Hoffman Forums in Wash. Post: "How a Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire."

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Mike M, Aug 6, 2022.

  1. Mike M

    Mike M Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maplewood
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/05/mofi-records-analog-digital-scandal/

    "Shane Buettner, owner of Intervention Records, another company in the reissue business, defended MoFi on the popular message board moderated by mastering engineer Steve Hoffman"

    "And Randy Braun, a music lover, Hoffman message board member and lawyer in New York, hopes that, in the end, the MoFi revelation will prove what he’s been saying for years, that the anti-digital crowd has been lying to itself: “These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.”
     
  2. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    wow! nice... was there more to the article? I couldn't read it due to the subscribe blockage.
     
    kt66brooklyn and Mike M like this.
  3. Mike M

    Mike M Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maplewood
    Yeah, a lot, but cannot and paste the whole article here, but was amazed to see the forums mentioned.
     
    MonkeyMan, rbichamp, wwright and 3 others like this.
  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    very cool, eh? yea ...TWP does that so does the NYT ...you have to pay to read...dragsville.
    thanks man. ; )
     
    jricc and Mike M like this.
  5. MonkeyTennis

    MonkeyTennis Billie Eilish style

    Location:
    Manchester
    I’ve the vaguest recollection that I may have seen mention of this elsewhere:)
     
  6. J.A.W.

    J.A.W. Music Addict

    https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/mobile-fidelity-sound-lab-has-been-cutting-vinyl-from-digital-since-a-long-long-time-ago.1150351/page-689#post-30155189
     
    Mike M likes this.
  7. Crimson Witch

    Crimson Witch Roll across the floor thru the hole & out the door

    Location:
    Lower Michigan
    I see that as a beautiful thing , the revelation. The proof should be welcomed by everyone, for what it means to the industry going forward and at a critical juncture.

    My ears loved it, so why shouldn't I ?
    :)
     
    Mark Wilson, rod, starduster and 19 others like this.
  8. Morpheus

    Morpheus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    uzn007, Mark J, Usagi75 and 14 others like this.
  9. masterbucket

    masterbucket Senior Member

    Location:
    Georgia US
    Its more about colors and profits/flipping than sound these days at least for most crosley listeners anyway.
    To each their own as they say.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2022
    Dylan75, IndyTodd and Mike M like this.
  10. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    Fremer comes across as badly as MoFi in all this. Perhaps it’s time he retired….

    Pheonix Mike is a hero and I will support his store in the future. I will think very hard about ever supporting Music Direct/MoFi again.
     
  11. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    The records were obviously generally always great sounding.
    The superlatives thrown around suggested that many of these records were the ones to have.

    The reveal about digital files should be freeing of the self imposed shackles people have given themselves.

    Suddenly now, after I have read countless statements about how mindblowingly great these albums are, many are selling off their albums, claiming they never sounded that great etc etc....

    The big reveal to me, is something I learned for myself, disappearing into audiophilia risks forgetting that it is music you are listening to.... songs and instrumentals that supposedly one enjoys.

    If every company that doesn't reveal "all" the details, and even, hides some details was shut down, there would be no companies.

    People say this isn't about sound, but it is music, so it is only about sound.
     
  12. Booyaa73

    Booyaa73 Often wrong, never in doubt.

    Location:
    New England
    Try doing a search on just the headline. A lot of these articles appear in multiple publications.
     
    Vic_1957 and Groovy like this.
  13. John Moschella

    John Moschella Senior Member

    Location:
    Christiansburg, VA
    I've stayed away, but this is infuriating. Many issues being conflated.
    That fact that many (not just MOFI) digitally sourced LPs can sound very good doesn't prove a bloody thing.
    Has someone produced a LP digitally sourced, then the same LP from the analogue masters with the same manufacturing chain?
    That is what you need to prove something.
     
  14. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    duly noted...thanks.
     
