French Audio Company Selling Single-Use Lacquer LPs of 'Lost' Jazz Recordings

Ten-year-old French high-end hi-fi company Devialet branched out from making amplifiers and wireless speakers into selling one-and-done lacquer master LPs of a series of “lost recordings” by jazz artists Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, the company told us Monday at an event to introduce the recordings at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The series of pricey master lacquers would normally be used as the first stage of a traditional multistage vinyl LP pressing process, and now they’re available to audio enthusiasts who have money to burn (about $8,200 for four sides of a double album and $5,850 for a two-sided single album). The lacquer discs can be played on a conventional LP turntable, arm and stylus but are destroyed as they are tracked by the stylus, said the company. Because the lacquer is so soft, it plays -- just once -- with virtually no surface noise, said Victor d'Allancé, Devialet general manager-U.K. and Ireland, who compares the experience to “opening and drinking a bottle of fine wine.” The soft lacquer must be handled with gloves and is sold in a leather case made by French craftsmen. During the demo, we were amazed by the almost complete absence of any surface noise from the Vaughan lacquer recording, which we likened to listening to an original studio master tape. For those with more modest means who want to hear an album more than once, Devialet offers limited-run pressings of the Lost Recordings series starting at just over $100.