https://www.msn.com/en-us/musi...-on-fire/ar-AA10kCWg

Very long read above but, MoFi admits they use digital masters and, essentially, advertised them as being analog masters to produce those record.

Individual or class-action lawsuits, which will come first on Monday?

I have a bunch of their stuff from back in the 80's, including quite a few UHQR's. I knew it didn't bode well for them when digital launched, still, they lasted quite a while before they declared bankruptcy in 99...

The conclusion to the article is damning....

"And Randy Braun, a music lover, Hoffman message board member and lawyer in New York, hopes that, in the end, the MoFi revelation will prove what he’s been saying for years, that the anti-digital crowd has been lying to itself: “These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.”

FWIW I have vinyl and CD collections and love both.

Personally, I bought their products, and especially the old school UHQR's, because they were a solid product. Of course, most of my stuff predates digital, and I have none of their new products.

All of mine were from the late 70's early 80's.

Got a few of their 24k CDs as promotional items back in the early '90s.

Saw what they sell for now and wish I had actually bought some.

Almost bought Tapestry a couple years ago. Glad, now, I didn’t.

Will have to pive with my 1975 vinyl version.

I still enjoy listening to my original MoFo albums, too bad they did what they did.

Folks, Vinyl is NOT CAPABLE of reproducing auto digitally. You have the mass of the stylus just "butchering" all of the sharp square waves in a Digital Audio soundstream. I'll also point out that the act of cutting a Master for pressing a Vinyl Copy will also be Analog due to the mass of the components cutting the groove. Which is a good thing because Square corners in a Vinyl record would do a lot of damage to the stylus. So it really doesn't matter if the source is Digital or Analog, the sound produced by a turntable is 100% Analog.

So yeah, people cannot tell the difference between a vinyl record made with a Digital source and one made with an Analog source and it's because they are listening to an Analog Playback.

quote:

Originally posted by Scooter123:
Folks, Vinyl is NOT CAPABLE of reproducing auto digitally. You have the mass of the stylus just "butchering" all of the sharp square waves in a Digital Audio soundstream. I'll also point out that the act of cutting a Master for pressing a Vinyl Copy will also be Analog due to the mass of the components cutting the groove. Which is a good thing because Square corners in a Vinyl record would do a lot of damage to the stylus. So it really doesn't matter if the source is Digital or Analog, the sound produced by a turntable is 100% Analog.

So yeah, people cannot tell the difference between a vinyl record made with a Digital source and one made with an Analog source and it's because they are listening to an Analog Playback.

Any sound coming out of any speaker is analog. You're missing the point.

A whole big sect of the audiophile community has always been really wrapped up in the idea that analog audio formats can capture infinite detail and nuance because the information in them is continuous, and digital audio formats can't because the information in them is discrete.

This totally ignores the obvious scientific truth that the information capacity of analog formats is still limited by stuff like noise floor and frequency response, and the equally obvious scientific truth that the information capacity of any given analog audio format can be exceeded by a digital audio format of sufficiently high quality.

But that sect of audiophiles has always sworn up and down that wasn't true, and that good analog audio formats would ALWAYS be better than the best digital audio formats.

Now, here we have a bunch of records. The original analog master tapes were captured in extremely high-resolution digital recordings. Any magic analog detail and nuance impossible to capture in a digital audio format would be lost in this step. Then the digital recordings were used to produce the records (with, yes, an intermediate conversion back to analog, because vinyl is not a digital audio format). The records can't have any magic analog detail and nuance impossible to capture with digital audio, because at one step in the process, all there was was digital audio.

Just one problem: all the analog-is-my-religion audiophiles UNIVERSALLY ADORED those records for the 10 years they didn't know there was a digital conversion step in the process, even though, according to their religion, those records should be shit because they came from digital intermediate source audio.

Telling them the records they've been praising as some of the best records ever produced used digital intermediate sources is like walking up to them, kicking them in the nuts, and telling them God is a lie.

Haven't audio producers always run digital recordings through an analog system to "warm them up"?

Whatever. As long as these people never stop buying quality vacuum tubes, because if they do, me, and every other guitarist who likes tube amps is fucked.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
Haven't audio producers always run digital recordings through an analog system to "warm them up"?

Tube mic pre amps for everything in the mix is basically the standard for people who refuse to go totally digital. I know it’s what a lot of Nashville producers do.

I'm an equal opportunity listener. I strive to get the best from all formats both from my playback equipment and what good recording engineers produce.

Main stereo rig has a turntable, CD deck, R2R deck, cassette decks, and FM/AM-Stereo tuner:


Computer DAC - headphone amplifier system:



And for audio-video enjoyment, a 4k HDR 7+2 system which also has a turntable, CD player, and even a VCR deck in the equipment rack:

Given high sampling rates and the quality of DACs, I don't see how the differences in any output of something mastered in analog vs something mastered in digital is discernable once processed through pre-amp, amp and speakers. If you look at the waveform of the acoustics coming out of the speaker, how can you possibly tell if the source was analog or digital? Let alone hear a difference? Perhaps it's possible but I'm skeptical.

I own some MoFi albums and CDs but they're all from the 70s-80s. The only MoFi media I've bought in the last 30 years are from horse-trading friends for the older original ones.

The modern MoFi strikes me as a "brand" and not who they were when the company was first founded. I've paid little attention to them in recent years because they no longer have music I'm interested in buying. Most of the 40+ year old music they're re-releasing I already own on the band's original label vinyl. Also, I don't listen to that older stuff often enough to justify re-buying it for what is often a marginal improvement in actual sound quality.

If what's being reported is 100% true it's a damned shame MoFi mislabeled their vinyl but I'm not surprised. Just another in a long line of companies picking the pockets of the audio obsessed. If MoFi has been lying to their customers about their mastering sources then they deserve to go straight out of business and then straight to hell.

As for the vinyl vs. digital debate: starting in the late 90s it was generally true that in basic to mid-fi systems a half-decent turntable (Rega, etc.) produced a more palatable sound quality and especially imaging than most CD or DACs of that era. Once you moved up the scale (Mark Levinson, etc.) then digital playback could equal or better vinyl playback as long as you didn't mind spending the cost of a nice car on your system. Starting in the early 2000s companies like Linn came out with their DS products that proved digital file playback produced higher sound quality than CD disc playback. About the same time DACs were steadily improving and lowering in price. Nowadays the gap between vinyl/digital has closed up noticeably and not just in upper tier systems.

As for me I still play my Linn LP-12 but not quite as often as I used to. When I do the process of playing records tends to get me more focused on the music and paying more attention to sound quality/imaging. Digital playback has gotten so convenient I've noticed that I tend to focus less on sound quality and more on being able to instantly choose whatever whim I want to hear next. If something in the currently playing song reminds me of another song or band it's nice to be able to tweak the "up next" list with just a couple of clicks. Tastes great, less filling.

^^^
Mark Levinson, Linn Sondek (“simply better”) … names from my past.

My adolescence was sometimes hanging w (my uncle), Dr. Sao Win of WinLabs. CES in Chicago every summer.

Known quite well for his strain-gauge phono cartridges, magnetically levitated tone arms and amazing turntables.



Thank you for the memories.