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

Michael (Poetry on Plastic) would make a great second guest,
he's very intelligent and thoughtful, i'd enjoy listening to his take.

 

Another Mike? OMG.

 

Oh don't get it twisted, for years I have been saying MFSL has never been clear as to how they go about mastering for records. I've been in arguments on this forum and many others saying with the info they have given, they could very well be mastering in the digital domain.

That said, and for over 40 years of very limited info, azMikes video has far more info than we have had in all that time. My post also said it's in their words as what they do, can we believe it? I don't know but it's the best we have right now.

However people hear they are mastering in the digital domain, and they flip that into labels are sending them old files they made or they just grabbed a CD off the shelf and made a record, this is propagating a fallacy. They are also totally ignoring that they said they have tested tape and digital, they have tested many different masting lacquer cuts, they even take all these cuts and get them plated and pressed to test even further.

My point is just because the final record came out as being mastered from DSD, does not mean they never cut that same title from the master tape either. They just picked the mastering they liked better, that's all. So a goof ball will come along and say Fremer's statement saying MFSL had a master tape and cut lacquer is totally false. However it may not be, the final product might not of came out that way but they also could have cut a analog lacquer, this is not his fault or misinformation.

 

That is one area where I would have liked the Times reporter to have followed up a bit: "Why did you think it would be a bad idea, and how would you have preferred to have responded to Mike E's initial video? What would you like to have added to the conversation had you made it to the interview in time?" Not to try to embarrass him further, but just to get enough clarity on his intentions to avoid the speculation (and even assumptions) we've been seeing in this thread. In some ways, the story gives surprisingly little insight into what Davis was thinking about much of anything. It's possible that the reporter did ask those questions and was rebuffed, though.

 

Agree. Smart guy

 

Yep and he's been doing the same song & dance in this thread, too.

 

Regarding Volkswagen, they had to pay an estimated $15 billion in fines.

Eclipse gum claimed it's gum had germ-killing properties they were ordered to pay more than $6 million to a fund that would reimburse consumers up to $10 each for the misleading product.

Frosted Mini-Wheats falsely claimed that the Mini-Wheats improved "children's attentiveness, memory and other cognitive functions". Consumers were allowed to claim back $5 per box, with a maximum of $15 per customer,

Activa yogurt was ordered to remove "clinically" and "scientifically proven" to boost your immune system from its labels and were fined in a class action $45 million.

The list is much longer, Mofi could be next ... who knows?

 

Agreed 100 percent. It sucks what happened but we need them to stay in business and fix the issue going forward. I want to continue to enjoy MoFi stuff

fwiw - SRV -CSTW One-Step is my reference for this album it sounds freaking amazing imo.

The Eagles are excellent .. I wouldn’t say they are the top but I never thought they were audiophile masterpieces to begin with.

bring on VH and Eagles - Hotel Cali. I won’t even attempt to pay 2nd hand prices for a DCC as excellent as I know it is…

just my 2 cents and opinions

 

I never pay shipping to MDirect to get replacements. They always send me a free shipping label and don’t ever charge me for the new replacements ..

 

I dig Mazzy but yes, those questions are not what I would have wanted to address in a general-interest newspaper feature if I wanted it to remain interesting, focused on lively characters, and not so lengthy that it hits a tl;dr iceberg.

 

But he calls himself a journalist yet did no journalistic investigation.

 

I’ve been “fooled” many times by assuming vinyl I purchased is AAA. As been discussed ad nauseam, it shouldn’t make those records less enjoyable before learning there is a digital step in the chain.

The Rush Remasters come to mind as a great example of my quandary—I was touting how much I loved the analog sound in this forum, as I assumed it was AAA, but came to learn they were sourced from digital. This news sent me on a re-evaluation of the value I place on AAA versus the finished product’s sound quality, which ultimately led me to embrace those records on sonic merit (i.e., still fantastic work, still sounds lovely on the turntable, Sean Magee did a top notch job).

The three One Steps in my collection sounded fantastic out of the box and still do today. MoFi put out misleading provenance information IMO and are eating crow, but I expect them to fully recover and they haven’t lost me as a customer.

 

So more background on deaths, divorces, bankruptcies and drug addictions of the various characters interviewed ?

 

I'm sure there will be a follow up, maybe some of this will be addressed there?

 

MoFi records sounds really, really good. The re-issues of the early Pixies catalog is fantastic, much better than their own label's re-issues.

 

Not the point.

 

Yes.

edit: less snarkily, the idea that the WaPo story was sensational yellow journalism crammed with cruel dirt is a real distortion. Your questions are great inside baseball questions though!

 

Apparently, only Michaels need apply!

 

Reading this thread, you'd think there are no other first names available.

Note: my name isn't Mike.

 

The way people try to equate the lies and deception to analog vs digital sound quality really bothers me. Jamie Howarth seems like a good guy but he’s wrong, one can make an argument that he’s biased on the subject. Audiophiles KNOW that digital can sound great, they were told it was analog, charged and paid a big premium because it was supposed to be analog, it’s really that simple and shouldn’t be that hard to understand.

 

Consumers like this kind of outcome. It lets them personally off the hook from having to hold corporations accountable for their actions,
so they can just buy a car or whatever they want without having to be the ethics police themselves.
"Yeah, it was bad what they did, but they paid the fines".

 

Yeah, the article is hidden behind a paywall so the only way to read it is to sign up or subscribe. Neither of which I willing to do, so I guess I won't be reading that article.

 

Yes

 

Subscriber gift link:

https://wapo.st/3BIfYIu

 

Agree @cement_head. Surfer Rosa especially!

I have both the SACDs and the vinyl and it will be interesting to see if these were “analog master to lathe” releases, once MoFi gets around to posting provenance on these.

Edit: MoFi released the Pixies catalog starting in 2007 with Surfer Rosa SACD and finished with Trompe Le Monde SACD in 2013. The vinyl reissues started in 2008. I actually do not have the Trompe Le Monde MoFi on vinyl so I can’t verify that date, assuming it was the last release of the series.