Everyone have their RCA LIVING STEREO SACDs yet? Better grab 'em! Leontyne Price...

Ok, thanks for the heads up Steve.

 

I did just order a couple last week - Vienna and Billy The Kid.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=132832&highlight=

A recent thread with a link to the titles.

 

Have a bunch & ordered more off of DeepDiscount during the curent sale that runs till Sunday. Some are on back order.

 

Steve, you echoed my thoughts on these. I'm planning to buy my first SACD (actually, universal) player on forthcoming Christmas, and these SACDs are on my wish list too. I've already got about 20 SACDs and DVD-As, but strangely none of these Living Stereo's, despite they are cheaper. So it's really the time.

 

Am I the only one who prefers the eq on the cd, not SACD, versions?

Sure the dynamics are compromised in the redbook 44.1 format but you can't have everything.

Not to threadcrap but there are a lot more than 52 titles floating around "as cds", and they're
pretty terrific as well. Some of the first classical I heard on cd that sounded GREAT was an
RCA 'Symphony Fantastique' in a generic cover in the late eighties, it was recorded in 1954!

I do like that the reissues properly restored the covers. That Charles Munch/Boston recording
had a cover by the brilliant and very personable Richard Powers.

(I attended SF conventions from 1976-91 and was good friends with a Powers collector who brought
Richard to Nashville where we spent a fabulous, talkative day & evening together)

 

I love this series. Last weekend I took advantage of the $6.99 Deep Discount CD sale to get the last 6 or so that I was missing. Just last night I was playing Disc 1 of Berlioz Requiem. Haunting stuff...

Great sound, great liner notes, true history on SACD!

 

Here we go:

Living Stereo titles at Amazon

DeepDiscount.com seems to have a bunch of these too, and they're having their semi-annual 30% off sale through 11/30. Additional $5.00 off coupon-codes here:

DeepDiscount Sale Thread

- Rich

 

This list is a bit more complete, and lists all 54 titles, 5 are double disc IIRC:

http://www.sa-cd.net/search/living+stereo

 

This was posted recently in the previously-referenced thread, but for those who don't want to dig through that thread to find it:

All 54 Living Stereo SACD titles

I got the last 6 titles I didn't already have earlier this year when one of the usual online vendors had them on sale. I'd put off completing the collection for some time, but started to get concerned that they might go OOP in the near future.

I'd also put off completing my Mercury Living Presence SACD collection until a couple of months ago, when I noticed that quite a few of those were already OOP. I thought I'd managed to track down all the ones I was missing, only to have a couple of orders cancelled due to the inability of vendors to fulfill those orders. I eventually got all of them with the exception of a single title, which as luck would have it appears to be the scarcest of the OOP titles, with the expected premium being asked on the secondary market.

Edit: Oops, SamS beat me to posting that link by a couple of minutes.

 

Cool video Steve, Thanks

 

I have 29 of the 54 listed SACD titles on early RCA LSC shaded dog vinyl ... some great sounding recordings indeed!

 

Living Stereo - WOW

Sometimes that was all I could say after listening to these timeless gems. I have over half of this series and reviewed several of them on SA-CD.net. Steve, thanks for the kick in the pants...I need to make sure to acquire all. Some of these go for peanuts on amazon.fr and the joy you get from this music is priceless.

Jw

 

My favorite album of the entire Living Stereo Classical catalog is Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherezade", performed by conductor Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Original "shaded dog" vinyl pressings of this recording fetched obscene prices in collectors' circles for the past 47 years...for good reason! The 3-channel layer of the SACD is as close as we'll ever get to hearing the actual session master at home, so I treasure my copy of this as if they were classical music's crown jewels of the early stereo recording era...which they are!

 

Probably a silly question, but I guess they have no plans to release Sounds In Space anytime soon?

 

I don't think they've issued any more titles in the last several years, so probably not. Wish they would issue "Sounds in Space" or some Chet Atkins titles.

I played Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra just yesterday.

Amazing dynamics and great early stereo for this 1954 recording.

 

I have all but two of them and the Blue Album is one of my all time favorites. Tracks #8 Un bel di vedremo and #11 Vissi d'arte are the highlights for me.

I will grab the two missing ones as soon as I can.

 

I've got a bunch of these and have a bunch more I ordered about a week ago. I don't have the equipment to experience the sound the way Steve does but I've enjoyed what I've heard. Got just a few more to get. Does Best Buy still have these in stock at their stores? They did a couple years ago.

 

What a strange world we live in. Amazon has the disc of "Hovhaness: Mysterious Mountain"for $7.99.....or you can download the MP3 version for $9.99.

 

Very very hard to find in Best Buy stores. Safest bet is to order from Amazon.

 

Thanks for the reminder, will get a few more!

 

I wish they would do some of the British recordings done at Kingsway Hall, like Witches Brew.

 

Q- Is the RB layer on these SACDs better than the previous RB-only CDs ?

 

Agreed. Great sticky. No reason an AUDIOPHILE shouldn't own at least a handful of these. Seven bucks??! My picks for the choosy:

• Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue - Wild/Fiedler/Boston Pops Orchestra (all-American classic)
• Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe (complete) - Munch/BSO (wow)
• Rimsky-Korsokov: Scheherazade - Reiner/CSO w/ Sidney Harth (violin) (classic Living Stereo)
• Saint-Saens: Symphony No.3 'Organ'/Debussy: La Mer - Munch/BSO (demo all the way)
• Sibelius, Prokofiev, Glazunov Violin Concertos - Heifetz/Munch/BSO (the Sibelius of all-time, hard to pick just one Heifetz)
• Strauss, R.: Music from Salome, Elektra - Borkh/Reiner/CSO (shame Welitsch did not sing on this, she was Salome)
• Tchaikovsky & Rachmaninov Piano Concertos: Cliburn/Reiner/CSO (best-selling concerto recording of all-time?)

And Leontyne Price!

 

I'd add the Heifetz disc of Beethoven/Mendelsohnn violin concertos.

Honestly, Steve made the case as well as it can be done. Get all of these. They were a bargain at the original $10 per disc. For $6??? A no-brainer!