Washington Post article on MoFi vs. Fremer vs. Esposito

I was able to read the article because my wife has a Washington Post subscription.

I am a confirmed digitalphile.  Some years back it was revealed that many lp reissues that were lauded to the skies by the likes of Fremer and Art Dudley were using digital masters due to the sticky tape phenomenon.  Basically this means that master tapes over the years tend to congeal into a sticky blob and the tapes were prone to fracturing , thus limiting the ability to use them for new issues.  Instead many of these reissues were pressed from digital transfers made in the nineties when the tapes were more useable

.  When this was revealed the analog gurus didn’t miss a beat.  They either chose to ignore this or somehow claimed that embedding a digital file in a slab of petroleum and extracting that file with analog players was superior to leaving the same file in the digital domain.

What nonsense. The digital masters probably sound better than the aged tapes.

I only own one of the "One Step" albums by Eric Clapton Unplugged. I am very pleased with it and even the wife who is not into audio thought it sounded fabulous. Will I buy others? Possibly if it is something I really like. I am curious to see if they lower the prices going forward.

I get everyone's feelings about the obvious misreprentation, but going forward shouldn't we ultimately judge them by the value proposition of their products, i.e. the incremental quality relative to the incremental price?

Going forward simply stream the digital. Band limiting the digital to fit on vinyl in order to charge more is ridiculous. If you want to reduce fidelity , limit it with EQ.