Friday 25 May 2018

R.I.P Audio Fidelity cds

On May 18th in answer to much speculation on the Steve Hoffman Audiophile Forum, an open letter from Audio Fidelity's president Marshall Blonstein was published where upon he outlined the closure of his re-issue label Audio Fidelity originally famed for its gold plated discs and lately its hybrid super audio discs.
The company was formed in 2005 from ashes of DCC which he also had an involvement in which ceased operations in 2001 and utilized the services of mastering engineers Steve Hoffman, Kevin Gray and Steven Marsh who owned a mastering facility.
To be honest this didn't surprise me too much as they had not new titles out nor announcements for over a year which is never a good sign especially as members of Mr Hoffman's forums are very much the prime target for the discs, people who are looking for best sounding cds (or records) of certain 'classic' albums.
Another reason was to do with the hit and miss nature of a number of their titles some sounding little better than original cds from the 80's, others having in explicable errors such as clicks or having mysteriously the highest and lowest volume passages reduced which is the opposite a person spending around $29.99 wants.
Moreover even the presentation suffered from poor quality scans from 'borrowed' lps with no posters with the disc itself in a blurry looking templated slipcase which when compared to budget regular cds looked embarrassing and cheap.
Compared to people like Mobile Fidelity who used sharp images on a mini lp form with booklets that you'd feel proud to own and whose work is often to a high standard, they looked poor so it was hardly surprising I bought more Mobile Fidelity titles because I felt confident placing a pre-order.
In truth I feel they were uncompetitive being pitched at the premium cd market who understandably are also interesting in how something looks as its absolute sound quality so while I enjoyed a number I bought such as the Styx, Rush, Phil Collins, EWF and certain Billy Joel titles I don't feel mournful.
They just lack the quality of the DCC discs from 1992-1999 a number of us bought.

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