Friday, May 12, 2023

Mobile Fidelity to pay up for fraud?

Color me surprised at the amount but MoFI, the company whose claims for an all-analog recording chain in their ultra high end vinyl releases were exposed as 'less than truthful' last year, have apparently agreed to pay $25m in settlement.  Not entirely sure how this will work but all buyers who screamed foul can return their purchases for full refund or take a 5% refund if they want to keep them. So it would seem very unlikely that MoFi end up paying out even close to that headline-grabbing sum.  No word on what the folks who bought at greatly inflated prices on the secondary market feel about all this but as always, prices will reflect this.  Most folks used to think these sounded great until they learned the facts. Fascinating stuff -- read more here

4 comments:

Aarondoo said...

This was always whiny BS from people who bought these LPs as an investment instead of for playback. It is inconsequential how these LPs are produced if the results are satisfactory or better. How are you going to make a lacquer if you can't get the master to your facility? To my ears these are amongst the best recordings available. Next there will be a class action about the missing "fresh mountain spring water" in beer!

Aarondoo said...

This was always whiny BS from people who bought these LPs as an investment instead of for playback. It is inconsequential how these LPs are produced if the results are satisfactory or better. How are you going to make a lacquer if you can't get the master to your facility? To my ears these are amongst the best recordings available. Next there will be a class action about the missing "fresh mountain spring water" in beer!

Anonymous said...

Digital surpassed analog over 20 years ago by several orders of magnitude. It has also surpassed human hearing.

The only sin here was claiming the total chain was analogue.

Using digital masters made sense for 2 reasons:

• You will destroy the master tape if you keep using it for mastering. It wears out.

• A hi-res digital file to human ears is a perfect copy of the original. Also, it will not age and become brittle. You can store copies of it on servers all over the planet or blockchain it.

As Martha Stewart found out, it’s not the crime, but the lying about the crime that gets you locked up.

Anonymous said...

Mofi was never among my favourites on vinyl playback. And now I know why. Digital has surpassed nothing. It’s different and not better. Getting Analogue wright cost effort en mostly money but if you are there then you know why Analogue always survived.