Audiophile LP's

Sheffield Labs, legendary pressings:

http://sheffieldlab.com/content.php?content_id=1002

Here's another vote for Sheffield Labs :-)

Another label sold as "audiophile" is Tacet, but i do have an issue with them...
- sound engineering is superb
- the pressings are quiet (i.e. track noise compared to others)
- very flat pressings

But my issue is - the grooves are cut too close together - you can hear the content of the upcoming groove (i.e. in the next revolution) in the background, because during cutting process, each cut groove is distorted by the cutting of the present groove it is next to. Loud rtacks are not as noticeable, but solo artist pressings are ver noticeable

I would like to think this is an oversight, but every Tacet album I have suffers this same issue. 

Deutsche Grammophon is one of my all time favourites for non-audiophile pressings

Cheers

Another vote for the Sheffield Direct to Discs(and no compression). The Thelma Houston/Pressure Cooker album, will REALLY test a system’s mettle, played at anything close to realistic levels. Doug Sax will probably always be my all time favorite Music Mixologist/engineering talent. What a shame, to have lost him! Acoustic Sounds bought his entire facility(The Mastering Lab), from his estate. Crystal Clear made some excellent Direct to Discs. If you want to test a system/room, for bottom end response, get The Fox Touch(Virgil Fox playing the Fratelli-Ruffatti Organ, in Garden Grove, Calif.). That album has some 16Hz fundamentals on it(the 32’ pipes). The early MFSLs were great too(especially Dark Side of The Moon). Their new ones(anything after they started making CDs), not so much(to me). Nautilus put out a few REALLY well mixed/mastered/pressed, 1/2 speed mastered discs, Fleetwood Mac’s, ’Rumours’, being my favorite of those releases. Then there’s their Heart/Dreamboat Annie, too. I even enjoy some of the old Telarcs(ie: Stravinsky’s Firebird). If you can locate an original pressing of Ry Cooder’s, Bop ’Til You Drop, it was the first major-label(Warner Bros.) vinyl, to ever be digitally mastered and is a lot of fun. I sold a lot of speakers, using that as a demo album. Glad I learned how to care for vinyls, early on. My old, "audiophile" pressings were certainly worth the time/effort. Hell- I’ve still got my original Columbia, Dave Brubeck/Take Five. I can’t imagine a better mix/pressing (audiophile or not), though there may be one out there. In my opinion, one of the things that made a lot of those vinyls so very good, was the use of tubes, in those old recording/mastering/cutting systems.

Refence Recordings by Keith Johnson are among the best LPs ever made, and the musicians are generally superior to those recorded by Sheffield.

Check out the Better Records web store.

I know the owner can be a bit of a "hard" salesman with a pitch that can get annoying.

However, I can personally state that Hot Stampers are no hype,  The owner of the site has been able to perfect a system that allows him to compare vintage vinyl copies to identify the best sounding ones.

However, be prepared to pay a premium for this service.