This article is a repost of the three-part series originally published as Why—and WHICH!—classical recordings can make your system sound stunning.

3-to-6-minute tunes? Sure, they can move us, or be fun to hum to or even do a little dance-step to, but the truth is, for many of us audio enthusiasts, they become just not good enough.

Now wait. Before anyone gets up in arms about of my comment, let me say that I realize that the music most of us connect with the easiest isn’t usually a symphony or a violin concerto. It’s a song with lyrics that speak to or for us, often with a catchy beat. So, naturally, when we want to sit back and listen to music, we tend to play the kind we relate to most—a 3-to-6-minute rock, R&B, hip-hop, country, folk, or other “pop” song.

Which is fine, until it isn’t. The problem with pop recordings is that most don’t sound very good, which is why many audio enthusiasts feel the need to venture elsewhere, often into unknown musical territory. It’s a natural urge for us, to want to hear and discover great music in great sound quality from high-quality recordings. As someone who happens to love pop and classical music equally, I’ll never say classical is of a higher musical standard than non-classical, because it’s all about personal taste. But I will say this: classical recordings tend to sound much better than popular music ones.

Take, for instance, the way the sound of music is captured and processed. With pop recordings, creativity is king. Anything goes. The engineer is allowed, presumably with the artist’s permission, to stretch, twist, recolor, bounce around, and add artifacts to the original recorded performance however he or she likes. It’s all part of the art and that’s what makes pop recordings interesting. These tricks can add to the emotional depth or catchiness of the song.

But studios don’t do that with classical recordings where the goal is to preserve the original performance without adding anything to it. The rules are strict, not only regarding sound effects (ideally there should be none), but also in the way microphones are placed.

The difference between a classical recording and a pop one might be explained with this analogy: a basketball handling contest vs. a real basketball game.

In a basketball handling contest, someone might be spinning the ball on their nose while riding a unicycle, while the second person is rolling the ball across his outstretched arms while drinking a cup of hot coffee. You can say both are skilled and talented. If you’re equally amazed by both acts, you’ll have difficulty deciding who’s better. And this is what pop recording comes down to. You use whatever means necessary to create the desired effect. What sounds good depends on who you ask.

But classical recording is a lot like a real basketball game where there is no such ambiguity or subjectivity about what is best. There are strict rules to follow, and all teams and players are judged by the same set of criteria. Whichever group scores more points is the better one, period. In a classical recording, having the sound swim in an ocean of echoes is not considered creativity. It’s just a bad decision.

And these restrictions and their rigidity are precisely the reasons why, speaking purely from a sound quality standpoint, many of the most breathtaking recordings you will ever hear are of classical music. When it’s done right, you can hear the material the instruments are made of and hear their bodies ejecting and injecting air, almost as if they’re breathing. You can feel their physicality, as real as your own. You can hear how the beauty and drama of a performance is enhanced by a properly designed hall acoustic, such as the Wiener Musikverein in Vienna or the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, two of the most fabulous concert halls in the world. The guiding word for these engineers and producers is faithfulness, not creativeness. That’s the goal they all strive for. And to reach that goal, they must follow certain rules.

An endeavor based on absolute rules and criteria can lead to a very different kind of greatness than that of an endeavor based on creative freedom. Michael Jordan is an awe-inspiring athlete not in spite of the rules of basketball, but because of them. What makes his 4-foot jump admirable is the absoluteness of the circumstances he does it in, the absoluteness of the rules and the end-goal. Sure, if he had access to Nike’s new concept Super-Spring design (not a thing) and a backyard trampoline he’d probably wow us with a high jump to the top of a highway light post, but that would be a different kind of greatness, more of a Harlem Globetrotters kind.

In the case of those who are passionate about building a great audio system, I think that passion is based on the absolute nature of the audiophile game. Sure, people in this hobby like to say that whatever sounds good to you is good enough. But deep down, I think most of us believe in an absolute standard, an imagined destination where everything sounds right to everyone. It’s our North Star, a place we constantly strive to get closer to, one upgrade at a time, even though we know, in the back of our mind, that we’ll never quite reach it.

So, if you’re interested in playing the audio game in absolute terms, join me as we explore the world of classical recordings, where the game is also played in absolute terms. We’ll dive into the well-known classical labels, discuss how their sound quality has evolved, highlight the best recordings, and point out the ones to avoid.

