The Great Mofi Records Scandal

After the last few weeks of serious politics on here we go back to one of the old mainstays of this blog from the very beginning, music, and specialty record labels.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs otherwise known as Mofi was first established in 1977 in the US as the premier company for issuing high quality reissues of titles because while many of the major labels such as Columbia, Capitol, MCA and RCA had re-issue labels, quite often they used copies of tapes in varying conditions, in the case of Capitol, hacked songs off to save royalties and used shoddy recycled vinyl to press from.

It wasn't unknown for those pressings to be very noisy too more so than discs pressed in the UK or Germany for instance.

The original company ran until around 1998 making mainly lp records although the late 1980's and 90's saw some 24 karat gold cds including a pioneering series of two on one titles and they were first off the mark to issue Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on a single cd.

After a hiatus brought on through it folding, the label was bought by Music Direct, an Illinois, U.S.A. hifi distributor and shop continuing with heavy weight "audiophile" lps and a mixture of gold cds that were phased out around 2012 and Super Audio cds which what the current cd offering is with both regular and sacd layers.

Historically all lp issues were mastered and cut from tape provided by the majors under licence that would restrict quantity and sales period to minimize impact their own sales and the cd product mastered and pressed for that.

It appears after a major ruckus in the hifi community to have been revealed this month that from around 2008 a high proportion of records were cut with the tapes copied to a high quality digital system (DSD) on location at the major labels facility and that was used to master and cut lps even though the packaging made no reference to it, just droning on about their all analogue mastering chain.

This did not just include their regular lp series but very limited "One Step" releases that have  simpler process for making stampers to press the discs, cut at 45 rpm and presented in big boxes currently selling around $125 (£175) often selling out quickly.

The second hand prices of them are often quite high so Santana's Abraxas from 2016 often goes for around $2,000 or more and more or less everyone thinks it's the best ever copy.

Thing is people who pony up over $100 for a record tend to be hifi nerds who love the romance of an all analogue product believing it to be the most truest form and they are avid collectors.

That digital step doesn't matter to someone paying around $25 and many new releases from groups like Music on Vinyl often are as for instance are the current Beatles, Stones and Abba  vinyl editions.

I'm not opposed to digital sources on vinyl remembering buying "digital" classical lps on Decca and EMI Angel amongst others and having some of the DSD sourced Rolling Stones titles but to me the issue was with them you know it was from digital.

Mofi flat out lied about it in the promotional material and on the jackets plus their is footage even from 2017 showing staff claiming discs to be analogue when only this week under pressure they have published their sources for an increasing by the day number of titles and the one mentioned WAS digitally sourced.

Yesterday as the anger mounted over ten days the following was issued on Twitter and a in modified form on their website:

Abraxas, that super rare and raved over One Step IS from a digital transfer so whatever the all analogue protagonists think digital does sound very good enabling great care to be taken to get things like exact tape azimuth and dolby noise reduction alignment spot on song by song, reel by reel which certainly wasn't the case in vinyls heyday on that digital transfer and be mastered back at their own facility in California on to the lacquer to press the record from.

Sony Music who own the Abraxas tapes seldom allows their tapes to be sent to any other label supplying dsd files or offering access to tapes only at their facilities and this is a growing trend.

The issue was honesty and trust, put very simply and in the future (can we ditch "going forward" for the tried and trusted older expression please?) new releases will have more information so at least you'll know how it has been mastered and cut from.

Other labels like Analogue Productions will still continue mainly doing tape based mastering for the purists although for me its always been about the best sound but this explosion of anger is leading to greater transparency from specialty reisse labels and that frankly is well overdue.

We have the right to know how our favourite records we spend top dollar on are sourced, mastered and cut from.

 

A New Era Begins II-B Elimination to two.

 Across the week run offs were run Monday Tuesday and Wednesday to arrive at the two required for the next stage.

Tom Tugendhat - Eliminated Monday

Kemi Badenoch  - Elim inated Tuesday and was personal favourite for her straight talking.

Penny Mordaunt - Eliminated Wednesday.

This leads us with the two for be put for the Conservative Party members to decide upon by either paper branch voting or postal votes which will be going out very soon.

Liz Truss who came second.

Rishi Sunak in the lead

There will be a series meetings "hustings" held for each so that members have opportunity to hear and put personal questions to each candidate.