  15. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    So I'm guessing you didn't see the link to this and the ensuing discussion yesterday ?
     
    ssmith3046 likes this.
  16. John Buchanan

    John Buchanan I'm just a headphone kind of fellow. Stax Sigma

    It was a bad move that MoFi weren't honest from the start, however the "audiophile" backlash proves why they hid the digital step. The other thing that makes me laugh is the praise most MoFi releases had received from those same afore-mentioned audiophiles. Either they sounded great when they were praised or they didn't, but it certainly proves it wasn't due to a digital step. I'm guessing that the same wa****s wouldn't consider buying a MoFi SACD hybrid because of the extra digital step. Actually, it's kinda refreshing to see Michael Fremer caught red-handed as well as MoFi.
     
    kt66brooklyn, Marzz, mpayan and 26 others like this.
  17. rcsrich

    rcsrich Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    Agree and have posted similarly a number of times in the MoFi thread…it’s great that so many DSD sourced titles sound amazing, but we don’t know what they would have sounded like if cut directly from the master tapes through an otherwise identical mastering chain.
     
    John Buchanan, BuyMeVinyl and AnalogJ like this.
  18. Audiowannabee

    Audiowannabee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Florida
    Yep DSD / sacd s sound great to me. Ive not had a TT in decades. Cds since late 80s.

    Its the mix mastering etc that really matters
     
    EricSwan, Blair G., izgoblin and 12 others like this.
  19. Crimson Witch

    Crimson Witch Roll across the floor thru the hole & out the door

    Location:
    Lower Michigan
    Okay, yes - I had used the word 'proof ' in common parlance rather than as any industry-technical meaning of the term. I simply meant that some - aye, many - were fine when none the wiser which kind of shows that we're talking about a difference than makes no difference. Taking into account the explanation that the owners of the original tapes could never be expected to allow even the most careful and diligent of engineers to run those tapes dozens of times over in their often most fragile state in order to achieve the result many had expected as foregone conclusion, I don't see how anyone can now even expect what [those] AAA collectors and traders once thought.
     
  20. AnalogJ

    AnalogJ Hearing In Stereo Since 1959

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    What if you were a vegetarian and were the dish you bought that was advertised as vegetarian turned out to be not so?

    What if the great looking and performing Rolex watch you bought that you paid $20,000 for that was supposed to be all made in Switzerland you found out years later that it was actually made in China?

    I've been saying this for a while - There are many qualities which qualify a recording as a great one. Tonality is one. Dynamics, both low and high, is another. Many of us have heard qualities we might have attributed to being digital, but were told emphatically that they had no digital steps as part of them. The MoFi Kind Of Blue for example. Before I had seen any reviews, a friend of mine who has a high-end audio shop played his new copy. He has about every pressing ever made of KOB. While the MoFi wasn't awful, it was tonally off. I thought the top end sounded digital - thin, somewhat hashy. But no, it couldn't be, because there was no digital in the chain. That's what we were told then. But it turns out that wasn't the case.

    The OneStep of Mingus' Ah Um is terrific. The OneStepn of Sunday At The Village Vanguard is also terrific. Tonslly, it's on the cool, clinical side (digital), but I overlooked the cool tonality because it is otherwise so fantastically musical. If I had known there was a digital step in the process at the time, I would have attributed the coolness to that. But we were told there was no digital in the process. When I reviewed it, I focused on how the pressing brought out the b pitch specificity and rhythm of LaFaro's bass playing, which led to greater understanding of the musical interplay between the three musicians.

    Today, the knowledge doesn't take away from the superior portrayal of the performance of the OneStep SATVV, but it does help explain the overall tonality.
     
  21. John Buchanan

    John Buchanan I'm just a headphone kind of fellow. Stax Sigma

    Fair comments.
    PS My favourite Kind Of Blue on CD is not the MoFi - it's the Sony Legacy.
     
  22. TwiceFan

    TwiceFan Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Coast
    Of course he didn't. Was this comment really necessary? So much antagonism in this place recently. Especially in that thread. It's gotten very old.
     
  23. AnalogJ

    AnalogJ Hearing In Stereo Since 1959

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    I had that and gave it to a friend who was getting into jazz. That's a REALLY well done CD.
     
    John Buchanan likes this.
  24. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    The single layer Sony SACD is Digital King for me. The mono original Columbia LP is also King, in a different way. (Kind Of Blue.)
     
  25. WTLB

    WTLB Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Thank you very much for the advice about Kind Of Blue on CD :)

    Can someone please confirm this is the one?

    Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue

    Tx
     

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