Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab has been cutting vinyl from digital since a long, long time ago...

I know. It was a rhetorical question. Most OG records were cut the same way.

 

I think people here that are rooting for or predicting the demise and writing the obituary of MOFI are premature. They may take a hit now, but businesses do & can regroup & reinvent themselves and maybe for the better.

 

Ladies and gentlemen…Today’s WINNER!! Lol

 

Mofi isnt dead, it just smells that way

 

I'm not writing their obit by any means, but I've read a whole lotta posts here and elsewhere by angry people who are cancelling their pre-orders and vowing never to spend another dime on MoFi. The hit will not be inconsiderable. And having hung out here for many years and knowing how very long people's memories are, I can only hope that MoFi cleans this up with PR that douses every fire and brightens every heart. And I can't even begin to imagine what would do that.

 

Why would that be terrible exactly? They did this to themselves.

 

or so they say.... can they truly be believed on anything any more

 

Earlier postings have quoted the April 2022 press release announcing the Music Direct/MoFi hire of a new CMO, Syd Schwartz, and I do find the timing of this and that at the very least curious.

Beyond the debate and repetitive opinions - and maybe this is repetitive as well and I've missed it in the waterfall of postings- I'm super interested to understand what exactly is, and has been, going on internally at MoFi this entire time. They had to have known when they announced FORTY THOUSAND COPIES of a "One Step" of the greatest selling record of all time that people would start asking technical questions. That's just too obvious. Hell, I only have a passing understanding of the vinyl process, and I was confused (but ordered one anyway).

I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but something doesn't add up - you don't have someone of Syd Schwartz's resume/experience and just allow something like this to break into a wildfire and then allow legacy technical staff members to become the face of the company in a moment of crisis - at least I wouldn't. There are well-established business practices of how you manage these types of situations and I can't tell if Music Direct is just inept at it, or if this was some sort of master plan to naturally allow this to be "found out" and have had a scheme to come clean and roll w/ some new transparency process all along.

There's almost a mad genius somewhere in that latter idea.

This is the part of this now that I'm most interested in understanding.

 

It would be terrible for people who buy and enjoy their products and don't hold their sins against them. And it would be a body blow to an increasingly shrinking niche of audiophile labels. You can already see how people are starting to say. "So are all other audiophile labels doing this or nah? How can we be sure?" It could destroy general confidence in LPs as a medium for deluxe audiophile packages, and then what? SACD? Great format but I don't see it carrying the whole industry.

 

I got my answer from the Aqualung thread, really interesting thread, I think people should check it out, very interesting.

 

It would be terrible because they make some of the best pressings out there. I don’t want the One Step division to stop either I just want more availability across the board.

 

How many people buy MoFi because they were thought to be AAA? A lot of people collect them just cause they're collectible.

 

Bernie is really a national treasure. A wise old Sage. All of you digital boys should listen to this.

 

Thay’re going to have to lower the prices considerably on those one steps and lose the box box already, not necessary.

 

You probably didn't inhale either

 

I’m a glass half-full kinda guy and still think they’re gonna follow through and do the right thing. SACDs are amazing but agree with you there. Hopefully the firestorm will begin to subside after information is released next week.

 

Well, they sure went to much trouble to do so if this was an elaborate scheme to reveal something that could have been revealed at least 12 yrs back. But then again, they made a lot of cash in the mean time.

Are you suggesting that they knew this was starting to be questioned and set this up beforehand?

To me thats a weird way to go about it. Logically if they were thinking "Well, geesh looks like people are catching on, we should set up a meeting in order to shoot ourselves in the foot and look like liars" that would be an odd approach.

The better way, I would think, would have been to say "Well, the jigs most likely up fellas, lets make an announcement and show that we have some integrity before this breaks wide open. And we can play dumb with "Oh, we thought yall knew" in a subtle way also"

The later would seem to be more logical than some elaborate scheme that is going to for sure make them look worse.

Nah, I think its much more simple. The rumors turned into a tornado of questioning. This is 2022, not 1979. Things take off quickly and they just figured they could clam up and it would go away. But it bit them in the butt instead.

Sometimes the simplest answer is the reason.

 

I agree with that but you’re really not paying for the box, that’s just the presentation. I only own one which is amazing and I’d love to own ten more but it’s basically impossible as they go out of stock almost immediately.

 

I more think that other labels would learn from this. But mofi is the only one selling $125 digital files on vinyl, so I kinda do think they deserve this. Maybe 100% transparency on everything they ever cut and do cut going forward could save them.

 

Interesting theory about this “coming clean” being intentional. If MOFI is behind this, is this another deception on the part of MOFI? Will this have an equally negative effect on them?

 

I watched that today, to be clear, Bernie didn’t insinuate that Acoustic Sounds is doing what MoFi did.

 

…And they don’t even include a DSD download code!

 

Exactly!

 

me too . . .except when he says something demonstrably false, like saying that copying a file changes the audio content contained in the file even if every bit in the file is identical.
no matter how smart/experienced/knowledgeable someone is, we're all human!
its like my old cello teacher- Harry Sturm. AMAZING cellist, had a long career in the Chicago symphony. But, I remember during one lesson he told me I should NEVER drink milk or eat anything with dairy in it. I asked why, his response was "your stomach is filled with acid, so it just curdles as soon as you drink it".
I . . . did not give up milk

edit: ohhh crap did I just make a food analogy? **** **** ****

 

Listening to the MFSL Dylan Desire SACD right now. This sounds absolutely beautiful! Get one now while they’re still in stock. I gotta get this on 45rpm soon.