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The Oslo Phil. Brings Pictures at an Exhibition to Life

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mussorgsky Available Now

Lately I have been listening to this piece of music from start to finish over and over again, at this point easily ten times through, immersed in the glorious display of more orchestral color than one could possibly imagine in a single piece of music (including The Planets I dare say), in all of 35 minutes no less.

What triggered this behavior you ask? Hearing it performed live a few months back (5/2026?) planted the seed, and rediscovering the CD in my collection allowed me to get obsessed with it, something I tend to do when a piece of music is as full of life as this one is. We describe Muti’s performance of the work this way:

The EMI import pressing you see here gives you the complete Pictures at an Exhibition with a top performance and superb sonics.

Pictures is a piece of music that has been recorded countless times. I’ve played scores of different recordings starting at about the age of twenty, but the only one that still satisfies is this one, Muti’s 1979 recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Much like Previn and the LSO’s performance of The Planets, he brings out musical qualities in the work better than any other conductor with which I am familiar.

If I were limited to only one record to test a system with, it would be hard to choose a better one than a top copy of the Muti on EMI. (It’s almost, but not quite, all you would need.)

My advice would be to go and find yourself a clean UK pressing as quickly as possible.

It may eventually become your favorite orchestral recording of all time the way it has become mine, at the tender age of 72 in my case!

In the meantime, check out the wonderful performance recorded by the Oslo Philharmonic available on youtube. If you have big speakers hooked up to your TV and are willing and able to play them good and loud, you are in for a treat.

The performance is easily one of the best I’ve ever heard, although a bit slower and more measured than ideal. However, it would clearly be superior to those on offer by second- and third-rate orchestras, of which there are many in my experience.

Here is the precision and energy that is surely missing from those performances, as well as most recordings truth be told, whether analog or digital. (The CD on EMI by the way is excellent and highly recommended.) As I said, the pacing is a bit slow, but the ability to see all the players and their instruments is a huge bonus on a powerful work such as this.

List of Instruments (AI Assisted)

  • Woodwinds: 3 Flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 Oboes (1 doubling English horn), 2 Clarinets, 1 Bass Clarinet, 2 Bassoons, 1 Contrabassoon, and 1 Alto Saxophone (featured prominently in The Old Castle).

  • Brass: 4 Horns, 3 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, 1 Tuba, and 1 Euphononium (or Saxhorn, often performed on Euphonium or Tuba for the Bydło soloist movement).

  • Percussion: Timpani, Snare Drum, Bass Drum, Cymbals, Triangle, Tam-tam (Gong), Tubular Bells, Glockenspiel, Whip (Slapstick), and Xylophone.

  • Keyboards & Harp: Celesta and 2 Harps.

  • Strings: First and Second Violins, Violas, Cellos, and Double Basses.

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Guess Which Pressing of Aja This Guy Likes the Best.

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aja Available Now

Go ahead, take a guess.

If you guessed the Cisco LP from 2007, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever pressed, you win a prize!

When I go searching the web to find out something about a record, occasionally I come across something I had no idea existed.

Look what I found today: a survey of various pressings of Aja!

Aja is an album I think I know pretty well. I’ve been playing it since the day it came out in 1977 and still listen to it regularly.

Play the video and tell me if you think you are learning anything useful from the guy. Does he seem to understand much about the sound of the pressings he is reviewing?

I didn’t think so. If you know much about records you should be appalled at the nonsense coming out of this guy’s mouth. This video will no doubt garner many ten of thousands of hits, but that is to be expected.

Phony record gurus like this guy —  as opposed to authentic record gurus like us — have found a home in every corner of the web, spewing out bad advice for those foolish enough to take it.

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Does It Seem to You That This Guy Knows Much About Dark Side of the Moon?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

It doesn’t to me, but I admit to some bias when it comes to Dark Side of the Moon. I must have played more than a hundred different pressings over the last forty-odd years.

Year after year I was sure I understood exactly which copies had the best sound, and again and again I was proved wrong. (To be clear, I proved myself wrong. Shootouts have a way of doing that.)

We only found out what the best sounding versions were about five or six years ago [make that ten]. We did that by doing shootout after shootout with every version we could lay our hands on, starting around 2005. We even did a shootout for two different Mobile Fidelity pressings many years ago, which we think makes for some good reading to this day.

It’s especially good reading for those who don’t appreciate how dramatic pressing variations can be for even quality controlled limited editions. The comparison of the two MoFi’s centers around the idea that midrange tonality is by far the most important quality to listen for on Dark Side, and that, surprisingly to some audiophiles, but obviously not to us, there are MoFi pressings with a correct midrange and there are some without.

Is this fellow listening for midrange tonality? If you watch the video and he says he is, then you can let me know!  And if not, you can ask him in the comments why he wasn’t. Maybe he just likes the chiming clocks and the deep bass of the heartbeat.

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Big Drums in a Big Room – Now That’s a Story Worth Telling

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top 100 Titles Available Now

What could be better?

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, with jump out of the speakers, live in the studio sound, this is the album for you.

The opening track on side one of  Every Picture Tells a Story has drums that put to shame 99% of the rock drums ever recorded.

The same is true of I Know I’m Losing You on side two. It just doesn’t get any better for rock drumming, musically or sonically. Micky Waller is brilliant throughout. Kenney Jones, who only plays on the showstopping “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” is clearly out of his mind.

Some of the best rock bass ever recorded can be found here too — punchy, note-like and solid as a rock. If you have the system for it you are going to have a great time playing this one for your friends, audiophiles and otherwise.

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Sound Like This Makes Audiophiles the Laughing Stocks of the Music World

Advice We Think Can Help You Make More Audio Progress

Click on the link below and give this system a listen for a minute or two.

