Whats on your turntable tonight?


For me its the first or very early LP's of:
Allman Brothers - "Allman Joys" "Idyllwild South"
Santana - "Santana" 200 g reissue
Emerson Lake and Palmer - "Emerson Lake and Palmer"
and,
Beethoven - "Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major" Rudolph Serkin/Ozawa/BSO
slipknot1
Last week I was at the local record store and browsing though the "newly arrived" used records and something made me check out a particularly bad looking Dark Side Of the Moon.

I think it was the fact that they were asking $30 bucks for an album that had a terrible cover, I thought it was a mistake, but it wasn't.

When I took the record out, I realized it was first pressing from 1973, and even though it was dusty, it looked amost new. I played it on in the store, and it sounded fine, but I knew I wouldn't really to be able to tell if it was noisy or not until I got home, cleaned it Walker/VPI 16.5, and it's just sublime. Much less noisy than any of the 3 "new" copies I have tried this year.

It does sound different from the new pressings, it's more open and extended, not at warm. Not better or worse, just different.

What a find.
Kaleidoscope - "Tangerine Dream" (Fontana UK '67/ Repertoire UK '05)
Kaleidoscope - "Faintly Blowing" (Fontana UK '69/Repertoire UK '05)
Fairfield Parlour - "From Home To Home" (Vertigo UK '70/Repertoire UK '04)
Kaleidoscope - "The Sidekicks Sessions 1964-1967" (Alchemy '03)

...All the same British band, evolving from garagey Beat/R&B as The Sidekicks and Moddish foppery as The Key (both represented on poor-sounding rediscovered demo acetates only), to electric + folky-baroque lite psych as Kaleidoscope, to mildly proggy classic AOR as Fairfield Parlour, with consice melodic pop and fanciful poetic/introspective lyrical sensibilities at their core.
Janet Baker:
"A Treasury of English Songs" truly magical inspite of being a EMI "Angel"!

Kings College Cambridge:
Purcell "Funeral Music for Queen Mary" (EMI)
Allegri "Misereri", Palestrina "Stabat Mater" (Argo)
both of these LPs are old staples for me.

Corydon Singers:
Howells "Requiem
Vaughn Willams "Mass in G minor"
Bruckner Motets
This group has several LPs on Hyperion and are all amazing

all of these LPs are original 1960s and 1970s pressings

all played in reverse phase,,,a recent discovery that is making many of my records (mostly British) sound like a different (and correct) recordings.
,,,,,give it a try
Hi Emorrisiv. I'm fortunate (or cursed, depending on your viewpoint!) in that my preamp affords remote control of absolute phase, AKA polarity, from the listening position. I try to determine the best polarity setting for any recording before listening (other than sometimes casual or background listening), and have amassed experience in doing this with thousands of recordings over several years.

The truth I've found is that many, if not most recordings are either only mildly sensitive to polarity at best; or apparently insensitive enough that I can never be sure which the preferred or "correct" setting actually is; or display one preferred setting for one solo instrument or voice but the other setting for another soloist; or confusingly display opposite preferences for soloists vs. backgrounds; and/or vary in these regards and thus the preferred setting from cut to cut on an album. And I often find that it's quite possible to convince myself that one or the other setting is "correct", only to change my mind upon subsequent relistening (additionally, this can change as I vary my listening distance within the room, or even the volume setting).

On the other hand, many other recordings do seem to show a polarity preference that's constant and not difficult to determine. In the final tally, I'd guesstimate that I do determine a setting which I prefer on balance for around 85% of recordings (the other 15% being pick'em). The funny thing is, try as I have, I can't really say that these recordings possess any likely characteristics in common, such as being "minimally miked" or "naturally recorded". Sometimes "purist" or live recordings you'd think would be a slam dunk in theory are impossible to determine the "correct" polarity with, while some heavily multitracked studio creations are quick and easy to determine.

However -- as you'd expect given the disregard to polarity throughout the miking, recording, mastering, and production processes for most recordings, and the fact that most playback loudspeakers aren't so-called "minimum phase" designs but instead use high-order crossovers that rotate phase and multiple drivers often wired in opposing polarities -- in the end, the breakdown between "straight" and "inverse" settings in my experience approaches a 50/50 split with those recordings for which a preference can be determined, with maybe just a 10%-15% tilt toward the nominally "correct" setting when using 1st-order or single-driver, minimum-phase loudspeakers.

The upshot of which is, I'd be leery of declaring one or the other polarity setting best for any arbitrary group of recordings based on some incidental characteristic such as country of origin. Especially if you're having to reverse polarity by reversing speaker leads, since that doesn't allow for rapid, multiple A/B comparisons from the listening position -- it's just too easy to confuse or convince onesself that way. But having said all that, I do commend you on bothering to experiment with polarity, and can only say "go for it and enjoy it!" if you've found any rules you can live happily by.