Mobile Fidelity - the digital step in MFSL vinyl debacle

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
There's probably 15 full page color ads in Stereophile and the same in TAS, full of BS, pseudoscience fairytales, and like lies from cable snake-oil purveyors this month alone. Most likely a billion dollars or more year scam on unwitting audiophiles.
MFSL isn't even in the ball park for their little fib.
Sorry
MOST LIKELY a billion dollars or more a year? Or most likely just a number pulled out of thin air with nothing to support it?
 
The math behind tracking error shows that the phase shift caused by the slight offset in the pickup angle is not sufficient to generate an ambiance effect.

The ambience effects I hear are not just a feeling of room acoustics. I hear audience noises (chair noises, giggles, distant shouts, etc) between songs on the record. They are gone on the CD.
Which albums, specifically?
 
Sal, when you make such claims .... first and foremost ...have you ever ACTUALLY tried UPGRADED Interconnects, SPEAKER CABLES, upgraded power cords and power conditioners or are you basing it on WHAT YOU'VE READ.
Yes to all, I've been following this passion for 60+ years.
All your claims will disappear like dust in the wind if you take the time to set up tightly bias controlled double blind listening tests.
You hear what your subconscious and eyes tell you to hear.
Put some science in your thinking and in making deductions.
There is NO magic dust in wire, only in some folks minds.
Here's a small example for you.


MOST LIKELY a billion dollars or more a year? Or most likely just a number pulled out of thin air with nothing to support it?
A number I pulled out of thin air, it's an enormous scam industry.
I did say "most likely". ;)
 
Sal, have you ever ACTUALLY tried to EDUCATE the 4-earred wonders here on the REASONS why sighted comparisons of things like CABLE UPGRADES and POWER CONDITIONERS are LUDICROUSLY unconvincing?

I have. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME.
I know, been at this for many years.
I hate seeing folks get fleeced, and even if you don't get through to that person, another reading might be a bit more receptive. :)
 
Yes, there is: the pearl-clutching hysteria of vinylphiles whenever the word 'digital' appears.
I'm not sure that's a fair characterisation of what it's all about. In general, older mass-release records sound better than modern mass-release records, with the former having an all-analogue provenance and the latter involving a digital step somewhere along the line. Sure, some modern vinyl that's been knocked up for mass release does sound pretty good. But in general, older records sound better.

There's almost certainly no going back to mass-release records with an all-analogue provenance, obviously so when it comes to reissuing records from half a century ago and whatnot, so a niche market exists whereby people can still buy records that have an all-analogue provenance, as long as they're prepared to pay the premium that comes with the territory.

Mobile Fidelity, a key player in this niche market, deliberately chose not to tell their customers that they were actually cutting records from digital files. Indeed, they went as far as to spell out the cutting process in such a way that its customers could only draw the one, same conclusion: that its records were wholly analogue in provenance.

Simply put, the product they were selling was not as advertised; sure, that might be for a court of law to decide in the end, but Mobile Fidelity knew what they were doing by not being transparent with its customers. That highly mastered apology from Jim Davis mentioned the use of vague language and allowing false narratives to propagate, but that seems a tad exculpatory: at least one person at Mobile Fidelity or the parent company, Music Direct, made the decision that that particular information should remain a company secret. Only when they got busted did they admit the truth about the secret digital step.

Regardless of how puritan or evangelical some record collectors can be when it comes to buying records with an all-analogue provenance, it doesn't change the fact that Mobile Fidelity has done what it's done - such record collectors are simply customers, not CEO in control of Mobile Fidelity or Music Direct.
 
Last edited:
The error in a lossless digital coding system can be calculated (be it PCM or DSD), if the error is less than what the human ear can detect, then using a digital copy is completely transparent and doesn't limit the sound quality in any way.

AFAIK, MoFi used an analog FM data recorder to make a copy of the original master recording for making their prerecorded cassettes - I don't know if this technique could have been used for mastering their vinyl releases though (they could have claimed that it was an all analog process).


