Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Modest Mussorgsky Available Now
Never liked the performance. The sound can be quite good on the best pressings, but too many copies are congested in the loudest passages.
We recently found a pressing that was quite a bit better than the other Reiner pressings we had on hand, which simply means that good pressings exist, but they are very hard to find.
However, without a good cleaning, this record is very unlikely to sound right on high quality modern equipment.
There are quite a number of other vintage classical releases that we’ve run into over the years with similar 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.)
It may be on the TAS super disc list, but that doesn’t mean the sound is up to our standards.
We much prefer Muti’s performance from 1979 for EMI.