Eldartford,
I fully understand the greater challenge presented by the wide dynamic range of classical, since that's all I listen to. Matt clearly understands this too, that's why he's looking for suggestions and not just buying anything. Since that's what he asked for I thought I'd try to respond.
In my experience most well-treated and properly cleaned LP's are reasonably quite, though there are obviously some exceptions. The new audiophile grade LPs (eg, Classic Records) are better and the newest 200gm stuff is ghostly quiet. Highly recommended.
Totally agree with your view on recording techniques. The superiority of two-track, tubed recording is obvious even on CD reissues of Living Stereo recordings (compared with newer recordings on CD). After we played our first one of these and picked our jaws off the floor, my partner asked, "The last recordings like this were made in the early '60's? What happened?!" Everything went to hell when they invented the transistor, multi-track mixdowns and (shudder) digital. The first two can never be overcome. Digital has only started to become listenable in the last few years, sort of.
I fully understand the greater challenge presented by the wide dynamic range of classical, since that's all I listen to. Matt clearly understands this too, that's why he's looking for suggestions and not just buying anything. Since that's what he asked for I thought I'd try to respond.
In my experience most well-treated and properly cleaned LP's are reasonably quite, though there are obviously some exceptions. The new audiophile grade LPs (eg, Classic Records) are better and the newest 200gm stuff is ghostly quiet. Highly recommended.
Totally agree with your view on recording techniques. The superiority of two-track, tubed recording is obvious even on CD reissues of Living Stereo recordings (compared with newer recordings on CD). After we played our first one of these and picked our jaws off the floor, my partner asked, "The last recordings like this were made in the early '60's? What happened?!" Everything went to hell when they invented the transistor, multi-track mixdowns and (shudder) digital. The first two can never be overcome. Digital has only started to become listenable in the last few years, sort of.