Mercury Living Presence

The LP's are great! Amazing quality. My only complaint is that you can tell that they used multiple tracks to record on. The separation between sounds is very exact at times vs blended.
You should hear a piano solo where they used multiple mics along the keyboard/harp. It moves across the room with utmost quality and amazing clarity.

In response to Mapman's question, not sure if you're referring more to the simple mike placement, but perhaps Telarc, in its pre-multi-channel days, was close to a mainstream record company using a fairly simple miking technique (spaced omnis as the main array) and taking great care in the mastering and production of its recordings. While many companies have produced fine classical recordings, such as Harmonia Mundi, Reference Recordings, Delos, Decca, etc., most of them use or used far more of a microphone array than Mercury did.

I have The Nutcracker on original vinyl and its very good. Also have seven others on vinyl and they are equally good, but i prefer the overall sound of RCA's Shaded Dogs and White Dogs, even though the Mercury's sound a tad more dynamic to my ears (IMHO). -Mrmitch

Mrmitch

not sure I know what series/line you are referring to exactly by "shaded and WHite Dogs".

Can you elaborate?

Thanks.

White and Shaded Dogs refer to the labels on the RCA Living Stereo recordings from back in the 50s and early 60s. Both of the dogs were white, actually, but a Shaded Dog was a dog on a shaded background, while the White Dog is a dog on the plain red background. These were the earliest of the RCA Living Stereo issues, and were much better pressings than the later Red Seal reissues of those recordings that came from RCA later in time. The early RCAs are equally prized by collectors as the Mercs; a slightly different recording technique, but equally talented recording engineers and producers. Another plus of the series was that they got to record the Chicago Symphony at the peak of its powers under Fritz Reiner.