MoFi controversy


I see this hasn't been mentioned here yet, so I thought I'd put this out here.  Let me just say that I haven't yet joined the analog world, so I don't have a dog in this fight.

It was recently revealed that Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs one step LPs are being cut from digital masters (DSD) rather than being straight analog throughout the chain.

Here is one of the many Youtube videos that discusses it

 

To me, it seems that if MOFI is guilty of anything, it's "deception by omission."  That is, they were never open about the process and the use of digital in the chain. 

One thing to mention is that hardly anyone is criticizing the sound quality of these LPs, even after this revelation.  Me personally, I wouldn't spend over one hundred dollars for any recording regardless of the format.

 

ftran999

Dear @daveyf  and friends : Folk Singer is just another very good recording and always will be " Folk Singer " and your experience obviously is system dependet.

I posted before " since when MoFi was doing digital " and well since 2011 and way before that some of us posted here that many non-MoFi LPs were digital recorded and not only almost all of you just did not care about but even blamed to the one that posted on.

 

Today that all know for sure about the LP digital recording every one blame MoFi when in the past almost no one of you took in count that several MoFi were digital as I posted many years ago and several times and not only with MoFi.

The analog recording industry ( AP, Music Direct, Elusive, Classic records, and many more ) in reality grow-up mainly with LP re-issues and with nothing really new recordings but re-issues: 3, 4 or even 7/8 different kind of same title re-issues and almost all of us were buying as crazy horses. Every new reissue ( no matter what. ) we buy it. Why, who cares ! ! 

The LP stampede started around 20 years ago and it follows today and this thread confirm that stampede.

 

3/4 years ago I left it. I made a stop in the road and asked my self: why in hell am I running in this long no sense LP stampede when there is nothing new ? and since then I stop to buy re-issues no matters what.

 

The best QS LP  happened way before the " stampede " with some of the D2D by Sheffield, M&K, Cristal Clear and the like that even today can´t be ouperformed and the AP efforst with its D2D recordings was not not only near those references but really bad D2D recordings.

For years I posted that digital medium is the superior alternative and no one today can't stop digital that always will be better. The One Step re-issues confirm that.

 

R.

 

Anyway, the world is in continuous movement and a lot of people have no other best way of life that spend any kind of money for truly little rewards but such is life.

 

@rauliruegas: Yes, direct-to-disc LP's (for you youngins, no tape recorder of any kind is employed, analogue or digital. The output of the microphone mixing console goes straight to the lathe cutting the lacquer) remain the by-a-wide-margin most-alive sounding musical format I've heard. But very few musicians and singers are capable of making records that way.

I suspected all along that MOFI were using a Digital step in the process simply because they WEREN'T plastering AAA stickers all over the outside of their product the way some other's were doing...Analogue Productions for one.

Dear @bdp24  : Yes you are rigth because in D2D there is no chance to editing or second take and the players play under heavy stress but not only that because you need engeenering/gentlemans that really have deep knowledge, skills and experience with that kind of demanding recording proccess for even they.

 

Analog Production/AcousticSound recorded a D2D series and I have to say that all samples are really a dissapointment against Sheffield/M&K experiences.

 

So not easy for any one to do it.

Now @alexberger  posted that who needs those One Step recordings when we can get the DSD direct version. We have to remember that any digital copy of PCM/DSD are and original master nothing less than that.

 

DSD and even 32/384 PCM recordings beats analog and nothing wrong with that due that every technology out there works inside its limits an pure analog can't do better today when digital " everyday " is growing-up.

 

R.

@rauliruegas Raul, you are using Jim Davis’ justification for using a DSD step in his ’supposedly’ all analog releases. Davis stated that he and MoFI thought that the DSD recording sounded better than the AAA tape. I have a hard time believing that, because there are clearly a number of other reasons that Davis would come up with that justification...cost, ease of use etc., Besides this is not the point here, even if Davis is correct, because the point is he was still making sure that MoFi and everybody connected to them was propagating a lie for years to their consumers...and I think we all know the reason why!