Let’s look at the different categories of recordings I’ll be addressing:

1. Mono Recordings
2. Early Stereo Recordings
3. 70s Analogue Recordings
4. Early Digital Recordings
5. Today’s Digital Recordings

For each of my category descriptions, please keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule.

Mono Recordings

These are the recordings made in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and early to mid-‘50s. From an audio quality standpoint, they’re simply not competitive with later releases, especially in regards to orchestral or piano recordings, which tend to sound too boxy, veiled, or noisy. This has almost nothing to do with the fact they were recorded in mono and almost everything to do with the recordings having been made so long ago, when recording technology and techniques were nowhere near as developed as they are today. Many of the recordings were of broadcasts of live performances captured from radio programs. Sometimes the coughing is louder than the music, which is actually a difficult thing to pull off even if you tried.

Still, there are many seasoned collectors who prefer these early recordings over all others. The reason is not the quality of the sound but the quality of the performances. Some legendary musicians and conductors made recordings only in the mono era, and while I’d never say these musicians and conductors were superior to those who followed, I agree that there was something different—special—about the way they played and interpreted the same familiar music. You could say their playing was freer, and more romantic. Cellist Pablo Casals, violinist Ginette Neveu, and conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, are such examples, whose abilities combined with their uniqueness is what attracts many to the mono-era recordings.

Early Stereo Recordings

I include in this category recordings mainly made in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Some classical collectors, of which I’m not one of them, argue that this was the best period for recording quality. They qualify the sound as “warmer”, and more natural, although many tend to use the word “natural” to describe a sound that is more bloomy than life and has a high-frequency roll-off.

It’s true that most recordings from this era sound naturally full-bodied. I believe that’s because they were made before engineers and producers started using too many microphones to record performances. This practice did more harm than good, especially to some of the ‘70s recordings, which sound either excessively brittle or muffled. The early stereo recordings don’t suffer from such problems.

When done right, the typical sound of the early stereo recordings is addictive. It has a warm and rich presence. An example of this is The Art of Song sung by operatic tenor Cesare Valletti. Just listen to it on YouTube or any streaming service and you’ll see what I mean—yes, even streamed. Or try any of the orchestral recordings conducted by Ernest Ansermet or Fritz Reiner. For many audio enthusiasts, these recordings offer an exceptionally cohesive portrayal of a live orchestra—of all the different parts of an orchestra playing together as one—a difficult thing to achieve when recording a full orchestra. There is a unique sound signature in these early stereo recordings that escapes most later recordings. Ironically, even live performances don’t have it. It’s a product of the recording techniques of the era.

That said, these recordings are not perfect. Many of them lack clarity and transparency, especially compared to digital recordings of more recent performances. The recording’s bloomy richness often interferes with the individual sounds of the instruments and the hall ambience. Moreover, the noise floor of those recordings is very high, emphasizing tape hiss. If you value in music reproduction the qualities of transparency and accuracy above all else, you won’t be entirely happy with these early stereo recordings. Their sound is more akin to fiction than to the documentary.

Many big and small record companies during this period produced wonderful recordings. But of these, four big labels stand out, having consistently produced great-sounding recordings which are, to this day, readily and inexpensively available in most countries. They are:

• RCA Victor (dubbed as Living Stereo)
• Decca (sold as London in the US)
• EMI (also sold as Angel, Seraphim, or Warner Classics)
• Philips

Of these, Decca calls for special mentioning because their sound is easily distinguishable from the rest, a result of a microphone placement technique called “The Decca Tree”. It’s basically a “tree” built with three mics and bars, suspended around 3 meters high over the conductor’s podium (if it’s an orchestral recording) or in the center sweet spot above the musicians’ heads. The Decca Tree is so effective that still today it’s being taught in many professional studio engineering classes.

There is a caveat with the Decca sound, however: it is so vivid and dynamic that it can sound aggressive on a system whose sound leans toward brightness. But on a good, well-balanced system, it’s a knock-out. In comparison, Philips’s and EMI’s early stereo recordings sound gentler and sweeter. The sound of RCA Victor’s Living Stereo has all the virtues of the other labels, but balances them out. For example, its sound is more vivid than that of Philips or EMI, but not as vivid as Decca’s.

