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We judged these vintage Decca and London records to have unacceptable sound based solely on the specific pressings we played.

We can’t say that other pressings don’t sound better. We just don’t plan on playing any more copies to find out.

Every Label Made Mediocre Records – London Released This One in 1963

More of the music of Franz Schubert

More of the music of Antonin Dvorak

The copy we auditioned was opaque and veiled, much like the Heavy Vinyl reissues that are flooding the market these days.

Looking for pressings with audiophile quality sound and mostly quiet surfaces? This link will take you to the Decca/London records that are currently available on our site. They’re guaranteed to have good sound. Quiet surfaces are harder to come by but we’re doing the best we can.

As far as we can tell, based on this single copy, CS 6357 is not an album worthy of a Hot Stamper shootout.

We can’t say that there aren’t good sounding pressings of the album though. If we hear a better one down the road, we would certainly be open to the possibility of doing a shootout and making the best copies available to our customers.

Perhaps you have one you like. If so, please let us know. You can email me at tom@better-records.com

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Gaite Parisienne – Great Cover, Bad Sound

More of the Music of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

Great cover, awful sound. It’s blary and gritty.

The sound is much too unpleasant to be played on high quality modern equipment.

A stereo that looks like the console below — or one that sounds like an old console even though it has new components, there are plenty of those out there in audiophile land — is perfect for all your bad sounding Golden Age recordings.

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Sibelius, Liszt, Dukas et al. – A Lousy London Phase 4 LP

More of the Music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Jean Sibelius

Sonic Grade: F

While preparing for a Finlandia shootout recently, we happened to drop the needle on this album, a 1977 Phase 4 recording made in Kingsway Hall and engineered by Arthur Lilley. We could hardly believe how bad it sounded. The multi-miking is the worst I have ever heard!

We like lots of Phase 4 recordings — especially those of Bernard Herrmann — but this is definitely not one of them. 

Are they all bad? Who can say? We sure aren’t going to be wasting any more time and money on the album in order to find out, I can tell you that.

The Obsession soundtrack is a dog as well. Audiophiles looking for good sound are best advised to avoid them both.