MoFi controversy

@dconsmack - MoFi corrected the mistake that some have taken issue with. I didn't care. 

I want the best sounding record possible. Your organic produce argument doesn't hold weight - there are no health benefits to pure analogue.

Not sure why you want the best analogue sound possible, don't you care about pressing quality? . Are you trying to judge engineers in a contest for third place (or lower) in terms of SQ? Engineers can do a great job, but if the pressing sucks, what is the point?

@dconsmack you know what the best analog sound sounds like? It sounds exactly the same as digital. That is a fact that audiophiles would be best to accept. Now if what you really want is a bunch of stacked artifacts just saw so.

Turntable setups are finicky beasts that are rarely perfect. Frequency response issues, high distortion, crosstalk, all kinds of nasties. An SACD will never sound like your turntable even if the two recordings are mastered for as close to the same result as possible. There are too many artifacts and non fixed variables in vinyl.
 

I am defending the result of MoFi not business practices. If your organic produce was grown on overused old cotton fields, do you think the result is better than non organic?

I have long known MoFi wasn’t cutting their lacquers from "the" original master (which "original" master? The 1/4" or 1/2" two or three track tape---commonly used in the late-50’s and early-60’s, or the 2-track "master" mixed from those 3-tacks? Or the 1" four and then eight tracks used from the mid-to-late 60’s? Or the 2-track master mix made from the multi-track? Or the 2" 16 or 24 tracks from the late-60’s onward, or the master mix made from those multi-tracks?). No label (especially Sony) is going to let their master tapes out of their sight. Those tapes are worth a fortune! ALL reissues are made from a copy tape (with one notable exception---see below), in the record biz known as the production master (or safety copy).

That is why first Classic Records and then Analogue Productions long ago took over leadership in the LP reissue field. Bernie Grundman cut his Kind Of Blue lacquer from the actual 1/2" 3-track master, run directly into his cutting lathe. Not after making a 2-track final mix tape (analogue or digital) and using it as the cutting lather source, but directly from the playback machine’s circuitry into the lathe! While preparing for the mastering of KOB, Grundman discovered the original LP (and also subsequent reissues) had one LP side cut with the master tape running at the wrong speed! Turns out the 3-track machine used on one day of the album’s recording was running either slightly too fast or slow (I forget which), and the lacquer cut in the original mastering job played back off-pitch and tempo! Grundman of course corrected it, and Sony has used speed-corrected masters since.

Grundman cut the lacquer for Classic Records, from which the metal father was made. More recently Analogue Productions used that same metal part to press their reissue of Kind Of Blue. After the passing of infamous mastering engineer Doug Sax, AP’s Chad Kassem bought the mastering chain long used by Sheffield Labs for their world class work.

MoFi’s reissue of The Beach Boys’ Surfer Girl album was good, Analogue Productions version is INSANELY great! Michael Ludwig (45 RPM Audiophile on You Tube) declared the AP pressing of Surfer Girl one of the 10 greatest sounding LP’s of all time. Fremer has in in his Top 100.

Also doing great work is Speakers Corner in Germany (their LP’s pressed at Pallas, perhaps the best pressing plant in the world), and Intervention Records in Washington State. Both go to great lengths to make 100% analogue-sourced and pressed LP’s, while MoFi for over twenty years deliberately hid the fact that they were mastering from digital copies of the analogue masters, knowing full well an LP mastered from a digital copy would not sell as well as one mastered from what they claimed were analogue master tapes, an outright lie.

As the article mentioned through a quote, anyone who believed 40,000 copies of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" were all done through the "one-step" process needs help. They obviously don't understand the limitations of analogue tape. Put differently, most of us who are vinyl fans knew that digital was being used. Fremer wrote about this again, again, and again. Were you folks that are now complaining not reading?  Granted, the marketing terms and the one-step diagram ARE misleading. Absolutely. But the reality was there for all to see. 

As the article also points out, MoFi got rescued/revived after BR by Music Direct and though profitable now has only a "handful of full-time employees". Being a small operation without good management leads to this type of publicity debacle. 

Well said @sns. 

Perhaps we'll all look back on this "outing" as the start of the end of the analog / digital argument. One can obviously sound as good as the other.