Simon and Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" MOFI UD1S


I’ve had my copies for awhile now and have had a chance to listen to it several times. This is the newest Mobile Fidelity "One-Step", (UD1S) that was just finally released.

While this is on par with the first three UD1S reissues, it just falls a little short. I think maybe I was expecting too much?

It’s a fantastic recording and sounds superb, but it left me puzzled. The first side is excellent, very quiet and dynamic. Side 2 with the song "Cecilia" is just SUPERB! It’s hard to say that the track "Cecilia" alone is worth the price of admission, well, because $100 for one song is kinda silly, but WOW, this track is really, really good. Side three is kinda weird and seems to vary from song to song. This can be said to a much lesser degree for the whole album, but side three is inconsistent. This could just be the way the tapes are now, many years later.

I did compare this to my US first pressing and my UK first pressing and this UD1S is better in every way. Quieter, more dynamic, deeper bass, cleaner vocals and way more open sounding.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a WONDERFUL album and recording and I highly recommended it, but not as highly as the first three...
mofimadness

Showing 3 responses by bdp24

slaw, my putting "better" in quotation marks was deliberate, for a reason. Better in terms of technique (a voice as an instrument) and being "prettier", but those are only two element in a singers voice, and not at all the most important to me. I do appreciate Art’s abilities at harmonizing, though. While he has his faults (to put it mildly), David Crosby is a REAL good harmony singer.
Great comparative review folkfreak! I prefer Paul solo (his first two, especially. He lost me on Graceland; not great songwriting imo), Garfunkel's voice being too lightweight for me. I prefer Baritones to Countertenors ;-) . Garfunkel has a "better" voice than Simon, but I don't care about that.
I’ve always found Mobile Fidelity’s choices of titles to redo inexplicable. They always do a great job, I just can’t discern what the rational is in those choices. It doesn’t seem to be the sound quality of the original master tapes, as that varies widely. And it doesn’t seem to be a universal critical approval of the music. So what is it? I could name some Mobile Fidelity titles that I can’t see any justification for redoing, but I don’t want to offend anyone who may love one of them ;-).