Indeed. Mobile Fidelity did a very bad thing, but these people who completely scorned digital/CDs in favour of these now look a bit silly.Originally Posted by 3LockBox
Indeed. Mobile Fidelity did a very bad thing, but these people who completely scorned digital/CDs in favour of these now look a bit silly.
They counted on it and got caught.
Even as somebody getting a certain amount of wry amusement from this saga, e-Mails like this customer service one (from 2020) seem difficult for MoFi. They'd been doing the DSD thing for years by then. I don't see any room for manoeuvre in the wording of the first line, but perhaps that's just me:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...#post-30120492
STEPHEN J. TUTTLE, an individual, and DUSTIN COLLMAN, an individual; on behalf of themselves and persons similarly situated; Plaintiffs, v. AUDIOPHILE MUSIC DIRECT, INC. d/b/a MUSIC DIRECT, MOBILE FIDELITY, MOBILE FIDELITY SOUND LAB and/or MOFI
Case No: 2:22-cv-01081
And so it begins…
Are those customers suing?
Class action suit. There will be more.
When MFSL could/should have been touting the incredible quality of digital masters, they instead perpetrated the falsehood of analog superiority in order to capitalize on vinylphiles desire for scarcity and exclusivity. Hard to feel bad for vinylphiles in this story.
So lying about your product is ok. You feel its the vinyl collectors who are at fault for believing what was represented to them by MoFi.
Yeah, they've painted themselves in a corner. Having used advertising terms like "limited production runs" and "one step process" suggests analog only. They manufactured scarcity by suggesting a limited run when in fact, using a digital source means there's no reason for a limited run. They told certain people what they wanted to hear.
Ironically, it was a reissue of Thriller with a suspiciously high print run (ten times higher than the norm) which brought the whole house of cards down.
At least you know where you are with original pressings of records. There's so much...well, let's call it double-speak and obfuscation involved with some of these reissues.
So what's your definition of a vinylphile? As a lover of both CD and vinyl, do I get lumped into that category? Is this somehow sticking it to me for "wasting" my money on LPs?
Man this popcorn is delicious.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle
Nostalgia, you know, ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, they tells me, it never was.
“A Man Who Does Not Read Has No Appreciable Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read” - Mark Twain
How was the popcorn prepared, though?
Mmmmm....butter! Butter!
This is called digitalphiles finally getting revenge on all of us suckers who occasionally buy vinyl. Well and CDs too. Revenge....yeahhh!!!!
Luckily I own exactly one Mofi LP so I maybes wasn'ts thats dumbs afteralls....
I have an air popper. It really blows!
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
Ooooohhhh!!!!
I don't personally see this as a 'format war' issue, and it shouldn't be really. I prefer CDs for a few reasons- convenience/cost being some- but I like records. Beyond the shocking behaviour of MoFi, it's also about the exclusivity and 'I know best' vibe from some people within that 'high end' audiophile world...the pomposity has been pricked somewhat.
A few of those one-step things are massive sellers...Abraxas, Tapestry (hardly an 'audiophile' recording anyway, surely??) and Thriller. I'd go for originals any day.
Last edited by JJ88; 08-09-2022 at 03:43 PM.
People have mention MOFI Abraxas as a good one. I bought a non-MOFI CD remaster of Santana I, II and III in the 2000’s. Those are CDs that only differ in sound quality because of the source. Abraxas sounds great. The first is weaker but it’s the source. III is just as good as Abraxas sound wise.
I am only bothered when a record I really love is carefully remastered and then released only on vinyl. That, to me, seems as silly as ripping an LP to MP3 in hoping to retain the “analog goodness.” Happily, that rarely happens.
"I have not yet begun to procrastinate."
I have a bunch of MFSL albums, both vinyl and CD, none of them bought new. All that I've heard sound great. From the discussion at hand, I think we can rule out the 70s vinyl as having the "taint." As far as the CDs...I'll reserve judgment until I know which have the "taint." I can tell you that the MFSL edition of Tommy mops the floor with the fat boy edition, to my ears. Some of the others I haven't a comparison for, and the Rush I haven't got to yet.
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see that there would be this same problem with MFSL CDs/SACDs. With those formats, there obviously is a digital element involved, so there's no deception. Unless the original tapes haven't been used, I guess, but that doesn't seem to be the problem here really.
All my vinyl rips are in 24/96 Hi-Res. I do agree however turntables with USB or Bluetooth outputs to record in 16/44.1 are a waste of time.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
If you're familiar with Pbthal and his vinyl rips, some of his rips (in 16 bit) are great. Again for me it comes down to the mastering. A great album, well-mastered (even in 16 bit) can sound great. Anglagard's first two albums still sound killer to me in 16 bit on cd. I have no doubt a good vinyl rip of those albums to digital have the potential to sound great.
My 2 cents FWIW, I think my opinion is in line with what has already been expressed: in my view, the vital elements are obviously
1) How was it recorded?
2) How was it mixed & mastered?
3) How was your copy produced? (i.e. what came between the original master and your copy?) and
4) How good is the fidelity of the playback system?
I have incredible recordings from the 50s, crap new recordings, crap and great AAA and DDD recordings etc. etc.
I'm not anti anything, having owned CD and vinyl. As a matter of opinion I think vinyl is much more collectable than CD. And I believe one can enjoy and even prefer the sound of vinyl playback. Ive heard a lot of vinyl I thought sounded great. My daughter for one is what I'd consider a vinylphile because she prefers vinyl playback to CD (even if she did dally in cassettes for a short time). I've always maintained that in the audio hobby its ok to keep a harem. One doesn't have to worship one format while holding up a shiny cross to another. But a lot people get caught up in the dogma of 'so-called' analog purity and superiority when it's been demonstrated recently that, for many, many people, it's near to impossible to discern an analog mastered LP from a digitally mastered LP. It was that dogmatic belief that allowed a lot of people to get duped by, to my own surprise, a long-time respected name in the industry. I own a few MoFi CDs myself and have had opportunity to compare MoFi releases to regular releases and have usually preferred the MFSL versions. I haven't heard an MFSL vinyl reissue in a long time. In fact, the last MFSL vinyl I can remember hearing was John Mellencamp's Lonesome Jubilee which I thought at the time sounded better than the CD I owned. Like I stated previously, MFSL did the audiophile community a great disservice by perpetuating a belief system in which they themselves didn't believe. I mean, that's gotta give the entire vinylphile community cause for pause, right?
Last edited by 3LockBox; 08-10-2022 at 08:33 PM.
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