Washington Post article on MoFi vs. Fremer vs. Esposito

Good points @larryi. There is a case to be made that a DSD 256 (or even 64) file made from a master analogue tape is not necessarily in every way inferior to a 1/4" (or even 1/2") 15 IPS (or even 30 IPS) analogue copy. I’ve read reports from well-respected audiophile mastering engineers who’ve said each has it’s own sonic signature, neither perfect.

But MoFi instead for whatever reason decided to deliberately hide their digital step from consumers. If they compared a digital transfer to a tape copy and judged the digital to be better sounding (perhaps at least over all), then have the courage of your convictions and say so. They didn’t, I believe, because they feared audiophiles are analogue purists, and it would hurt sales of their LP’s. They were probably correct on both points.

Though their promotional material long stated they started with the original master tape, I for one new that was in most cases very, very unlikely. The record companies themselves almost never use the 2-track mix master tape as the source for the cutting of the lacquer. In the analogue days they made production master tapes from the 2-track master, and put that original back in the vault for safe keeping. Some companies were more open to letting a tape out, the Warner Brothers group of labels, for one. Do you really think Capitol Records would lend out their Beatles tapes?!

@cleeds Exactly what I was thinking. Is the intention to drive Mofi out of business?

I have no problem with the notion that many of us simply like the alteration of the sound that analogue recording imparts.  Those alterations would also be there if the original source is digital or digital is somewhere in the chain.  I read an article where three recording engineers were talking about high resolution digital vs. very high end analogue—like 1” tape at 30 ips—and they all agreed that the digital recording sound much more like the microphone feed when you do a direct comparison.  But, they also agreed that the analogue tape actually sounded nicer.

To some extent, what we prefer may be a matter of conditioning—we like what is familiar.  Around 15 years ago, a researcher took high quality recordings and then converted them to CD quality recordings and old MP3 quality recording (before MP3 was even close to decent). When his college test subjects listened to analogue vs. CD vs. MP3, they overwhelmingly preferred MP; this was the sound that was was familiar to them.

@larryi - that's an interesting test with surprising results. I mean, I was familiar with VHS tapes, but DVD's still looked a lot better to me when those came out.

I'd like to see more details about that researcher's test of 15 years ago, as I'd have to question how he converted those 'high quality recordings' to 'CD quality recordings' (to me, CD's are plenty high-quality). After all, there were some really rubbish sounding CD's through much of the 80's, especially. It's a real art and skill, mastering music for CD's and other media.

I'd also be interested in knowing how the test subjects did this listening - if it was on crap earbuds or on a crap system, no, I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference, either, or might prefer the mp3... If it was on a good sound system (and it may have been, I don't know) or quality headphones, the results might have been quite different.