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

I have actually deleted the post but never mind, I still know people interested in it perhaps they are not a representative segment but your previous post mentions several points that are quite true and yet, while many people struggle there are still many thriving. Otherwise I could not see how some of the house prices or expensive items that you see around can keep going up in price. Also I agree, mass market is certainly not about quality, convenience and instant momentary satisfaction for low prices seem to be what we are going to in general terms.

 

I'd argue it's more not understanding the wants and needs of the modern vinyl buyer than giving them too much credit. I don't think many buyers of modern vinyl think they are buying something all analog, and I don't think many buyers of modern vinyl care whether it's all analog or not. I buy plenty of new music on vinyl and I'm under no delusions that any of it is cut from anything other than digital. So what. Most of it still has more dynamic range than the digital releases (I can't believe I'm typing that in 2022 but here we are).

And I certainly can't claim to be in touch with younger buyers, but based on the way I hear them talk when I shop at Newbury Comics I don't think you are giving them enough credit; they are clearly way too into music to drop $100+ on vinyl in one trip to the store and then just hang them on the wall. I see plenty of 20'somethings spending hours digging in the used record stores, again I find it doubtful they are doing that just for wall decorations. But I'm an old angry white dude with no social skills so what do I know.

 

26-year-old here. I can't speak too much for the others, but I know I spend hours digging through the used bins for both CDs and LPs. I buy MoFi LPs and SACDs (including One-Steps). One of my first posts on this forum (after lurking for years) was about the Abraxas One-Step, which I opened and played and have no plans on selling - because I enjoy the music and the sound!

 

I sprang for a pair of Westone CIEM's but for a good 10-15 years my iPhone was my primary source of music listening, my son took over the living room as a toddler and didn't relinquish it until high school. Took me another 5 years after that to start using the big rig again.

 

Why in the world would MOFI ever do such an interview? I get why you want it, I get why Mike would host it, I can't think of a single reason why anyone from MOFI or MD would want to go anywhere near it.

 

Compensation for being taken advantage of? Like a class action suit or something?

I still have no idea what that has to do with people dividing each other in a boat. It seems to me that people either don’t particularly care in general or people only care enough to simply not buy any or as much of their product going forward. But division? Just because not everybody agrees on how much they care or to what extent they’re going to take some sort of personal boycott?

 

All MTV Unplugged titles are Digital

It's starting to sound like digital mastering might go back to 2000 and the start of the Gain 2 system, witch is also the time of ownership change.

LOL, I have over 17,000 records, MFSL is only like 0.001% of the records I buy, but I have hundreds of them. People are clamoring for repressings I bought 10 years ago, so MFSL could not in any way keep up with my active buying. It's just one tinny label in the big picture.

Hold it up to the light and see if you have virgin translucent performance vinyl (Quiex II) Many of them are that way, you just need to know to look.

Old news man, why would you want them to put out the same old reissues over and over again?
I already have two copies of that bought 13 years ago.

Yep me too

This label is as old as MFSL, there selling point back in the day (1979) was Digitally Remastered. So you can go to that site and buy brand new records, or 45 years worth of past pressings.
TELARC - Concord

AP sell classical titles and you can also find lots of Classic Records sealed, or used.
One label doesn't have to do everything you want to listen to, most audiophile Classical listeners buy CDs SACDs

 

Link to two people talking at an audio show?

I don’t recall all of the details at the time. I know that at least the first SACD of Come Away With Me turned out to be upsampled Redbook, but don’t remember if that was from AP itself, or merely an SACD AS was selling.

However, there were a number of AP SACDs mastered by George Marino (Tea for the Tillerman being the first that comes to mind) that were derived from 20/44.1 PCM, which may not be precisely Redbook, but is certainly pretty close. Their provenance is currently clearly marked on the AS website, along with the explanation that Marino sampled many ADCs and decided this one was more transparent. I don’t know if that was true from the get-go — I seem that explanation was only added after some buyers did spectrum analyses on those discs and noticed a high-frequency cutoff typical of Redbook on those releases.

 

We've seen a lot of bad analogies comparing LPs to girlfriends so far this thread.

 

That's a surprise to me I didn't know they were still producing. Do their records sound any good? I have only one (1980s) with organ music and it is a bit underwhelming, I used to quite like their CDs in the early 80s.

 

If I remember correctly, people might also be referring to the thing some time ago, about the big record companies providing upsampled files as HiRes files - remember that a Beck album was also mentioned. Which make sense, the big record companies employ *some* of the laziest, dumbest individuals ever. ( I know, kind of prejudiced, but tons of examples, like getting rid of masters because they don't want to pay for storage... and so forth).

