What LP shows what analog can do?

The Mercury Firebird is one spectacular sounding record! I've been listening to this album for almost 20 years, and have yet to encounter one that can better it in performance and sound. The best version is the 45 RPM Classic Reissue, followed by the 33 RPM and the Golden Import Dutch Pressing. Salvatore aptly described it as "EXPLOSIVE"! LIsten to this record and experience analog at it's finest!

Enjoy,

rcprince,
Acoustic Sounds has the Chesky/Petroushka on 180g vinyl, unless the one I got last month was the last copy .

It's almost as good as the Firebird we've been discussing.

I have a couple of copies I squirreled away a few years back. Strings a little steely sounding (compared with the Firebird or some of the Decca reissues), but otherwise a terrific record. Some of those Readers Digest recordings were far better than the records they pressed--same goes for some of the Voxes, such as the Ravel and Gershwin boxed sets. The original vinyl I've found is easily surpassed by the Analog Productions and Reference Recordings reissues. Lets you see how good Wilkinson and the Aubort/Nicrenz team really were.

Have you guys heard the Reference Recordings' Gershwin Mastercut Reissues? A specific cut, "Variations on I Got Rhythm" got me boogying and twirling an invisible baton like a crazy mofo! It's not as explosive as the Firebird, but the overall sound is so natural and utterly convincing. Check it out. These records are still available from Acoustic Sounds or Elusive Disks.

That's one of the reissues I was referring to. Their Ravel and Rachmaninoff are excellent as well, the former a nice complement to the Analogue Productions reissues from the same Vox Box. Interesting to compare the Reference and AP reissues of those sets to the Classic Records DADs from those tapes, and RR's remastering chain to Doug Sax's tubed remastering job. Same master tapes, three different sonic signatures, all of them highly enjoyable and working to show how good the original recording really was (although I still can't figure how Classic mixed up the right and left channels on the DADs, even within the same piece, such as the Gershwin Concerto in F). It's too bad that Reference couldn't make any profit from their fine efforts to do more vinyl in the series, but such are the economics of this business, I guess.