mussonight

Who on Earth Could Possibly Take the Sound of this Ridiculous Remaster Seriously?

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

There actually is such a person who does exactly that, can you imagine?

Only an Audiophile True Believer could be fooled by sound so ridiculously unnatural.

But the world is full of such people. They bought into the audiophile BS of Mobile Fidelity in the 80s and apparently haven’t learned much since.

Now they think Heavy Vinyl is the answer to the world’s problems. The more things change…

If your stereo is any good at all, you should have no trouble hearing the sonic qualities of this album we describe below. If you are on this blog, and you have tried some of our Hot Stamper pressings, there is a good chance you’re hearing pretty much what we’re hearing. Why else why would you pay our prices?

One thing I can tell you: we would never charge money for a record that sounds as weird and wrong as this MoFi.

A well-known reviewer has many kind things to say about this pressing, but we think it sounds like a hi-fi-ish version of a 70s London, which means it’s opaque and the strings are badly lacking in Tubey Magical sheen and richness.

The bass is like jello on the MoFi, unlike the real London, which has fairly decent bass.

If an audiophile reviewer cannot hear the obvious faults of this pressing, I would say there’s a good chance one or both of the following is true:

  1. His equipment is not telling him what the record is really doing, and/or,
  2. His listening skills are not sufficiently developed to notice the shortcomings in the sound.

The result is the worst kind of reviewer malpractice.

But is it really the worst kind? It seems to be the only kind!

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another.

Dull playback equipment? An attempt to confuse detail with resolution? Whatever the reasons, the better and more accurate your equipment becomes, the more obvious this shortcoming will be. My tolerance for their phony EQ is at an all time low. But hey, that’s me.

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Mussorgsky / Danse Infernale – Our Favorite Night On Bald Mountain

More of the Music of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

  • The best pressings of this 70s DG are some of the best sounding orchestral showpieces we know of
  • After a three year hiatus, our favorite performance of Night on Bald Mountain is back, and it’s guaranteed to blow your mind (and maybe a woofer or two), thanks at least in part to the conducting skills of Arthur Fiedler
  • Side one also boasts an excellent Danse Macabre, with a powerful finish that may remind you of the thrill of live orchestral music
  • Clear and transparent, with huge hall space extending wall to wall and floor to ceiling, this is a sound that the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue fails to reproduce utterly
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.
  • Watch your levels – this pressing is dramatically more dynamic than most Golden Age recordings
  • Click on the link to see more classical “sleeper” recordings we’ve discovered with demo disc sound

This pressing clearly has Demo Disc quality sound — not in every way, but in some important ways. The energy of both the sound and the performances of these barnburning showpieces is truly awesome. Fiedler brings this music to life like no other conductor we have heard.

This pressing boasts relatively rich, sweet strings, especially for a Deutsche Grammophon LP. Both sides really get quiet in places, a sure sign that all the dynamics of the master tape were protected in the mastering of this copy (and the reason it is so hard to find a copy that plays better than Mint Minus Minus.)

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Our Previous Shootout for Witches’ Brew Occurred Way Back in 2007

More of the Music of Modest Mussorgsky

  • This original Shaded Dog pressing of the New Symphony Orchestra of London’s performance of these classical warhorses boasts seriously good Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound from first first note to last
  • If the price seems high, keep in mind that the top copy from our most recent shootout went for almost $3000(!)
  • A quick look at the cost of used copies on eBay or Discogs should tell you all you need to know about how impossibly tough it is to get this shootout going these days – we may not do it again for a very long time!
  • These TAS-approved sides are doing just about everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • The rich, textured sheen of the strings that Living Stereo made possible in the 50s and early 60s is clearly evident throughout these pieces, something that the Heavy Vinyl crowd will never experience, because that sound just does not exist on modern records
  • We have written extensively about this recording and went into some depth about the Classic Records repress of it, which you can find linked here and here.

Demonstration Quality Sound, of a sort. As I’ve said elsewhere on the site, this is not my idea of natural tonality. It’s not trying to be a realistic recreation of music performed in the concert hall. It’s a blockbuster to be impressive when played on an audio system in your home. On that level is succeeds.

The excerpt on side 1 from Pictures at an Exhibition and the complete A Night on Bare Mountain are both played with a kind of energy and attention to detail that allows these pieces to come alive right in your living room.

The entire side 2 is outstanding from start to finish.

Only the Arnold piece on this record is not particularly inspiring, although it does have excellent sound.

All in all, an amazing group of warhorses given a fresh reading by Alexander Gibson and the New Symphony Orchestra of London.

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Our Favorite Night on Bald Mountain

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mussorgsky Available Now

If you like Orchestral Spectaculars, have we got the record for you!

