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

They also use American mastering facilities and engineers.
Go to their website press on an album like Alice Coltrane and all the information is there.

pure-analogue | Eine Vinylschallplatte entsteht

 

For US recordings they use Kevin Gray.

 

behind paywall. does anyone have the full article?

 

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I am certainly not going to be able to afford to purchase the best quality mastering of an album if standard prices of an LP go up to $60+. Regardless of the Analog vs Digital debate, I have been forced to purchase a lot of vinyl due to the fact that it was mastered better than the digital offerings. If the price of vinyl goes up any more (and it most likely will due to the actions of MOFI) then I am out of that affordability comfort zone and I would imagine that I am not the only one in this position. Sounds like a losing game to me... unless the industry want to start releasing better mastered digital products for a more affordable price (that will be the day).

 

I think you're missing the point a bit here. MOFI could have just said the records were digital from the start and said why they think digital records are superior. No one was forcing them to sell records either - they could have marketed USB sticks in fancy packaging with DSD256 files instead, for example, or just sold SACDs. They deliberately deceived people, both in their marketing and in their private emails to customers. You might want to read some of the earlier posts in this thread.

Part of the problem with these long threads is we don't get a pinned summary with all the facts.

 

Right... And AP is loose with descriptions as well sometimes, providing even less detail on their site than what MoFi is now.

So, again, qui bono? Who benefits from such drama and would leak/suggest to multiple people (Mike E, Mike L and Mike F, specifically) to drum up this at this time, when MoFi is building their own pressing plant and announcing dozens of touchstone one step releases, not one or two UHQR or equivalent per year? Who decided now enough was enough and could capitalize on a shift in a now heated market?

It didn't matter before when only a very, very small few were even caring and MoFi releases could reliably be on shelves for months or years before 3000 copies sold out.

Meanwhile, as I've offered before, anyone looking to throw out their now garbage MoFis I'm happy tondeive and dispose them for you for a nominal fee to cover my gas and subsequent storage costs.

 

Billion dollar question: Did MoFi mislead their costumers on purpose?

 

Even if they came out and said “our process requires multiple runs of the master tape so we make a digital copy and work from that”, most people would have been happy with the end product.

The analog vs digital debate is interesting but not related to the issue at hand. They traded on their reputation, changed the process, and obfuscated the truth about their Original Master Recording brand so they could continue to push a premium product at premium prices.

 

It's all marketing. Every company does this. General Mills tells people that high-sugar Honey Nut Cheerios are "heart healthy" because they're made from oats.

So yeah, it's on purpose.

 

I don't see how it could be otherwise.

 

Yeah, again, there's wiggle room, no? They talk about original masters as well, but -which- master?

I'm not disputing that they don't make exceptional records, let's be clear. I'm suggesting that even "pure analogue" or "AAA" only gives some of the story for thise wanting similar clarity from MoFi.

Essentially, like an auction, a full breakdown of the provinence of the source, mixing chain and resulting lacquer producer might be a start...

Meanwhile, I still can't get my head around how the Classic metalwork from the mid-90s can hold up to so many more pressings, save for they are obviously NOT doing a one step, 500-1000 per "stamper"

 

Right, let people make a purchasing decision based on truth and facts, not lying and hiding the ball.

 

I wish people would stay on topic.

 

The tape Mofi are referring to is the 1997 transfer that Mark Wilder did to mix the original 3 track to 2 track stereo.

Technically that is a "remix" and also it's technically the same generation of tape that original 1959 copies of KOB were cut from,
as no records were cut directly from the 3 track tape until Bernie Grundman did it for Classic Records.
Historically, KOB records were cut from Stereo masters.

The irony here is that Mofi's KOB should have been the lynch-pin that broke the DSD story back in 2015.
Fremer's review of the Mofi 2x45 vinyl is painfully close to cracking the truth, but he missed the real story in his review.

Mofi was extremely cagey about the exact details of the KOB tape. In Fremer's review (which originally contained more source speculation
than fact, and had several details wrong that he corrected once i commented on the first version he published) looking back, there was smoking gun
info that Mofi was up to something they wouldn't talk about:
Mo-Fi's "Kind Of Blue": Kind of Blah? (Updated 10/28/15)

1) "Mastered by: krieg Wunderlich, Assisted by Rob LoVerde At MFSL"
- we know now, that "assisted" means Rob did the DSD transfer of the tape

2) "Sony/BMG does not allow original masters off the east coast so Mo-Fi probably lugged its superb Tim DeParavicini designed R2R deck to Battery and made a copy"
-Fremer was on to something, but appears to assume Mofi was making analog tape copies of tapes they couldn't bring to California.

3) "I wish Mo-Fi would be more forthcoming about this critical reissue so I wouldn't have to be guessing and speculating here,
but they were tight lipped, which left me no choice other than to guess about certain facts"
- SO CLOSE! He almost had the real story, but the fact Mofi wasn't being transparent about sources
they used for a title as big as KOB 2x45 was a huge red flag.
-now we know what was going on, but the story was there 7 years ago!

 

Thanks... sure can get confusing at times.

 

Read:

THE MAGNETIC TAPE | pure-analogue

Please learn about how records are made. You can make at least 100,000 LPs from one lacquer using father/mother plates and making stampers from those.

 

Fair enough. I'm simply referencing the article video in OP which leave me with the general impression that post 2015 MoFi releases cut from digital sourcing have been at least as good as releases cut from analog. Watching the guy in the video agonize over this was like watching a guy who just found out his wife cheated on him seven years ago. OK, that was bad. But it was seven years ago, and you still love her, right? Right???

 

Lol I don't even know what that is.

 

the DSD or PCM HD file is INDISTINGUISHABLE from the native analog master of which it is a copy; 2 - the vinyl derived from this digital copy is AS IF IT WERE DERIVED EXACTLY FROM THE NATIVE ANALOG MASTER. And with this, from the point of view of quality, we can close all discussions."
.

 

The notion that a company can repeatedly make false representations that have the effect of improving their sales but be doing so accidentally is intriguing.

 

Who knows who leaked it tbh. But I think the strongest reactions are coming from people who supported the company in those days when the releases would linger and were largely seen as audiophile pretensions. The timing is obviously key because MoFi was riding high and increasingly alienating their customers who were used to paying lower prices with a lot less fomo involved. Didn’t take much of a tactical effort imo, they kind of made their bed to a point where a tiny rumor shook their reputation.

 

Understand... ya might miss something that's already been said 30 times before.

 

I wish all mastering studios would have each and every engineer sign lacquers, but they just don't, and often didn't back in the day. For SC, if there is no lacquer cutter sig, there's a good chance the record was cut at Emil Berliner since that is a mastering studio they use often that is less known stateside. Outside of classical music releases where tapes are stored in Europe, that would likely also mean a copy tape, but if the record sounds good you can assume a good quality copy (not high gen crap) was used.

 

Hype and greed were ultimately the undoing here. Maybe a lesson for other companies, no matter the industry.

 

I doesn't have to be black or white, I mean if they made a decision to outright lie, or if they had just thought that it wasn't necessary to give all information about their releases.