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

Liked your comment but a couple add ons. Mike sells a ton of Mofi turntables cleaners brushes , record sleeves. And of course records. Mofi is his best selling tables.

I wasn't alluding to you saying it. Fremer said it. If I wasn't clear, that's on me. I agree , emphatically, Fremer would have made it about himself. Where if all of Esposito's videos are viewed in order. He lumps himself with the rest of us. Something sadly, Fremer has forgotten.

 

100 % agreed !
Sure, they are not the big corporation, but they're ain't the shop around the corner either. And their crisis management is a complete disaster.

 

Soon to be 700.

 

I don't know if they brought someone in from the outside. That's usually best, because the folks embroiled in it are usually defensive, and in-house people tend to say "yes." An outsider, paid as a consultant/whatever, can tell the truth, be a little more objective. That's what one needs if they have been in a bad place, it got exposed and the company and people behind it need to do not only "damage control" but ultimately win back goodwill with their client base. I think it is more art than science, which also tells me that there are certain specialists that are pretty good at this. Whether MoFi used such a person, and listened to them-- that's always an issue too-- is unknown.

 

Thanks Bill. As with you I also followed Mike Fremer for years. Much like you I finally had enough of the grandstanding and standing on past glory ( to which he was a champion swimming against the digital stream). May be time for him to go quietly into the night. He has every reason to be proud of his championing. Just wish he would do it quietly. Take care.

 

[QUOTE="Uglyversal, post: 30129482, member: 875820] This also wasn't orchestrated, the whole thing is so stupid nobody could have orchestrated it.[/QUOTE]
Nobody, except someone stupid precisely ...

 

I for myself don’t believe the technical details about the process were written by the management or pr-people, but were at the least dictated and/or reviewed and/or approved of by the engineers, carefully avoiding the words digital and DSD.

Excuse me if somebody already brought this up, but did anyone consider this possibility: that it might be the management of Mofi who asked the engineers for a unique selling point but that they came up with the one step pressing process. A process which for large quantities requires a digital step in the form of a DSD-master. Moreover it solved the problem of the inaccessibility of analogue master tapes, because they could use the archival DSD copies made by the record companies. Maybe they also found out that this process gave the best results and it anyway made runs of thousands of records possible. It could even be the case that the management objected and said: but we can’t use a digital step. And that the engineers said: yes we can, as long as we don’t tell anybody.

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but this would explain why the engineers did the interview with Mike from The ‘In’ Groove, because it was their idea in the first place and it was their vague language that was used to suggest a AAA process that wasn’t the truth.

Don’t get me wrong: no doubt they are great engineers with great ears who care about sound and music and make great products, and I myself am ‘a digital man’, but I am really fascinated by this story.

 

Checking eBay today and a German seller called "audiophile-vinyl-cd-collector" is shifting their Mofi stock, at premium prices it must be said but if you wanted something hard to find might be worth having a look. Wonder if it's Michael from 45rpm?

 

I still have a couple, the Supertramp in particular is spectacular, razor thin vinyl always makes me chuckle when I see please clamour for a 180g pressing.

 

I think the whole thing was a nonsense to sell a record processed from a digital source that should be $30 for $60-125

They are very naughty boys and girls.

 

I doubt anyone wanted to be fooled. People believed in Mofi ‘s reputation and expected them to tell the truth. If you read this thread you’d see examples of Mofi on video and in writing saying their records were AAA.

 

+1, Tom Petty reissues and Neil Young reissues are also 140 grams for instance.

 

Maybe the mastering engineers deserved to be thrown under the bus along with their stinkin’ DSD files.

 

No, in this case it would have been appropriate.

 

as somebody who has fully embraced digital for their music and who's very much not into vinyl, I just hope all this controversy ends in the whole game being oriented to more DSD and/or hi-res digital releases

 

I *think* I am seeing secondary prices come down on eBay.

Bringing It All Back Home, sealed, went for £120 a couple of days ago. That is by far the lowest price I’ve seen that title for quite some time. Oh, and there are a couple of sealed copies of Nevermind. They’re still priced stupidly, I’m assuming the seller is trying to cash in before MoFi reveal that they cut it directly from AM radio, or some other such abomination . But I don’t recall seeing Nevermind on eBay for a year or two: and now to see two copies.

And so, in short, you may well get lucky.

 

Winning back goodwill and their client base could prove to be impossible. Once bitten twice shy comes to mind here.
I don't want to see MoFi go under, but i think it is pretty clear now that top management and Jim Davis need to be replaced- as a beginning!

 

Music Direct are actually pretty big. I'm sure they have a firm of lawyers they work with. No in house legal dept like a multinational.

 

Since I look more at the result and not at how you get it, it being understood that MFSL was incorrect, for the price of One Step I find more annoying the high number of dished and warped records

 

Unlike many others in this thread, i think that the engineers and Jim Davis are "partners in crime". It would not surprise me to know next day that they are shareholders....

 

Yeah, More SACD/Hybrids please.

 

Vinyls or digitals ?

 

Don't be so hard on them, they compensate by having outstanding crisis creation skills.

 

The last one sounds kind of dirty in more than one way.