Anybody own any direct-to-disc LP's?

Were they that good?

Yes, in many cases.

I have many of the Sheffield Labs d-to-d releases, both popular and classical, and one of the M&K Realtime releases (the organ recording "The Power and the Glory," which is spectacular).

Some of the Sheffield classical releases were mic'd a bit too closely, resulting in an overly bright string sound, and somewhat dry acoustics. But in all other ways they were very special.

Many of the Sheffield's have been re-released on cd. I own two of the cd re-releases, and in both cases I also own the original d-to-d vinyl releases.

I was reasonably pleased with the cd version of Volume I of "The Sheffield/Leinsdorf Sessions," containing Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet," Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun," and Wagner's "Forest Murmers." I would not recommend it, though, to anyone with a system that tends towards excessive brightness, for the reason I mentioned above.

I was very displeased with the cd re-release of "The Sheffield Track and Drum Record." The original d-to-d release of "The Sheffield Track Record" had been proclaimed by Harry Pearson, at the time of its release in 1982, to be "absolutely the best sounding rock and roll record ever made." The cd re-release, however, I found to sound dull, dark, closed in, and completely lacking the magic of the original vinyl release. I was not particularly astonished to subsequently read in the liner notes that the cd was mastered by "playing back the analog disk with a Technics SP-15 turntable and a Shure V15 Type V assembly attached to a SME 3012R arm."

Best regards,
-- Al

I have a bunch of them and they are very good. Try the Sheffield Label and maybe a Lincoln Mayorga album. They show up here from time to time and always on Ebay. A good used record shop will have them as well.... try Bananas Music in St Petersburg, FL.

I own at least 20 D2D LP's. They are all superb, even on a modest vinyl-based system. And the better the system - Wow!

The LPs were great - one of the things that got me into this madness, even though I was only playing them through a Technics receiver, a Sanyo turntable and Infinity Qas, circa 1979.

Try Dave Grusin Discovered Again if you don't mind elevatorey, contemporary instrumental music aka "jazz".

It's an excellent recording, which to my ears was never surpassed or even equaled on later CD releases.

As Pkubic points out, you can find all of these D2Ds in good condition and sometimes unopened on Ebay, if not here on Audiogon.

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I'm a jazz fanatic. Any jazz recorded in this format?
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