What you want this record for is the best performance of Night On Bald Mountain ever recorded.

Fiedler plays it with a kind of pull-out-all-the-stops abandonment that no other conductor has on a modern recording, not to my knowledge anyway. It’s supposed to be a wild witches’ frenzy, and this is the only performance I know of that allows you to experience the full measure of diabolic revelry playing in your mind’s eye.

This is one of those “sleeper” albums that, as record collectors, you might stumble across from time to time, especially if you’re the kind of person who does nothing but play records all day. You will simply be amazed at the performance and the sound on this copy.

The Sound

Lively, set in a huge hall, with big orchestral sound, and more energy than you will find on 99 out of 100 classical LPs. So present, with an extended top end and transparency that allows you to “see” to the back of the hall.

Huge low brass, the kind you hear on Ansermet’s recording from the Victoria Hall. What a sound!

It gets loud and it stays clean doing it. Not many records can make that claim.

This pressing clearly has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND — not in every way, but in some important ways. The ENERGY of both the sound and the performances of these barnburning showpieces is truly awesome. Fiedler brings this music to LIFE like no other conductor we have heard.

This pressing boasts relatively rich, sweet strings, especially for a Deutsche Grammophon LP. Both sides really get quiet in places, a sure sign that all the dynamics of the master tape were protected in the mastering of this copy, and the reason it is so hard to find a copy that plays better than Mint Minus Minus. (more…)

Comparing Witches’ Brew on RCA with Danse Macabre on Decca

danseHot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Saint-Saens Available Now

UPDATE 2024

The review below was written a very long time ago, around 2010 I think. Our understanding of  Witches’ Brew has changed radically over the last fifteen years, as you can see from our most recent Hot Stamper offering of the album.

In 2010 we would have struggled mightily to reproduce the Shaded Dog pressings of Witches’ Brew. We had yet to make many of the most important improvements to our system that difficult to reproduce records require in order to sound their best.

Our 2010 Review

The Decca reissue above just happens to have the material found on one of the most famous and sought-after Shaded Dog pressings in the world, Witches’ Brew (shown below), along with one track added, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, conducted by Ansermet. (As a budget reissue, they felt they needed to give you more music in order to get you to buy performances that were no longer current.)

The Decca pressing is tonally much more natural from top to bottom. I used to think that it was the best way to hear the music on Witches’ Brew. Like so much of what happens in the world of records, it is and it isn’t.

Huh?, you say. Okay, here is what I mean. We played a handful of Witches’ Brews over the last year or two, and most of them left a lot to be desired. More than that — most of them were just plain awful. One, and only one, lived up to the hype that surrounds the record.

It was so big and so powerful that I would have had no trouble ranking it with the five best sounding classical recordings I’ve ever heard.

It was a real WOW moment when the needle hit the groove on that one.

This later Decca pressing is made from a copy tape, but it’s CORRECTLY mastered from that tape and therefore sounds worlds better than most originals and all the heavy vinyl reissues. This record I can play and enjoy. Those I cannot.

(A great deal more on the Classic Records repress of LSC 2225 can be found here and here.)

witchesSide Two

Mephisto Waltz sounds about as good as it can considering the source tapes that were used. It’s rich, spacious and huge but does have some smear. The tonality is correct and that alone puts it well ahead of the pack. We call it A++, Super Hot.

Side One

If you compare the Danse Macabre here with the same work on the earlier pressings one thing that jumps out clearly is how CLEAN the top end of this pressing is and how DISTORTED it is on even the best originals. The old cutter systems were a bit crude up top and this pressing will show you just how crude they were (assuming you have an original, not an easy record to come by these days).

That said, we graded this side one A+ to A++, a step below side two. Yes, it’s tonally correct and has a clean top, but it is also somewhat recessed and not nearly as lively as the best originals. (Gnomus is not very good here I regret to say.)

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The Power of the Orchestra – Remastered by the Brain Trust at Chesky

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pictures at an Exhibition Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Lifeless, compressed and thin sounding, here you will find practically none of the weight and whomp that turn the best Living Stereo pressings into the powerful listening experiences we know them to be.

We know that because we’ve played them by the hundreds on big speakers at loud levels.

It’s clean and transparent, I’ll give it that, which is no doubt why so many audiophiles have been fooled into thinking it actually sounds better than the original.

But of course there is no original. There are thousands of them, and they all sound different. (A concept we embraced many years ago and have never found any reason to doubt.)

The commentary reproduced below, from way back when, discusses a pair of records that proves our case in the clearest possible way.