On Monday the BBC will be hosting a special debate here in my home city region of Stoke On Trent with a hundred people in the audience on the tv which I'm delighted about because we have a good cross section of issues and people who should be able to cast some light on what each have to offer ordinary people of all classes, sexes and ethnicity.

These are trying times for people so this matters a lot.

A New Era Begins Part II

Well, after all the head scratching here I second guessed the short term situation right where Boris Johnston continues in office on the understanding from the temporary cabinet they are not to introduce any major new legislation effectively tieing an incoming Prime Ministers hand.

That was without an attempt by former Prime Minister John Major to persuade people to have him removed and an attempt by the opposition to pass a "no confidence measure" in him.

This basically takes us to the selection process where around eleven announced they were going to stand although one dropped out  on Wednesday.

The way this runs is this

Candidates could only enter the race if they had the backing of twenty Tory MPs, that reduced the number of candidates down to ten.

On the first of two rounds of voting only conservative MP's can vote and each candidate needs to secure at least thirty votes to go through to the next round.

The next round sees the candidate with least vote eliminated and this is repeated until just two candidates remain.

It then opens up to Conservative Party members.

Round one vote of MP's.

Eliminated Jeremy Hunt with eighteen votes

Eliminated Nadhim Zahawi with twenty-five votes.

Going through to Round One

Suella Braverman with thirty-two votes

Tom Tugendhat with thirty-seven votes

Kemi Badenoch with forty votes

Liz Truss with fifty votes

Penny Mordaunt with sixty-seven

Rishi Sunak in the lead with eighty-eight votes.

So Eight went through later onto Round two stage one on Thursday

 

Round two first elimination Results:

Tom Tugendhat with thirty-two votes (Rank: fifth)

Kemi Badenoch with forty nine votes (Rank forth)

Liz Truss with sixty four (Rank: third)

Penny Mordaunt with eighty-three  votes (Rank: second)

Rishi Sunak in the lead with One hundred and One (Rank: first)

Suella Braverman with Twenty seven votes - Eliminated

Now down to five candidates for next elimination next week.

A New Era Begins

 

A new era is set to begin in the near future as Boris Johnston, the current Prime Minister steps down after a difficult week where being caught to lied regarding knowledge of Chapman Pinch MP, the then Govt Whip accusations of unwanted sexual advance, potentially sexual assault cases against men most recently at a private Carlton Conservative Club prior to appointing him.

This followed a number of instances where he had claimed to had no knowledge of or misunderstood the rules around Covid Restrictions and Cabinet gatherings that it is widely held breached them (although most instances were not of themselves a threat to Public Health, the persons involved having already been together before hand).

The expectation is he will hang on for a caretaker period while the Conservative Party selects a new Leader to whom they are invited by Her Majesty the Queen to be her Prime Minister sometime around the Autumn although things may be quicker given the array of important issues presently such as Post Brexit trading in Northern Ireland, Support for Ukraine in the War against Russia, the "Cost of Living Crisis" and Covid variant case rises causing concern.

Things were not as expected in those early weeks in December 2019 when we went to vote and in the main supporters from all backgrounds feel in dealing with the unexpected issues we faced he did a good job although mistakes were made in the early days of the Covid Pandemic.

The issue was a lack of trust and integrity with what at times seemed like glaring own goals that ultimately lead to MP's and Supporters feeling it could not go on as he appeared to unable to learn from previous errors when the benefit of the doubt had been extended.  

*As with many things in the last year or so things are subject to rapid change and so may be content  may be subject to change*

Equality for all

It is summer but with Covid around it certainly doesn't feel it with no one able to be away or stay with anyone overnight so I've spent my time out just exploring in the fresh air.

I've found myself thinking during this period about where things need to be for everyone including people like me to feel accepted.

Comparing how things were when I grew up in the seventies and eighties and today we can see some clear signs of progress in what we might call gender roles in society and how we can ensure people are raised to take full advantage of those opportunities.

What seems to be helping us to achieve the most we can right now in society is that people are realizing there are traits that belong to both genders, and those traits that were traditionally considered 'masculine' are there in women, and the 'feminine' traits are there in men. 

It's no longer seen as a problem when someone shows traits that are often considered to belong to the opposing gender--men cry and get upset in bad situations, or are gentle and soft holding a baby in their arms. 