Kirk Bayne
 
I'm not sure that's a fair characterisation of what it's all about. In general, older mass-release records sound better than modern mass-release records, with the former having an all-analogue provenance and the latter involving a digital step somewhere along the line. Sure, some modern vinyl that's been knocked up for mass release does sound pretty good. But in general, older records sound better.
I agree with the bolded statement. But how much of that is the digital tampering and how much is all the other aspects that have changed over the course of time with regard to the way modern records are produced?
 
All you need to know about this entire thing is that before someone told them there was a digital step, none of the people convinced that a digital step means "bad sound" could tell there was a digital step.

If a given MoFi sounds good, it sounds good irrespective of a transparent digital step.

If a given MoFi sounds bad, it sounds bad irrespective of a transparent digital step.

The digital flat transfer they took is provably transparent unless you can hear over ~30khz - that's a mathematical fact that's not even worth fighting over.

This was true before, it's true now, and that doesn't leave much to discuss or get upset over except the (valid) point that more transparency in advertising would be good, to avoid misleading people who build misguided cults around parts of the audio mastering chain they barely understand.
 
In general, older mass-release records sound better than modern mass-release records, with the former having an all-analogue provenance and the latter involving a digital step somewhere along the line. Sure, some modern vinyl that's been knocked up for mass release does sound pretty good. But in general, older records sound better.
I agree with that but I think the root cause is the analog equipment not being dialed in or maybe operated with the level of expertise that was more readily available back in the day. If anything sounds off after a digital step then someone did something wrong there too. What I'm trying to say is that the answer doesn't involve running into a fidelity wall with digital AD/DA conversions or analog having some extended range over digital.

Anyway it just hits different now. MFSL didn't "choose" analog originally. They went after the best technology available. They should be doing something like having the REAL download service that includes original master sourced quads and other surround.
 
Why source vinyl from digital when you can simply have the digital recording?

Often digital has been manipulated in some way {worst case brickwalling}, records made from such sources will not sound good.

I own a number of MFSL LP's that do sound good but would not bother with the new Mo-Fi's at all, what is the point. There is more than enough used vintage vinyl out there.

I have my Mother's 78 collection but would I purchase new 78's if they were made available from digital sources? Not likely!
 
Why source vinyl from digital when you can simply have the digital recording?
That's the "Hey wait a minute?!" part. :D

It was originally effort towards the closest reproduction anyone anywhere could put in a consumer's hands. Now it's effort towards an old technology. And you can "break character" and use modern tools in a pinch when the road gets rough.

That really hits differently!
 
All you need to know about this entire thing is that before someone told them there was a digital step, none of the people convinced that a digital step means "bad sound" could tell there was a digital step.

If a given MoFi sounds good, it sounds good irrespective of a transparent digital step.

If a given MoFi sounds bad, it sounds bad irrespective of a transparent digital step
.

The digital flat transfer they took is provably transparent unless you can hear over ~30khz - that's a mathematical fact that's not even worth fighting over.

This was true before, it's true now, and that doesn't leave much to discuss or get upset over except the (valid) point that more transparency in advertising would be good, to avoid misleading people who build misguided cults around parts of the audio mastering chain they barely understand.
Amen. About 15 years ago, I told my equipment salesman that three most important things in audio reproduction are:
1) Sound quality of the source
2) Sound quality of the source
3) Sound quality of the source
 
Thankfully not true of the majority of music we're most interested in.
Our multich sources are, in the main, not mixed for the loudness wars crowd. :)
I did find some {relatively minor) brickwalling effects on a few newer multi-channel releases. The Band "Cahoots". I think was one. WHY,WHY,WHY?
At least it was not as bad as some of the old DVD-A discs like Alanis Morissette or Foreigner! I haven't noticed any limiting on any SACDs yet but have been told that they do also exist!:(
 
I'm not sure that's a fair characterisation of what it's all about. In general, older mass-release records sound better than modern mass-release records, with the former having an all-analogue provenance and the latter involving a digital step somewhere along the line. Sure, some modern vinyl that's been knocked up for mass release does sound pretty good. But in general, older records sound better.

that's a fantastically subjective opinion stated as fact.

And does 'modern' since the early 1980s?
 
Back
Top