# Vinyl recordings of my most loved... Recommendations...



## whyrichard (Sep 7, 2010)

Hello classical music obsessive crazies

I am rediscovering vinyl... And I just had an amazing love of three oranges Prokofiev experience...

I would love to get excellent recordings on vinyl of my most beloved classical music..... Which recordings and what online source for pieces such as:

Prokofiev piano concertos....
Bach cello suites -Casals and others 
Bach piano concertos
Shoshtakovich string quartets
Prokofiev sonatas
Rautavaara 
Mozart requiem
Brahms intermezzi by glen Gould 
List goes on and on...

Thanks for any as all vinyl advice....

r


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

Hi Richard,

Welcome aboard.
For the Prokofiev I'd recommend Ashkenazy. It is a box-set with all 5, but they were also issued individually.
I would need to look into "the crates" for renditions of other works you mention.
The best source is the secondhand shop, the joy of finding a gem amongst the trash is a true buzz. Also eBay and discogs, but expect to pay more for the vinyl. For me the shippingrates are often a dealbreaker.
Maybe we can set up a vinylexchangemarket here on TC.....
Hope to see/hear more about your vinylcollection.

Best regards,
Jos


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Swap meets and thrift shops are the best source for classical vinyl. You can find tons of it for a buck or two a disk. It's better to experiment and try new things with vinyl than to duplicate what you already have on CD. Most of the time, CDs sound MUCH better than the original vinyl release.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Vinyl recordings of my most loved... Recommendations

Now that the LP business has picked up again, the possibilities are even more endless. Of course, the "new stuff" will set you back $30 to $50 each. Better off sticking with the $1 to $5 product seen in so many used shops.

Recommendations? Classics by concensus usually remain so, as you yourself have illustrated with Casals and Gould mentions. What was recommended in the LP age 35 to 65 years ago, likely will still be. Some will now be in the Historical category, a category we all enter eventually.

Using that thought, my advice would be to keep an eye out for substantial artists who recorded predominantly from 1950 to 1970. That way, you're getting artists who aren't featured as much anymore, and in decent mono and stereo sound.

As always, there's much to be gained from Google searching, and Bookfinder searching, with respect to LP recommendations and sales. And also, old recording catalogues such as Schwann.

You may be interested in purchasing an online subscription to Gramophone. This can give you entry to all their reviews from that 50's to 70's era, and other periods.

Good luck, and have fun. :tiphat:


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

I've bought records thru Ebay and Amazon Marketplace.

I also have bought a number from Irvington Music and, although pricey, there's a guy who runs an auction every couple of months out of Chicago whose pressing are usually very good: Polyphonyrecordings.com


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Welcome back to the (growing) world of vinyl. I seem to have a pathological dislike of CDs, and it's my good fortune that collecting vinyl is an inexpensive hobby, providing you're not looking for a few notorious labels.

The items you mention are among the less common releases, but an Ebay "saved search" should alert you quite regularly.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

I think I like you :tiphat:


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Alexander said:


> Welcome back to the (growing) world of vinyl. I seem to have a pathological dislike of CDs.


I think I like you :tiphat:

I've no idea how you delete a post as I'm new in here so apologies for the double post.


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## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

I find the average CD sounds better than the average LP but many of my best LPs were inadequately transferred to digital. Even if I leave out the audiophile specials (such as the Argenta Espana on Decca and indeed most of the best Ansermet recordings which are crying out for loving remasters) things like the Knapp 62 Parsifal or the Pavarotti-Sutherland Turandot sound better than their remasters. In some cases there's a tradeoff: the LP will do well on some things and the CD on something else. Conversely, many recordings that I thought were very poor on LP (e.g. Bernstein Columbia Mahler cycle or various Leinsdorf RCAs from the Dynagroove era) sound superb in the best remasters. I would say that labels that did the most consistent job of creating decent transfers of great recordings were the Mercury Living Presence series, the RCA Living Stereo series (although not as consistently as Mercury) and the best Lyrita CDs.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

cournot said:


