Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now
Neither the sound nor the performance of this 1960 Living Stereo are impressive.
LSC 2287 might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.
There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve played, broken down by label.
More of the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Until we heard the right later pressings, we had always been disappointed with this TAS List recording, wondering what all the fuss was about. The original Shaded Dog pressings we had played left a lot to be desired. Like many of the old records we audition, it badly lacked both highs and lows, our definition of boxy sound.
Well, now we know.
The earliest Shaded Dog pressings have consistently worse sound than the reissues we offer.
We never offered the record in Hot Stamper form because we didn’t think the sound of the originals was all that impressive, TAS List or no TAS List.
Mystery solved, and truly Hot Stampers have now been made available to the discriminating audiophile.
Harry’s list, as was so often the case, did not provide the information needed to find the pressing that captured all the qualities of the recording the way this one does.
Did Harry have a good later pressing?
Did he have an original and simply liked it more than we did?
Who knows? Like so much in the world of records, it’s a mystery.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now
1S/1S Shaded Dog original pressing.
Ooh, let the drooling begin.
Here is our admittedly very old review for exactly the one copy we had on hand to play, although, to be fair, we have played more than one copy of the album over the years, and it never sounded especially good to us on any of the copies we auditioned.
The violin is very immediate sounding on this recording, maybe too much so.
Either way, the sound of the orchestra is where this record falls short.
It’s congested, thin and shrill in places. The right copy of Heifetz’s performance on LSC 1992 is a much better record overall. Some may prefer Szeryng’s way with this famous piece, which, as a matter of taste, is fine by us.
If you’re listening for just the performance and the sound of the violin, you may find this record to be more acceptable than we did.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now
I have never heard a copy of this record sound better than decent. This title is very unlikely to have the wonderful sound of the best Living Stereo pressings that you can find on our site, each of which has been carefully evaluated to the highest standards.
If you can get one for cheap, go for it. Otherwise I recommend you pass if what you are looking for is audiophile quality sound.
Perhaps the poor recording quality (I’m guessing; obviously I’ve never heard the master tape) explains the poor sound of the Classic Records remastered version from 1994.
Not that that stopped anybody from buying those awful 180 gram pressings! They may have been mastered by one of the greats, Bernie Grundman, but he was well past his prime when he was working for that awful label, as we explain here.
Have You Noticed?
If you are a fan of Living Stereo pressings, have you noticed that many of them – this one for example – don’t sound all that good?
If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have. But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare LSC pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?
There is an abundance of hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and most of them are downright awful.
Music Matters made this garbage remaster. Did anyone notice how awful it sounded? I could list a hundred more that range from bad to worse — and I have! Take your pick: there are more than 150 entries in our Heavy Vinyl Disasters section, each one worse sounding than the next.
It seems as if the audiophile public has completely fallen for these modern Heavy Vinyl pressings.
Audiophiles have made the mistake of approaching these records without the slightest trace of skepticism. How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.
Maybe not this guy, or this guy, but there has to be at least some group of audiophiles, however small their number might be, with decent equipment and two working ears out there, right? (Excluding our customers of course, they have to know what is going on to spend the kind of money they spend on our records. And then write us all those letters.)
I would say RCA’s track record during the ’50s and ’60s is a pretty good one, offering (potentially) excellent sound for roughly one out of every three titles or so.
But that means that odds are there would be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.
More of the Music of Tchaikovsky
Many Golden Age classical records simply do not have very good sound, and this is one of them.
We’ve never heard a good sounding copy of LSC 2216, and we’ve played quite a number of them over the decades that we’ve been in the business of selling them. (LSC 1901, with Monteux conducting, is no better.)
A copy came in a while back so I figured it was time to give it a spin and see if there was any reason to change my opinion. Hey, maybe this one had Hot Stampers!
Can’t say it wouldn’t be possible. Unlikely, yes, impossible, no.
So here’s what I heard. No real top above 6k, hardly any bottom, but with a very wide stage – the textbook definition of “boxy sound.” (Dry and thin too, on a vintage RCA pressing no less!)
If you are a fan of Living Stereo pressings, have you noticed that many of them – this one for example – don’t sound good?
If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have. But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare LSC pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?