The mono and early stereo periods combined constitute what many call the golden era of classical recording; the mono era for the musicians’ particular way of playing music and perhaps for its nostalgic value, and the early stereo era for its addictive sound signatures. But that doesn’t mean that classical recordings made in the following decades were any less interesting or somehow inferior.

Everything in life moves forward, and the way classical music was recorded since the “Golden Age”—the mono and early stereo period—is no exception. How has the landscape changed since then, and what does it mean for today’s audio enthusiasts seeking the best recordings?

Late Analog (late ‘60 -70s)

A mixed bag. Some of the worst sounding orchestral recordings are from this period. To lower the noise floor, which was the Achilles heel of early stereo, engineers started placing dozens of mics inside the orchestra, as close as possible to the musicians to try to eliminate extraneous noise. Since they had little experience mixing this many tracks, a process entirely done in the analog domain, the resulting recording sounded often dry and unnatural, almost plasticky, if that makes sense.

But it wasn’t all bad. In the midst of these misguided mic-placing techniques, stereo recording evolved. Some engineers improved on the clarity of recordings while maintaining the fullness of sound that the recordings from the Golden Age were known for. That combination of clarity and fullness was truly a case of having the best of both worlds. Good examples of this, on the orchestral side, are conductor Eugen Jochum’s recording of Carmina Burana (LP, Deutsche Grammophon, DGG 139362) and Bernard Haitink’s recording of Debussy’s Orchestral Works (LP, Philips, 4164442). The latter includes “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)” and it’s one of the greatest achievements in late analog recording. If you want to hear what your high-end audio system is capable of, this recording will show you.

Early Digital (‘80s to early 90s)

I call this era the “Dark Age” of classical recording. A bit of irony there, since most of the recordings from this period sound unbearably bright, to the point you’d be hard-pressed to find one that sounds natural.

But some recordings did succeed in overcoming the limitations of early digital. And these were almost all recorded in 20-bit. Sony Music was a pioneer in this area. Just listen to the Sony recording of Stravinsky’s “Le Sacré du printemps (The Rite of Spring)” (CD, Sony Classical, SK 45796) by the Esa-Pekka Salonen-led Philharmonia Orchestra to see light in the darkness.

Today’s Digital (some time in this century all the way to the present)

This period is rather specific; here, I’m referring to all modern recordings produced in 24-bit, which you can safely assume encompasses almost all recordings done in the last 15 years or so.

If early stereo was gold, today’s digital is diamond. Everything improved as digital technologies, along with our understanding of them, improved. Many of today’s classical recordings not only offer astonishing transparency and presence, but also fullness and depth of field. Simply put, even the best recordings from the previous eras can’t hold a candle to the better ones made digitally today.

I know this is a hotly debated topic, but it’s my view that the advantages of these 24-bit recordings shine through regardless of the playback format. You can listen to them on a 16-bit CD, for example, and it doesn’t diminish their awesomeness.

Today’s digital technologies also democratized the recording field substantially. You can, nowadays, produce a very good sounding classical recording with only a few mics, a USB interface, and a computer. Professional gear has also become cheaper. That means the field is no longer dominated by a handful of big labels. Many of the best sounding recordings I’ve heard are from new, obscure, classical “indie” labels founded in this century. And more often than not, when I’m disappointed by the quality of a new digital release, it’s from one of the major labels.

There are many modern recordings with breathtaking sound quality, but I think the following four represent the pinnacle of digital sound:

• Concerti Virtuosi – Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra conducted by Jeanne Lamon (Analekta)
• Translations – Choral Music by Ēriks Ešenvalds – Portland State Chamber Choir conducted by Ethan Sperry (Naxos)
• Beethoven, Sonatas for Violin and Piano – Clara-Jumi Kang, Violin, and Sunwook Kim, Piano (Accentus Music)
• Mahler, Symphony No.1 “Titan” conducted by Francois-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi)

I like to remind myself that most of this music was written before paper cups and cell phones were invented, let alone microprocessors and digital cables. And the last two are, among other factors, what made the above groundbreaking recordings possible.

I urge you to play at least one of these recordings through your treasured speakers or headphones. It would give your system a chance to flex audio muscles you didn’t know it had, while, perhaps, giving you a chance to discover emotional muscles you didn’t know you had.

Thanks for reading.