> I find the average CD sounds better than the average LP but many of my best LPs were inadequately transferred to digital. Even if I leave out the audiophile specials (such as the Argenta Espana on Decca and indeed most of the best Ansermet recordings which are crying out for loving remasters) things like the Knapp 62 Parsifal or the Pavarotti-Sutherland Turandot sound better than their remasters. In some cases there's a tradeoff: the LP will do well on some things and the CD on something else. Conversely, many recordings that I thought were very poor on LP (e.g. Bernstein Columbia Mahler cycle or various Leinsdorf RCAs from the Dynagroove era) sound superb in the best remasters. I would say that labels that did the most consistent job of creating decent transfers of great recordings were the Mercury Living Presence series, the RCA Living Stereo series (although not as consistently as Mercury) and the best Lyrita CDs.


It's irritating how supply and demand along with greed and profiteering have affected this whole thing.

On another thread someone even quoted re-remasters where something had been rushed out when CD first came along then remastered a few years later to make a few bob more and re-remastered as little as 4 years later to sucker-punch afficianados and empty their wallets again. The same poster referred to a Beatles re-remaster 20 years after the first remaster and I'd believe that technology had moved on in 20 years but not by that much between the late nineties and early noughties as in the 4 year example.

Another poster commented that you could DIY digitise your LPs just using your own turntable attached to a PC but if the pros have failed so miserably using the original master tapes then I don't see how we could make a better job of it. Until someone gets it right I'm happy to play my LP records or those CD remasters I like better where I've duplicated stuff.

It all reminds me of the expensive Bond movie boxsets which come out every few years with a few additions and the latest movies. I saw a Dark Side of the Moon pop disc set selling for £100 in my local HMV the other day and glanced at it as I thought the 1970s album was a only standard single LP. It seems it was originally just a single LP but the new version had a 5.1 remix plus a Quad version plus the original stereo one plus a Live version plus some work in progress and out-take stuff. I wonder who thought how to make a bundle there


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## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

For me the most laughable thing is all the pros who defended poor CD remasters in the 80s by accusing vinylphiles of worshipping distortion. Moreover, lots of people said that since 16 bit cds were theoretically above the dynamic range of tape, that no more benefit would come from digitizing analog at 20/48. Fast forward 30 years later and suddenly 24/192 processing that's then reduced to 16/44 "miraculously" sounds better than the best 16 bit only transfers. I wonder how that happened? Heck I can even remember when there were those who said jitter was inaudible, until rigorous tests showed that such distortions were audible under certain conditions. Yet there was no jitter spec in the original redbook CD standard.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The only home audio component I know of that has ever had documented jitter in the audible range was a McIntosh media server. Other than that one exception, jitter is WAY below the threshold of audibility, even in inexpensive equipment.

I think when it comes to high bitrates, it's mostly a marketing thing catering to people who believe bigger numbers on a page must mean better sound. 24 bit is useful when you're mixing, because you may want to increase the volume of a particular channel without bringing up the noise floor with it, but for straightforward mastering, where the program is already mixed, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference. Higher bitrate can be useful to more accurate noise filtering as well. That's probably what they are promoting when they talk about 24 bit remasters. It might give them a little more control over the shaping of the dynamic filtering of tape hiss.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

What's jitter got to do with vinyl. The only time I get jittery vinyl is if I jump on the floor and the stylus skates. I call that skitter.