Have you ever heard live music that sounded like this?

Who in his right mind wants a stereo with this kind of ridiculously artificial sound?

If you’re reading this blog, I hope it’s not you, because you will never find a record on our site with sound this unnatural.

If you like the sound of an album such as Aerial Boundaries, then buy this speaker. It will make all your records sound just like it! It’s the perfect example of a pass/fail record, the way this speaker is an example of a pass/fail speaker.

Here is how we described the sound of Aerial Boundaries years ago:

It sounds as if someone went into the biggest room in the studio they could book, sat Michael Hedges down on a stool out in the middle of it, and then took all the mics and aimed them at the walls. Roll tape! (Assuming they used tape, who knows what kind of crap digital system they were using.)

And the best part is that it was nominated for an engineering Grammy!

If you think the average music lover today wouldn’t know good sound if it bit him in the ass, this album is proof that nothing has changed, not since 1984 anyway.

Some commentary I found on the web

Aerial Boundaries is the second album by guitarist Michael Hedges released on the Windham Hill label in 1984. It was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best Engineered Recording.

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An Overview of Beatles Oldies But Goldies

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

This is a Beatles album we think we know well.

We’ve done a number of shootouts for A Collection of Beatles Oldies over the last ten years or so, and our experimental approach using many dozens of copies provides us with strong evidence to support the following conclusions regarding the sound of the originals vis-a-vis the reissues:

  1. The best of the early pressings always win our shootouts. No reissue has ever earned our top grade of A+++ and it is unlikely any reissue ever will.
  2. The reissues can be quite good however. The best of them have earned grades of Double Plus (A++).
  3. The worst of the early pressings also earned grades of Double Plus (A++).
  4. Conclusion: if you have a bad original and a good reissue, you might be fooled into thinking the sound quality was comparable.

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We Get in Near Mint Pressings Like This All the Time

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

The spindle trails are the strongest evidence that this record is more than likely completely worn out and noisy as hell.

At a cost of roughly $50 to send it back, and more than $150 to buy it and have it shipped across the Atlantic in the first place, this is the kind of pain we have to be willing to accept.

We eat noisy records like this week in and week out. There is simply no way around it. If there was another way to find the well cared for pressings that we offer our customers, I think we would have found it by now. If you know of one, please drop us a line.

Once you discover that Machine Head only sounds its best on the early British pressings, and you therefore would like to acquire one for your collection, you have your work cut out for you, my friend. Ask lots of questions and hope you get honest answers.

Get the Phono Finish!

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that his blog is:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with the highest fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.

Get the PHONO FINISH!

Robert’s Approach

Robert has methodically and carefully — one might even say scientifically — approached the various problems he’s encountered in this hobby by doing the following:

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Robert Brook’s Guide to Legrand Jazz on Impex

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert tries to remain positive when choosing the words that would best describe the award winning Impex release of Legrand Jazz. In the end he goes with the spoken word over the written one.

Years ago I wrote about how important the Legrand Jazz album was for me in my growth as a critical listener. It’s yet another example of an album that helped make me a better audiophile by showing me the errors of my tweaking and tuning ways.

Let’s watch the video and see what Robert has learned about Impex’s recent release.

Legrand Jazz (featuring Miles Davis) – the 2019 IMPEX Double 45 rpm

Michael Fremer gives the Impex pressings an 11 for sound. He writes (emphasis added):

“This IMPEX reissue is sourced from an “analog mix-down transfer of the original 1958 work tape by Mark Wilder at Battery Studios” and cut by Chris Bellman and Bob Donnelly at Bernie Grundman Mastering on Grundman’s all-tube mastering system. I have a clean, original 6-Eye pressing that this superbly pressed reissue betters in every way. This will make both your stereo and your heart sing. Some of the greatest jazz musicians of that or any era wailing and clearly having a Legrand time. Limited to 3000 copies. Don’t miss it!”

Who are you going to believe, the Self-Appointed Vinyl Experts of the World and Bestowers of Prestigious Audio Awards (awards which you may have never heard of; I sure hadn’t), or some guy who’s just dedicated to being an Analog Audiophile and knows a good record when he hears one? (Or doesn’t hear one, as the case may be.)

Like Robert, I tried being kinder and gentler, but it didn’t take. I may resolve to try harder in 2024 2026. Then again, I may not. If we’re nicer to the people currently making Heavy Vinyl records, aren’t we running the risk, to cop a line from the late, great P.J. O’Rourke, of encouraging them?

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A Collection of Beatles Oldies on Video – Expert Advice?

The LOST Beatles Album | Cancelled By Apple – Should It Be Re-released?

Click on the link above to see an interesting and informative video that we think is well worth watching.

Allow me to make a few points:

As to the question posed above, my vote would of course be no. The new Beatles albums are awful sounding. Here are a few of rour eviews detailing their many shortcomings:

After playing those three, we gave up on the idea of playing the rest of the set.

The Mono Box (in analog!) was even worse. We played one record, heard truly awful sound, and that was all she wrote.

Mushy Sound Quality

Andrew Milton, the Parlogram Auctions guy, offers opinions about the sound quality of the various pressings he reviews. Naturally we are skeptical of reviewers’ opinions for reasons that should be clear to readers of this blog.

We have no idea how he cleans his records or how carefully he plays his records, or even what he listens for.

Frankly, even if we knew all those things it wouldn’t mean much to us. So many reviewers like so many bad sounding modern records that we’ve learned not to take anything they say seriously.

The comment about the 1G stampers being “mushy” that Andrew makes about 19 minutes in is one we take exception to. Part of the problem with his comment is that we can’t really be sure what he means by “mushy.” If it means smeary or thick, that has not been our experience with the best cleaned originals.

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