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

The way the WaPo tells us it happened is almost hilarious at times.
Jim Davis lately informed that an obscure texan records store owner was wandering in MoFi rooms while he was trying to rent a car in order to reach MoFi's headquarters before Mike Esposito's leaving is priceless.
Very well written article. It was worth the wait.

 

Right! Mofi-gate, I like that.

 

If you've watched Fremer's interview response video with Michael 45rpm, he totally slags Mike E as not having asked good questions, didn't "press" the engineers
for answers the way a "journalist" would have. When in fact, I believe a more neutral observer would think that Mike E did great.

In his own follow up video, you could tell that Mike E understood his role was to get out of the way of the story, and simply let the Mofi engineers' words speak for themselves.
It spoke volumes. In a situation like this, directly confronting them wouldn't have produced any more useful info, and probably less because the interview never would have
happened, or they would just weasel answer, without answering. I think we learned a huge amount from the interview the way it was done,
and Fremer didn't seem to grasp this, or appreciate that the story was being broken by a simple "record store owner".

 

If Esposito could get picked up at SFO, why couldn't Jim Davis??

 

Huh? That's not what I've seen. Many have chosen to emphasize their anger in response to being lied to, but that's not "emotional hurt." Where is all of this emphasis on feeling hurt that you refer to?

 

Moreover, the end result of the story is largely the same even if Fremer or another journalist covered it. The story was broken and it's laid bare for all.

 

The Washington Post article is certainly well written. I liked it.

The only thing that doesn't sit well with me is the premise that audiophiles are mostly upset because of the insertion of a digital step. I think that most of "us" are angry because: a. we've been lied to, and b. we've been PAYING MONEY for something we didn't get.

 

This was no "ghost."

 

So they picked up Mike at the airport. They couldn't have picked up Jim Davis too?

 

The article is a little snarky about audiophiles and their analog obsessions. The “Ha ha” angle makes for a more entertaining read. John Q Public ain’t going to lose a tear over a bunch record nerds being lied too.

 

Moreover, a real journalist was never going to get the opportunity that Mike E had.

 

Fremer desperately needed that MoFi interview to boost his new You Tube channel. The self anointed king of vinyl sits at 7k subscribers.

 

I don't know - if the WaPo article is accurate, anybody with a Youtube channel who broke the news was probably going to get an invite. If it happened to be someone who was actually a journalist, I feel like the same invite would have been given. They guy who invited Esposito apparently didn't know what the interview would reveal.

 

D (Steve Wilson remix) was my second choice.

 

Mike E was able to keep it real, and he got to the crux of the matter. He was perfect for that interview.

 

Just a joke involving a bunch of acronyms.

 

The whole Jim Davis subplot in that story is the main new news.

So Jim Davis was out of the loop and didn't authorize the interview and was frantically trying to get to MoFi to step in and do damage control but arrived too late?

Wow.

I can't even begin to imagine that kind of thing happening. At any company I've ever worked at, you are clearly instructed that you can't go on record representing the company without permission.

I find it nearly impossible to believe that the engineers didn't first ask for permission to have the interview.

(I have images in my mind of Steve Martin as Jim Davis, with Edie McClurg as the rental agent).

 

I don't think so. He suggested this on several live streams that they should have invited at least one journalist or a small group of them along with Mike from the Ingroove. Someone who knows more about the process of making these sorts of records. I think Fremer was spot on here.

 

Two points. One, using the phrase "emotional hurt" to describe the feelings of those who are angry about being lied to in this way serves to belittle the people with those feelings, which is clearly a goal for some posters here. Two, the assertion that much of the anger is coming from "emotional hurt" is speculation on your part, and a speculation that ignores the simple fact that it's quite reasonable for people who are lied to in a significant way to be angry, and this does not require them to also be feeling "hurt." That's all from me on this.

 

sounds like Wood will be looking for a new job soon.

 

I think Mike E's character and honesty as a human being and genuine record collector helped him gain the advantage over anyone else.

 

Without more details, it's hard to know how involved Jim Davis is with operations at Mofi.

It was John Wood, executive vice president of product development, that made the invitation to Mike, and picked him up.
As a VP, he's not exactly a low level employee, even if their staff is quite small. (Maybe everyone is a VP of something !)
Clearly the "damage alert" siren failed to function on many levels at Mofi, maybe a WP article will wake them up.

 

The irony of Fremer saying this was not handled by journalists, is that it ends up in the Washington Post. That’s about as high up as you can get in journalism.

 

But in the end it didn't matter. The truth came out anyway.