Affected all purveyors of HiRes files, like HDTracks, ProStudio Masters, and at the time, Acoustic Sounds, which had a HiRes store at the time...
Might be wrong, though... but I think that's what people are referring to...

v

 

A lot of the record collector market tho is like the Pet Rock market. It's not really driven by audiophiles. Even now, I suspect many - maybe even most - of the "audiophile" pressings being bought end up getting played on garbage like Crosley turntables.

 

I would agree with that, if the outrage had been about the use of second-generation tapes per se. But I recall, when Thriller was first announced and people started focusing on that 40,000 figure, when Mikey F reported that he'd been told they'd be using an analog copy tape, the response was a collective shrug; no one seemed to care that much. It was only when it was reported that they were using digital that the torches and pitchforks came out.

 

You just shifted the terms of the analogy to unwittingly prove my point. I specified Pennzoil and Quaker State because both are known as generally-equivalent quality brands. You change it from "premium" (i.e. analog, in your mind) to "cheaper" (i.e. digital, likewise). If you didn’t maintain that analog is superior and digital is inferior, it would be an equivalent-value substitution, and therefore not something to get all that upset about.

 

Agreed about the "collector" mentality which could extend to Beanie Babies, Hudson River School paintings or antique firearms. I'm not so sure how many people buy 125 dollar records to play on a Crosley- there is always this thing about upgrading the gear even among people who have fabulous systems (they may be in constant upgrade mode)-- I did it over many years, it is a process.
But on some of the rare stuff I'm chasing, I collide with jazz collectors. I like this era in the early '70s. It's not pet rocks, some of it is gorgeous musically (e.g. certain records in the Strata-East catalog and some private label stuff). I just watched that video of the guy in Frederick Md. who has a pristine collection of blues and jazz '78s-- Joe Bussard--by comparison, I'm a dilettante. I can't speak for others-- I really don't consider myself a collector in the sense I'm after things for artifact value and I'm not a completist- but I guess, based on the video of Bussard, he was dancing and playing "air instruments" to ancient stuff that was early electrical transcription and having a blast. That's what it is about to me. It should be fun, educational and something to be shared.

 

Couple of issues here. I suspect that my original copy is from a lower stamper, plus it is not the cleanest copy. ( I have owned this album since new, as such it has seen a lot of play time). My MoFi copy is definitely a lot quieter in the groove ( which totally helps the SQ), plus it is more resolving of Paul's guitar in the mix. I have to listen again to do the 'AB', but I am pretty sure that I will again prefer the much newer MoFi copy.

 

I said nothing about "fake outrage." What I was calling disingenuous was the insistence by some that even mentioning the "analog versus digital" aspect of it was, in your own words, "shameful" because the controversy wasn’t ever about that. My point is that, unless you are convinced a priori that there is a crucial quality difference between analog and digital, the controversy and level of ire displayed here makes little sense. In the end, it’s all about the belief that digital is inferior to analog. Whether one is able to tell the difference oneself or not is irrelevant to that a priori assumption.

 

No, that's Chad Kassem who always gets the master tapes or he won't do a reissue (Jimi Hendrix AYE maybe an exception?). MoFi uses the "Original Master Recording" strip if they believe they had access to the original master tapes or files, and "Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs" if they don't.

 

But they will still take your money on a preorder.

Yeah I found out they were still around by accident around a year ago, I don't listen to classical so never needed to know.

 

There’s also a budget audiophile market as I spend more on my collection than my equipment but still have nice stuff just not ridiculous expensive. My most valuable pieces of gear are probably my Klipsch RF7’s which I adore. When I started out collecting in around 2010 I learned a lot about how to collect and where to find the best stuff. It’s way easier to get rare, incredible pressings now online versus surfing the bins. Joining the forum in 2015 just took the overall knowledge to a whole other level and I know this is always the best place to ask.

 

No, it is about lying to obtain a financial gain as patently demonstrated by the emails where there is denial of digital steps. No matter how you wish to paint it those are your words and will remain so. Lies are lies, end of story.

 

This doesn’t correspond to the general sentiment on these boards, and expressed by Our Host, that many original CD releases from the '80s are excellent. In fact, I just saw an old thread where Steve recommended simply getting the '80s-era OJC CD of SATVV to someone looking for a good vinyl version.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, the big problem from the early days lay in the filtering in DACs, not anything in the ADCs. CDs produced from those converters could sound great; it was when they were played back through that generation of DACs that the problems began.

 

I am pretty sure Kant would be a priori opposed to a company telling people in emails they don't have any digital steps in their vinyl

 

Those who are expressing the kind of anger that you've referred to in their objections to MFSL's deceit may not be explicitly indicating it, but they almost certainly do believe "a priori that there is a crucial quality difference between analog and digital," regardless of whether they are always able to perceive it. And as I've previously indicated, I think that to suggest otherwise is to mischaracterize the situation.