Women are more and more in the positions of power (here in the UK we've had two female Prime Ministers), and taking control of rough situations.

I don't think we need to go to a society where the women are wearing the business suits and running things while the men are dolled up in short skirts with makeup and painted nails.

That's where I break with some feminists and most on the sissy fetish side.

I hold to reverse the roles completely would be just as disastrous as the way things had been run. 

Instead, we need the roles equalized and that femininity should never be seen a bad thing. 

When we can get to the point where a parent gives their child a pair of panties and a sundress to wear for the day and nobody cares whether the child is a girl or boy, the world will be a much better place.

We'll get there slowly--as the previous generations die out and the new ones grow up, acceptance of things like this grows. 

Someone who grew up with a 'macho' father becomes friends with a more feminine boy and realizes there's nothing wrong with it. 

Now, their son grows up to be accepting of both feminine and masculine things, and their child more so. 

Those of us who grew up experiencing both sides of the equation when the roles were so much more rigidly defined seem to be some of the biggest champions for equality. 

We learn from each other, finding that often stereotypes and presumed attitudes have no basis in fact and we may have more in common than we thought.

We have the right to be free to be me.

Adding extra quality to regular cds

Over the years we've had features around audio on this blog and this week we return to the topic of cd reproduction

After replacing the Rotel unit I had for a Marantz super audio cd player that does regular discs I thought I had pretty much got this sorted as after all its reproduction of super audio cds was amazing and the regular discs sounded less muddy and frankly boring than the NAD C541i I had until it blew up.

One annoyance is the classical world Chandos have been issuing less super audio cds and with little rhyme or reason to what was a regular cd with a HD download being available from sites like Presto, the Warwickshire classical music store and what in it's physical form is a sacd.

Popular music remains mainly regular cd too outside of specialty re-issues as much as they are welcome.

The though arose, "is it possible to improve on what the internal regular digital to analogue converter offers on regular cds?"

These convertors that turn the naughts and ones into sound have come on a lot since the early nineteen eighties and even in the last fifteen years better sound can be had often for a good third or more of the price before we even consider inflation.

Enter the SMSL SU9 which comes from China, which personal political issues with their government apart has been producing in the last eight or so years some really good value for money hifi products

It is a fairly small unit, unlike many American offerings plain but attractively presented with a variety of inputs such as Toslink optical, Coaxial, USB which is common for computer based music replay (for which you'll need an up to date driver) and Bluetooth which tends not to be as good but does work without wires which some do feel matters.

The inputs are selected using a input button in conjunction with an up/down key, conformed by pressing the knob in which when configured also acts as a volume control.

This means in the context of a wholly digital system you could use this as a preamp sending an analogue output to a power amplifier.

The outputs are balanced XLR used in professional applications for lower noise and interference and traditional RCA or Cinch unbalanced used on nearly all hifi equipment these days with a now standard 2.3 volt peak output.

The mains input is a IEC Kettle type three pin connector that automatically adjusts from 100 through 240 volts.
 

Playing Sibelius's The Tempest on a 1992 Bis recording on regular cd, a pioneering recording it did bring out more depth and improved midrange  coupled with more detailed sound which l thought was more akin to great analogue source. 

While a dsd sourced super audio cd would of been better, this was more believable on fine regular discs although there are some "filters" that allow you alter the sound slightly if you prefer things warmer or more contrasty which generally I don't.

Overall I feel this has been an upgrade for the bigger proportion of my 5 cm disc collection.

Revisions to the blog 2022

This blog goes back a very long time like 2006 which is some sixteen and a half years and a few rebrandings along the way.

One thing has been blogger itself has changed in that time adding facilities and often altering the code that can make updating older entries trickier but sometimes it is necessary.

For one thing It is a lot of ways it is easier to find better quality illustrations than what were used back then, the layout options today allow for a more professional feel as monitors have got bigger with higher resolutions.

The other is the internet has improved making it less of dash against time to make a post before as was the case before I had a fibre connection before post and any image sources were replaced by "Your internet connection is no longer available".

While it has been quite warm this week, I have been revisiting a number of old entries, updating the contents where appropriate as may done other things or added to collections and adding a few images although obviously there will be some differences as images now tend to be centred rather than left aligned  and usually of better quality.

Yours Smol,

CJR