The MoFi Mess and TAS rolling over for them

I have always looked at TAS, and Stereophile mags as pure entertainment, it is very rare that I take their opinions seriously. It's like a comic book magazine...

I think the MOFI issue has been beaten into the ground and its time to move on. Not a vinyl guy myself, but I do have a large collection of their CD's that I have been collecting from the late 80's to the present. In most cases, I prefer the MOFI's sound to the standard CD issue but not always. I am sure their vinyls are the same: It boils down to preference. The odd thing about this is nobody could tell that they were listening to a digital file imbedded in their vinyl. They only way MOFI was  caught is the record store owner did the math and figured out that they could never release that many copies from an original tape. He could not or did not mention that he heard digital in the vinyl in his video. So my conclusion is that, despite what people think about how good their hearing is, it is very hard to discern source material when the listener has no idea what he or she is listening to. MoFi knew this and their deception has lasted about 7 years if their 2015 omission is accurate. It seems this is the trend in vinyl. I work in store that sells LP's and when I get bored, I read the covers. I noticed that I high percentage say they are OMR's remastered and transferred from digital files to vinyl. After the UMG fire, I wonder how many OMR's are real which could be another scandal in the making.

My feeling on the matter is this. Honesty matters to me. If I purchase a Mercedes from a dealer and get a Volkswagen that is wrong. Even though both are good German automobiles. It is not what I paid for and that's part of the problem. For people who thought they purchased Audio masters, not Digital masters were deceived. Not to say Digital did not sound good, it is a mater of trust you get what is advertised and if you did not there should be compensation returned. 

I don't think there was deceit. Perhaps not being as honest of every detail about each stage of the mastering. Does anyone care about the number of bits in the DSD file or the size and speed of the tapes used? Come on. 

All we should care about is the sound. If someone bought the records thinking they were 100% analogue and they are not, just sell them. I am sure you will get your money back, probably even make money.

Also, if the sound quality is just as good, who cares? I don't want to get sidetracked, but I am sure when you are buying a Mercedes you don't dig into the source of each component Mercedes assembles. They are overpriced with plenty of snob appeal built in, and because of their lack of reliability and extremely high cost of maintenance and repair, their resale value on the market is terrible.

"I don’t think there was deceit."

I not only think it, I know it. There is a clip floating around on YouTube, in which one of the MoFi people is asked point blank if their mastering chain is 100% pure analog. He responds with a very unambiguous "Yes". That was a deliberate lie. If you watch very closely, you may detect the same subtle sense of shame register on his face immediately after saying yes as do I. Not everyone can pull off being a shameless liar. Those who can sometimes run for president of the United States, and win (once, at least. Fool me once, shame on you..... ;-) .

In his announcement of the upcoming release of the Steely Dan catalog on LP, Analogue Productions’ Chad Kassem states the first five albums will be cut to lacquer from the analog master tapes (Chad and mastering engineer Bernie Grundman go to great lengths to secure master tapes), the 6th and 7th from DSD files.