Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now
These Beethoven “Appassionata” And “Funeral March” sonata recordings have never impressed us sonically.
On the Shaded Dog pressings of LSC 2545 that we’ve auditioned, the piano is too thin.
Who likes a thin sounding piano?
If you have big speakers that can move air with authority, the kind needed to reproduce the size and power of a concert piano, then check out some of the titles we’ve found to have especially weighty piano reproduction.
The sound is not awful — you could certainly do worse — but we do not see the value in this title considering it will be neither cheap nor quiet.
We say pass.
Lewis Layton is clearly one of our favorite engineers, but this album does not seem to be up to his usual standards, or ours.
There are quite a number of other vintage classical releases that we’ve run into over the years with noticeable shortcomings.
For fans of vintage Living Stereo pressings, here are some to avoid.
Some audiophiles may be impressed by the average Shaded Dog pressing, but I can assure you that we here at Better Records are decidedly not of that persuasion.
Something in the range of five to ten per cent of the major label Golden Age recordings we play will eventually make it to the site. The vast majority just don’t sound all that good to us. (Many have second- and third-rate performances and those get tossed without ever making it to a shootout.)