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.
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