We sold a 2-pack of Hot Stamper pressings, one with a good side one and one with a good side two. Why? Because the other sides were terrible! If you have a bad original, perhaps the Chesky will be better.

Our advice is not to own a bad original, or this poorly-mastered Chesky reissue, but instead we advise that you make the effort to find a good original, or two or three, as many as it takes to get two good sides.

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Witches’ Brew on Classic Records and How Crazy Wrong I Was, Part One

Hot Stamper Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now

Well below the reproduction of the front page of our old catalog you will find the review I wrote in 2007 for the Classic Records’ Heavy Vinyl pressing of Witches’ Brew.

Clearly I did not care for it in the least. In fact, I thought it was one of the worst reissues I’d ever heard, so aggressive, boosted and unnatural it defied understanding that anyone could ever play such a record and not notice how wrong it sounded.

Now when I think about the Classic Records reissue of Witches’ Brew and its awful sound, it’s obviously a modern remastering I could not possibly have liked.

However, in preparing to move to Georgia in 2022, I found myself digging through some old catalogs from the early Nineties. Something I read in one of them chilled me to the bone.

There it was in black and white: my rave review for the Classic Records pressing of Witches’ Brew.

It’s actually on the front page of the catalog, along with at least one other record that I would be mortified to sell today: the OJC pressing of Saxophone Colossus.

(As soon as I find my review in the old catalog for Saxophone Colossus, I will post it. I can hardly believe I wrote it, but I did. I wrote all my catalogs back then. My lack of competence and the guilt associated with my lack of expertise at the time is undeniable. It obviously would be foolish and wrong of me to try to deny any of it, so I don’t.)

Below you will find a commentary from 2007 detailing the shortcomings of the Classic.

I sure had a lot of nice things to say about it in 1994.

I thought my stereo was awesome back then, but it was not nearly as awesome as I thought it was. It was better than any system I had heard in a stereo salon, audio show or friend’s house, but that has to be seen as a pretty low bar, and it may even be lower now than it was back then.

I’ve written a bit about the limitations of my 90s system here.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is real, and I clearly suffered from it.

In 1994 I had been a fairly dedicated audiophile for more than twenty years, and a strongly opiniated audiophile record dealer, one who took pride in curating his vinyl offerings right from the start of the business in 1987.

I thought I knew what I was talking about. Looking back it’s clear I had a lot to learn.

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Liszt / Smetana / Mussorgsky – Les Préludes / The Moldau / Night On Bald Mountain / Dorati

More of the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

More Recordings on Mercury

  • Boasting superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this original copy will show you just how good the Mercury engineers were back in those days
  • Dorati breathes life into these concert hall favorites as only he can, and the Mercury engineers (Fine and Eberenz) capture the excitement on tape as only they can
  • We have a preference for Dorati’s recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, and a record like this will show you exactly why we do
  • The exciting sound of Mercury lives on through the vintage disc they made all those years ago – you can forget the idea that anybody will come along and produce sound of this quality
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this LP from 1960 belongs in your collection

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Mussorgsky et al. / Night On Bare Mountain / Solti

More of the music of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

  • This vintage London pressing of these Russian Orchestral Showpieces earned STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • Big and dynamic as all get out – the work is performed with a speed and precision that will make your jaw drop
  • Tons of energy, loads of rich detail and texture, superb transparency and excellent clarity – the very definition of DEMO DISC sound
  • Solti is clearly the man for this music – he’s on fire with this fiery material

Don’t go looking for the Tubey Magic of an earlier era. What you get instead is super-low distortion, full-bandwidth sound with deep powerful bass and more transparency than most later Londons.

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Did We Get The Power of the Orchestra Wrong, or Are These Just Bad Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

In 2007, we wrote the following review for The Power of the Orchestra, VCS 2659:

DEMO DISC QUALITY ORCHESTRAL SOUND like you will not believe. We put two top copies together to bring you the ultimate-sounding Pictures At An Exhibition. Folks, it doesn’t get any better than this for huge orchestral dynamics and energy.

I confess I badly misjudged this record over the course of the last few years. I remember liking it in the early ’90s; at that time it was the only Golden Age recording of Pictures whose performance moved me. I never liked the famous Reiner, LSC 2201, and Ansermet’s performance on London also lacks drive and coherency in my opinion.

I then went on to extoll the many virtues of the recording, making special mention of the brass, dynamics and bass, which you can read about here.

More recently we played a copy of VCS 2659 in one of our regular Pictures at an Exhibition shootouts and were not the least bit impressed by it.

Side One:

Steely and opaque, not that good.

Side Two:

Strings are not very [unintelligible, might be bright], not much weight.

In other words, it just sounded like an old record.

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