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

Revenue not profit, not sure what their margins are but assuming 5-20% that is 450K - 1.8M and probably closer to the lower number on a physically manufactured item.

 

I'm glad they didn't manage to implement a "well-thought-out plan," because that management failure deprived MFSL of the opportunity to control the narrative and thereby more effectively minimize the deserved damage to their reputation.

 

No doubt, we've been thinking ever since they started to do around 7000 copies they would need a copy work tape or digital file to do all the lacquers.

 

I never bought the conspiracy theory angle, mostly because it didn't make any logical sense (conspiracy theories can be tough enough to believe when they actually *do* make some sense - because of how hard such schemes are to actually pull off when not scripted into a movie - but this one didn't even have basic common sense going for it) but I did assume that the whole idea of the interview was some attempt at damage control and that there were MoFi/Music Direct people behind the scenes managing what Esposito could do and what the final video would look like.

If the Post story is accurate, what happened was a literal scoop by Esposito. It does bring back to life some of the claims that Fremer made, which was that as a non-journalist, Esposito was not in the best of positions to make the most of the opportunity, but overall I think he did a pretty good job: he got the information that he went there to get, and got it on video. Sure, was there *more* he could have done with that interview? Yes, but considering that the substance of the interview was the basis for a Washington Post article, I'd say that he did quite a bit.

 

I cancelled two of my pre-orders, VH and Elvis, but I just couldn't cancel Hotel California. I have the DCC vinyl, and it is very good. I just want to hear if there's more that the One Step can flesh out in terms of inner clarity. The DCC can come across as a little too warm at times. I'm hoping that the One Step can pull out details similar to what mofi did with Abraxas.

 

Going by the article, Michael Fremer and Jim Davis continue to dug themselves a bigger hole than before, throwing MoFi and Music Direct further into disarray. This article will certainly make things worse, circling the drain the company's reputation.

Though it's interesting to read Ryan K. Smith's and Kevin Gray's comments about this revelation and while the Washington Post nor the two engineers delve further, it goes to show how much it reverberate within the relatively tight-knit audiophile community.

It's an annoying strawman and canard towards many audiophiles that anti-analog, anti-vinyl, and anti-audiophiles love to prattle on many audio forums, the YouTube "vinyl community" and cheapophile peanut gallery. Even I don't have "golden ears", either, and it's also a ridiculous descriptor that they liked to use by the three stooges of the audiophile publication.

 

This I just don’t get. What do you care and what kind of person gets off on the disappointment of others.

Empathy costs nothing and you’ll be a better person because of it.

 

Shouldn’t folks link an article and quote a small section rather than copying and pasting the entire copyrighted piece from another publication ?

That’s how newspapers and magazines support themselves through visitors and ad revenue.

Support creative content.

 

I have the Classic 45 rpm one sided pressings. Trust me when I say I'm all set.

 

Oh I listen to them when I want to, it's just I can't listen to them as fast as they can be bought. Nore do I want to listen to the music unless I'm in the mood to, that doesn't generally correlate with time of purchase . As far as sound quality, when that mood strikes me or like on this site someone ask. Well I can gather numerus same title copies that are old to new and do a side by side comparison of the group. However I still don't mind owning records I feel are different, or I have a better to me sound quality issue. All records are different, is there really a best? or is one better than the other dependent on your mood and system at that given time?

 

One would hope. But many have chosen to emphasize the emotional hurt, rather than process this more analytically and realize that maybe there wasn't so much to be hurt about to begin with.

 

Wow, the WaPo article is really solidly written and a fantastic primer of the matter for the general public.

The best part are the answers to the questions many of us have wondered since this all started, "What exactly is going on inside Music Direct/MoFi and how did they allow this to happen?" The reveal of who invited InGroove-Mike, the mental image of Jim Davis scrambling to get there before this interview is shot only to get held up at the rental car counter, and now clear regret of allow him to come - is amazing. I almost wanted to believe there was a larger plan in place, because it seemed almost insane to have allowed this to play out as it did - but as they say - truth is stranger than fiction.

Oh, and Fremer totally exposes himself as an industry shill (duh!) with this magically damning quote:

"But Fremer, now a writer for the online magazine the Tracking Angle, has been bickering with Esposito for months. He was furious that MoFi invited Esposito to Sebastopol and wrote an email to Jim Davis on July 17 to protest.

