MoFi controversy

How one feels about vinyl vs digital, about prices for 1-Steps, or about the sound quality of MoFi products isn’t the point, compared to the issue of the little banner across the top of MoFi albums....there are 2 and they used to have a meaning....

"Original Master Recording" meant it was sourced from the original master tapes, and the other banner "Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab" meant they had to use something else as the source (often a duplicate "safety tape", or the master was lost/damaged and all that is left is digital, for examples) and now their third category, super duper 1-steps , (because it was digitized somewhere in the process) and suddenly all of those distinctions are meaningless. It’s a big omission to people who care about transparency in the process.

For me it isn’t about the "quality" of the sound (they’re incredible most of the time) it’s just not 100% analog which is deceptive when Master Tapes are part of your brand identity. It’s a small but very competitive segment of the market. And obviously the consumers care.

One-Steps suddenly seem drastically overpriced. I don't own any of them. Though if they were fully analog I would have no problem with their charging that amount. My small collection, 10-ish, MoFi albums are absolutely fabulous values to me. Transparency is key, they need to do drastically better in that regard, and then the market set the new prices. Regardless of their source the "regular" ones I've bought were well worth the $40-45, on average, that I paid. They are all phenomenal sounding.