Acoustic Sounds Hired Doug Sax to Ruin a Classic Chet Baker Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet

The less said about this awful mid-90s Doug Sax remastering for Analogue Productions the better. What a murky piece of crap it was.

Audiophile reviewers may have been impressed, but even way back then we knew a bad sounding record when we played one, and that pressing was very bad indeed.

One further note: the Heavy Vinyl pressings being made today, twenty-five thirty-one years later, have a similar suite of shortcomings, sounding every bit as bad if not worse, and fooling the same audiophile reviewers and their followers to this very day.

Nothing has changed, other than we have come along to offer the discriminating audiophile an alternative to the muddy messes these labels have been churning out for decades.

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Gaite Parisienne Is Just More Smeary Dreck from Classic Records

More of the Music of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

Sonic Grade: F

The last time I played the Classic I thought it was nothing but a smeary mess, as awful as their awful Scheherazade. If I were to play it today, I’m guessing it would join the other Classic Records entries in our audiophile hall of shame.

Here are some other records we played and found had smeary strings. They did not last long on our turntable.

I love Arthur Fiedler‘s performance with the Boston Pops and the 1954 two track RCA Living Stereo sound, but finding an original Shaded Dog pressing in clean condition under $500 with the right stampers is all but impossible nowadays.

If you want to go that way, more power to you. 

This 1954 2-track recording is RCA’s first stereo recording of the work. 1954. Can you believe it? A few mics and two channels and it blows away most of the classical recordings ever done! Some old record collectors and tube lovers say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be. This record proves it.

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

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