“You have lost your minds,” Fremer wrote. “Mistakes happen that can be corrected. In this case you have chosen to elevate [an inexperienced non-journalist] to work your way out of a predicament instead of a seasoned journalist and I’m not referring necessarily to me. I could name a half dozen others.”

Um, journalists report facts - as WaPo did here, Mr Fremer. Marketing and PR agencies help "work your way out of predicament".

delicious, but disappointing stuff.

 

Well, there's Bernie Grundman...

 

Look, it's no secret that there's a negative bias toward digital, particularly by those who are analog sycophants. This entire mess shows that such bias has been misplaced, and I hope that those who have expressed it now re-think their positions.

 

Don’t know how WaPo gets compensated for this article, but here’s a legit “free” link through MSN: How a Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

 

Maybe, but Kevin Gray said himself about some releases he did they were AAA.

I do believe him.

And think Tone Poet and BN classics are AAA. Correct me if i'm wrong.

 

Precisely. No one says that they have "golden ears" and I can't think of anyone who actually swore that he could tell analog from digital in a double-blind test. What does happen is that people who know that a certain release is digital will compare that release with another one that is analog and declare that the analog one is better, and they may mention by the way that the one that is digitally sourced fails because it "sounds digital", which for all practical purposes means that it sounds different to the analog one and in a way that sounds worse to that particular listener. Which is an observation that is almost certainly got confirmation bias built into it, but it's not the same as saying that one has superhuman hearing that can pinpoint a digital master at 500 yards. What people need to ask themselves is not why some people express such a preference for all-analog, but rather why is a company like MoFi so beholden to these people who do if the idea is so obviously wrong.

 

Again, what do you care whether people believe that they can hear the difference or not? Why do you feel it is for you to educate the unenlightened?

Frankly, you come across as churlish, dancing upon the disappointment of others. Personally, I don’t think it is a particularly good look for you.

 

I mean if "digital" meant that every digitally-sourced record was cut from a DSD 256 file and the engineers were top of the line guys who took weeks and weeks to get everything as perfect as they can, then yeah people probably wouldn't be so biased against it. It's not like anyone else is really doing what MoFI is doing with digital sources. It's all from 24/96 hi-res transfers otherwise.

 

Frankly, I don't think that you appreciate a factual observation.

 

Wow! A doozy of an article for MoFi. Written for the laymen but still managed to talk to literally everyone relevant to the issue in the hobby, probably their biggest nightmare.

Publications like WaPo have been more influential than people give them credit for in "mainstreaming" the hobby, vinyl comeback is a favorite puff piece over the last decade so I think this is actually much worse for them than having a hobby rag go after them. The American consumer abhors false advertising, and MoFi is made out to be a huge offender here.

Of note RKS, KPG and BG all piling on MoFi... yikes! Perhaps this piece by a respectable publication outside the hobby will convince some MoFi apologists to see the light.

 

The fact here is that MoFi misrepresented their product. The idea that the real story is that it's a black eye for those damn dirty audiophiles is a spin.

 

I haven't been part of this lack of integrity concerning analog AAA, pure process, in a long time. My last analog foray was early 1982. I'd think that there were few, even fewer to me, processes involving a digital component in my vinyl up to then.
Does anyone have a transparent list of vinyl record cuts up to that time wherein there WAS a digital component ? I had a couple of 'audiophile' pressings from the 70s of which my Heart Dreamboat Annie (Nautilus ?) sounded great ! Oh...I had a few direct to disc records too (Lee Ritenour, Dave Brubeck...)...I don't recall ever knowing if there'd been any digital component to these. Hey...if you like analog presentation and there's digital in there somewhere....and you don't mind....more power to ya....Me ? I'd be a bit miffed had I been deceived even finding out subsequently.

 

MoFi misrepresented ... fact. The real rest of the story is that the historical analog versus digital divide is not as great or as real as it once was.

 

Revenue isn’t income. It is important to know the difference. The article pointed out what we all know…Mofi’s process is producing highly regarded reissues. You can interpret the rest of the article to whatever bias you want/have.