Any advice on buying quality vinyl

@voiceofvinyl,

I can appreciate your expertise as a veteran record dealer, but are you seriously suggesting that DGG is to be compared to Decca? It's a generally acknowledged fact that the vast majority of DGG records sound mediocre and dynamically flat compared to any vintage RCA and Mercury, let alone Decca.

I don't know where your quote is coming from, but as fas as I know there isn't much debate amongst audiophiles that RCA's Dynaflex - like their equally desastrous Dynagroove mastering procedure - was one of the biggest backward steps in the history of the gramophone. The suggestion that Dynaflex was an attempt to fix noisy vinyl is one of the strangest things I've ever read on this topic.

Besides I don't understand where you get the idea that early RCA Living Stereo pressings are noisier than others from that era. In my experience the Indianapolis pressings (easily recognized by the 'I' in the dead wax) are mostly dead quiet, just like the early Mercury Living Presence records that were also manufactured there.

The Indy pressings are generally considered the benchmark of quality for classical stereo records in the late 50's and early 60's, along with Decca's New Malden pressings. This is why original pressings on both these labels are coveted by audiophile collectors, who generally ignore DGG and Dynaflex era RCA's.

@voiceofvinyl,

I must be one lucky fellow then. You made me go and play a number of my early LSC's and the background is just silent. For the record, I have cleaned all my classical records in three steps: Vinylzyme Gold, Quality Service cleaning fluid (a Dutch product) and purified water for rinsing on a VPI 16.5. A tedious and time consuming process, but I've learned that this first step with the enzyme mixture is crucial in removing organic contamination that builds up over the years on those old records, especially if stored in damp surroundings. Perhaps this first step has been particularly beneficial to those RCA's.

I'm sure you know that during the 70's the pressing, mastering and (perhaps) recording technology improved considerably with labels like Decca and HMV. To some extend this also applies to DGG, especially some of the 70's recordings made in Boston with Ozawa come close to the Decca benchmark. As much as we all love the late 50's early 60's performances by Ansermet, Cluytens, Klemperer et al, but the technology of the day was limited.

In contrast RCA engineering and sonics took a big step back with Dynagroove and Dynaflex. The same trend can be observed with Mercury and Columbia. Might it be true that US record labels reacted differently to mass market forces than did their European counterparts? I dunno, but this Atlantic divide is curious to say the least.

BTW I'm just a collector and with classical records I've reached saturation point many years ago, so there's no agenda here.

Those tube based recordings from the golden age of stereo are incredibly lifelike, no argument there. Less (technology) was more. But the mastering equipment had a limited frequency range, so records made in those days could not approach the sonic quality of the master tape. This gap narrowed considerably in 1968, when Neumann introduced a new disc cutting lathe (the SX-68) able to reproduce up to 20kHz. Unfortunately recording technology also changed drastically with the introduction of solid state multitracking (and multimiking). More (technology) became less.

According to your information RCA’s Dynagroove system was tailored to low end systems with spherical tips, just when elliptical tips were becoming more mainstream (the 60’s was a spherical world). This does indeed suggest they bended over to their marketing division. Dynaflex was the thin icing on the cake.

As for those supposedly noisy early LSC’s, I decided to do a little experiment. I remembered I have two pressings of one of their sonic spectaculars: the complete Albeniz Iberia from 1961, conducted by Jean Morel. I have both the LSC 6094 shaded dog (Indy pressing with 1S,1S,1S,3S lacquers) and the SB-2131/32 (3D,2D,2D,3D lacquers) mastered and pressed by UK Decca, who had a licensing agreement with RCA. Both copies are near mint condition, they both went through the same cleaning procedure and were both played with a Transfiguration Proteus MC cartridge. The experiment showed that both pressings have completely silent backgrounds. Sonically they were very close as well, but I’d give the edge to the LSC. It has slightly more dynamic range and is definitely more controlled in the loudest tutti passages.

What would be responsible for the difference: better tape source, better mastering or perhaps better vinyl?

@voiceofvinyl,

I certainly don't have all the facts, but apparently the industry practice was either to send lacquers to foreign markets (used on location to press the discs) or to send second generation copies of the master tape and have the mastering done over there (usually under some licensing agreement). Even in those days it seems that record companies were reluctant to ship around their original master tapes. This might explain why original pressings made in the home country of the record company usually sound best. And also why in the above comparison of the Albeniz the US pressed LSC sounds slightly better than the UK pressed SB. 

But to complicate matters the agreement between RCA and Decca also involved recording. Many of RCA's recordings made in Europe (mostly with London orchestras or the VPO in Vienna) were made by Decca recording engineers like Kenneth Wilkinson. Obviously Decca did the mastering and pressing of the UK issues of these recordings, but did they also use the master tapes (which they made themselves)? I have no idea.

So I did another experiment: Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique by the VPO conducted by Pierre Monteux and recorded by Decca. In this case the UK pressed SB-2090 (1M,2L lacquers) sounds better than the US pressed LSC-2362 (2S,4S lacquers). This outcome suggests that Decca had access to the original tapes, but of course as legal owners so did RCA.

I admit to speculation here, but IF both companies used the original tapes for making these records, the Decca mastering engineers had the edge over their US collegues. But perhaps this is totally wrong. Perhaps a 1S/1S copy of the LSC sounds best of all, who knows?

So there's really only one way to find out: listen for yourself! That's just the advise you were waiting for, right? ;-).