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## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

There are many things that are not well understood about acoustics and about subjective perception of sound. 
For example, AT&T did experiments over 50 years ago that showed that under many conditions, single blind testing is more revealing than double blind testing (i.e. once people were shown what specific tones to listen for they could reliably hear when turned on amidst noise but didn't find it in uninformed double blind) but most published studies I've seen did little to increase their test power. Also, I haven't followed the literature in detail, but on more than one occasion, I've seen a study demonstrating that (for example) a given difference in cables was inaudible when judged on the average, but that a statistical reanalysis showed quite clearly that a noticeable minority could reliably hear a difference above the 95% significance threshold. And don't get me started on the misuse of the 95% confidence interval that ignores type 1 vs type 2 error. The latter point is barely discussed in the engineering literature. But anyway, this isn't a technical forum and talking statistics is boring. Suffice it to say, I'll like what I like and live the possibility that some of it is placebo rather than dismiss what I hear on the basis of inadequate technical knowledge. Otherwise, we might as well require people to only judge new performances on a double blind basis before opining on this opera or that concert.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

cournot said:


> There are many things that are not well understood about acoustics and about subjective perception of sound. But anyway, this isn't a technical forum and talking statistics is boring. Suffice it to say, I'll like what I like and live the possibility that some of it is placebo rather than dismiss what I hear on the basis of inadequate technical knowledge. Otherwise, we might as well require people to only judge new performances on a double blind basis before opining on this opera or that concert.


Bravo, well said ... if we like it that's 'good enough' imho and 'selling' our opinions to anyone else won't make anything sound any better to us as individuals.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

It's strange how this vinyl v CD thing works. Let me give you an example using a popular (though not always appreciated) piece of music: Orff's "Carmina Burana". I have always enjoyed the Boston SO / Ozawa recording on RCA from 1969 as to me, on vinyl, it was the best for my individual taste. Many years later, I came across the recording on CD as a 24/96 audiophile remaster and it is horrible! It's like they've digitised all the life out of it: it's still "Carmina Burana" but it's lost the 'oomph' that is served up in spades on the original vinyl pressing.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

techniquest said:


> It's strange how this vinyl v CD thing works. Let me give you an example using a popular (though not always appreciated) piece of music: Orff's "Carmina Burana". I have always enjoyed the Boston SO / Ozawa recording on RCA from 1969 as to me, on vinyl, it was the best for my individual taste. Many years later, I came across the recording on CD as a 24/96 audiophile remaster and it is horrible! It's like they've digitised all the life out of it: it's still "Carmina Burana" but it's lost the 'oomph' that is served up in spades on the original vinyl pressing.


I think I like you :tiphat:

I like vinyl but also like CD so am not some kind of completely biased vinylaholic. If a recording started life on analogue tape then it's a hell of a job getting a digitisation to improve on that so I'll keep playing my LP records thank you very much until a good one comes along. If it started life on digital tape then I'll listen on CD.

Remastering something to CD doesn't necessarily make it even as good as the original let alone better.

On another thread someone mentioned Beatles albums being remastered to CD at least three times with the latest as recent as 2009 or 10. Someone else then mentioned a Rosenkavalier set remastered three times with one in the late 1990s then getting redone just 4 years later in 2001 or 2. I don't recall a leap in technology between the late 1990s warranting such treatment though or maybe we all need to replace our pre-2000 CDs.

The first AAD CD remasters were mostly average at best due to being rushed out to feed the take-up of the new medium. Later remasters should have improved on this but sometimes are simply another butcher's cut.

Someone else in here even suggested on another thread that anyone could produce digitised copies of their own LP records which were completely indistinguishable from the record when played back but Nipper and his owner definitely say No :lol:


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Some great vinyl records have a "warmth" to the sound that CDs can't seem to match, but at my level of playback equipment it's pretty much a moot point.

The main reason I like vinyl is that I love to watch the records as they spin.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Vesteralen said:


> Some great vinyl records have a "warmth" to the sound that CDs can't seem to match, but at my level of playback equipment it's pretty much a moot point.
> 
> The main reason I like vinyl is that I love to watch the records as they spin.


I think there are some top-loading CD players where you can see them spin too but it just can't be the same at hundreds of rpm 

I prefer my analogue warm rather than clinicalised and also quite like the simplicity of a needle traversing a visible groove as this has a certain magic whose mechanics are easy for all to understand and appreciate.


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