Speakers Corner / Decca  SXL 6113 - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl - AAA 100% Analogue

Limited Edition - Pure Analogue Audiophile Mastering - Pressed  at Pallas Germany

 

Masterly Performance! Sumptous Sound! fantastic sound, great engineering, fantastic dynamics, and superb conducting 5/5 LPreview

 

Mahler: Symphony No. 1 - London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti

 

“What kind of a world is this which produces such sounds and forms to portray itself?” said Mahler of his First Symphony and gave the world his answer in the music.

 

What at first sounds like “endless Spring” is transformed grotesquely to become an irreal collage. Just how deceptive is this idyllic landscape through which the wayfarer wanders? Distant fanfares, furtive melodies and strange cuckoo calls disturb the seemingly peaceful depiction of Nature before the cheerful theme melody pushes to the fore. But this peace is transient too. The wayfarer begins to increase his pace, he is not the hunter but the hunted in a hostile world. This symphony neither portrays nor describes – it presents the esthetic counterpart of reality.

In view of the recent revival of Mahler and the resultant new recordings of his works, this early DECCA recording cannot be too highly praised.

 

The disc guarantees not only a masterly performance but sumptuous sound and transparency. The owner of this particular recording of the Titan Symphony certainly needs no other and has every right to ask, “What kind of a record is this which produces such sounds...?”

 

Jan/ Februar 1964  Kingsway Hall, London - Gordon Parry - Production: John Culshaw

 

Are your records completely analogue?

Yes! This we guarantee!

As a matter of principle, only analogue masters are used, and the necessary cutting delay is also analogue. All our cutting engineers use only Neumann cutting consoles, and these too are analogue. The only exception is where a recording has been made – either partly or entirely – using digital technology, but we do not have such items in our catalogue at the present time

 

Are your records cut from the original masters?

In our re-releases it is our aim to faithfully reproduce the original intentions of the musicians and recording engineers which, however, could not be realised at the time due to technical limitations. Faithfulness to the original is our top priority, not the interpretation of the original: there is no such thing as a “Speakers Corner Sound”. Naturally, the best results are obtained when the original master is used. Therefore we always try to locate these and use them for cutting. Should this not be possible, – because the original tape is defective or has disappeared, for example – we do accept a first-generation copy. But this remains an absolute exception for us.

 

Who cuts the records?

In order to obtain the most faithful reproduction of the original, we have the lacquers cut on the spot, by engineers who, on the whole, have been dealing with such tapes for many years. Some are even cut by the very same engineer who cut the original lacquers of the first release. Over the years the following engineers have been and still are working for us: Tony Hawkins, Willem Makkee, Kevin Gray, Maarten de Boer, Scott Hull, and Ray Staff, to name but a few.

At the beginning of the ‘90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the reissue policy was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC Compact Classics, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and others, including of course Speakers Corner, all maintained a mutual, unwritten code of ethics: we would manufacture records sourced only from analogue tapes. 

 

Vinyl’s newfound popularity has led many other companies to jump on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source from which to master: CDs, LPs, digital files and even MP3s. 

 

Even some who do use an analogue tape source employ a digital delay line, a misguided ’80s and ‘90s digital technology that replaces the analogue preview head originally used to “tell” the cutter head in advance what was about to happen musically, so it could adjust the groove “pitch” (the distance between the grooves) to make room for wide dynamic swings and large low frequency excursions. Over time analogue preview heads became more rare and thus expensive. 

 

So while the low bit rate (less resolution than a 16 bit CD) digital delay line is less expensive and easier to use than an analogue “preview head”, its use, ironically, results in lacquers cut from the low bit rate digital signal instead of from the analogue source! 

 

Speakers Corner wishes to make clear that it produces lacquers using only original master tapes and an entirely analogue cutting system. New metal stampers used to press records are produced from that lacquer. The only exceptions are when existing metal parts are superior to new ones that might be cut, which includes our release of “Elvis is Back”, which was cut by Stan Ricker or several titles from our Philips Classics series, where were cut in the 1990s using original master tapes by Willem Makkee at the Emil Berliner Studios. In those cases we used only the original “mother” to produce new stampers. 

 

In addition, we admit to having one digital recording in our catalogue: Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky”, which was recorded digitally but mixed to analogue tape that we used to cut lacquers. 

 

In closing, we want to insure our loyal customers that, with but a few exceptions as noted, our releases are “AAA”— analogue tape, an all analogue cutting system, and newly cut lacquers.