55 ms·

A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

268 points by mtg 4y ago

TabTwo 4y ago
It’s a religion and now someone proved „there is no god“. Besides the money they spent, these people must really have a hard time. Really feel sorry for them.
taylodl 4y ago
Nyquist Theorem - learn it, love it, live it. I'm a musician and my mates and I have been going round and round on this issue for years. They swear analog is "warm" and "captures the whole wave." It's all BS. It's always been BS. What the vinyl lovers never stop to realize is the audio signal has to be modified to record on vinyl - you're not listening to the music as recorded on the master tape, you're listening to an altered copy of it. Why is that? Because of limitations of the playback mechanism - you can't impart too much kinetic energy into the needle. So, the bass gets rolled off, pop filters and transient filters are employed, and high hats get dialed back. All to keep that stupid needle in its groove. Bottom line - the music is altered, the dynamics have been diminished, and it all sounds muddier, i.e. "warm", as a result. The problem is a couple of generations grew up listening to this and thinking it was what music sounded like. The musicians making the music always complained that it never sounded right, but had to accept the limitations of the playback medium. I grew up in a musical family. All my friends played music. We always knew, and thought everybody else knew, that the music on records didn't sound right, it sounded muddy and compressed. Then CD Audio came out in the 80's and what a difference! The bass was punchy instead of muddy, the high-hats and riding cymbals rang, the dynamic range was breathtaking and the stereo separation was unreal! I was elated the first time I heard an audio CD. Then the critics came. It sounds "harsh" or "cold", it lost that "warmth", computers can't capture the actual analog waveform. That's when I began to realize that these audiophiles and critics didn't know what they were talking about. They obviously weren't musicians. Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this topic are the rock & metal guys. The Jazz and Classical musicians quickly recognized the superiority of digital audio. But the masses don't listen to Jazz and Classical music, they listen to rock and metal (and pop - but the pop world doesn't seem to care one way or the other). I don't even know what to say to the rock and metal guys anymore (full disclosure - I'm a guitarist primarily playing rock, metal, prog and folk - they're pretty much all in the same camp on this issue). Rare is the guitarist that isn't using a pedal board. Extremely rare is the guitarist using an all-analog pedal board. Many guitarists are using SS (solid-state) amps now. They're recording into a DAW (digital audio workstation). Then they claim that somehow distributing the end result of vinyl is somehow pure? It's nuts, it's simply nuts. Add to that almost none of us are playing our amps clean and pristine, so what - you think it matters how accurately you capture our harmonic distortion? Yet I see people lining up paying $40-$50 to get these albums thinking they're getting something different. Which I guess they are, they're getting an altered recording. This only reinforces what I've been saying for decades - vinyl is a scam and these people are laughing all the way to the bank. I'm hoping now we can finally put this issue to rest and get everyone on board with digital audio. Now if we can talk to the recording engineers about these stupid "loudness wars"...
- GuB-42 4y ago
  > Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this topic are the rock & metal guys. An it makes sense. Rock and metal are played with electric guitars, and electric guitars are not much unless they are plugged into an amplifier. What it means is that the amp is not just part of sound reproduction, it is actually part of the instrument. It is especially true in metal, where amps are frequently overdriven for that characteristic sound, here the idea of sound reproduction completely goes out of the window, the sound characteristics come as much from the amp as they come from the guitar itself, if not more. And if you look closely during rock/metal concerts, guitars are almost never plugged directly into the PA system, the band come with their own amps and if necessary, the sound is picked up using microphones and then sent to the PA system. So it make as much sense for guitarists to want a specific kind of tube amp as it is for a violinist to care about the wood their instrument is made of.
  - netr0ute 4y ago
    That all goes out the window if you use a DSP effects box, where you can "have your cake and eat it too" by having pedals (regular and expression types), amps, cabinets, and a mic for that cabinet all in one package. I use one because it's a lot cheaper than getting the individual parts and it fits in the palm of my hand!
- conqueso 4y ago
  I get your frustration at the popular misconceptions around sound quality, but see no need to evangelize this issue. If people enjoy spending money on records, good for them, and good for the industry.
gwern 4y ago
"The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile community into something of an existential crisis. The quality of digitized music has long been criticized because of how much data was stripped out of files so MP3s could fit on mobile devices. But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good they can fool even the best ears. Many of MoFi’s now-exposed records were on Fremer and Esposito’s own lists of the best sounding analog albums...“One of the reasons they want to excoriate MoFi is for lying,” says Howarth. “The other part that bothers them is that they’ve been listening to digital all along and they’re highly invested in believing that any digital step will destroy their experience. And they’re wrong.”...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.”" Hard to imagine a better A/A-test.
- allears 4y ago
  That's a little simplistic. You can certainly tell the difference between a good analog recording played on a high quality system vs. an MP3. But once you throw enough samples and bit depth at it (more than are on a standard CD), you get quality that's equivalent to, or better than, most analog media.
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
    >(more than are on a standard CD) Sorry, but CD (16bit PCM) has better dynamic range than vinyl. The best vinyl systems can have dynamic range of around 80dB. 16bit PCM is 96dB.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      Unless it’s brick-wall normalized during mastering.
      - masklinn 4y ago
eertami 4y ago
https://archive.ph/z83rO https://archive.ph/z83rO
aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
Audiophools got played yet again.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  There’s a fine line between a healthy audiophile and an over-obsessed one. Latter is a bad slippery slope, too.
- isatty 4y ago
  Audiophile here - if they were using a proper master, minimally a true lossless file I don’t really see the problem. On the other hand, it seems to me like I meet more people who are just into buying new gear rather than enjoying the music, which is what the hobby is to me. Don’t even get me started on snake oil like cables.
  - criddell 4y ago
    Can you reliably hear a difference between a lossless file and a modern high bit rate MP3 (or other lossy format)? I can't, but then I have tinnitus...
    - isatty 4y ago
      Depends on the music. 320k mp3 is actually pretty good. Anyway in this case I want a studio promising that their records were pressed from a high quality master to actually use a high quality master. It doesn’t matter if I can’t distinguish it. Just because a Camry can also transport my ass from a to b does not mean the Porsche dealership gets to sell me one over another car I specifically wanted.
      - npteljes 4y ago
        Yes, this is a very important point that a lot of people miss. How are people supposed to learn to appreciate a genuine thing is if they are constantly swindled? Also, people are not rational beings first and foremost. Sentimentalism makes them vulnerable, but that shouldn't mean that it's open season for swindlers. I can make my origami from any paper basically, but it feels good in a certain way to order special paper from Japan just for this reason. And I'd feel cheated if the paper turned out to be from anywhere else - despite being no different on a material level.
kazinator 4y ago
> But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good they can fool even the best ears. "These days" being what, 1982-2022?
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
Who knew that snake oil might not turn out even to be made from snakes?!
acomjean 4y ago
Digital was a badge of honor back in the 80s and 90s when CDs were new. No hiss, better sound. They Used to label CDs with 3 letters (the SARS code) : A for analog D for digital. For recording, mixing and mastering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code We had a high school radio station (10 Watts, mono FM). One kid had all these great classic rock albums he was getting from his neighbor who was giving him them when he got the redone CD versions. Even my old Sony V6 headphones have a "For Digital" sticker on them which thinking about it is pure marketing. I mean we tried A/B testing when I was kid, CD vs Cassettes. The Cassettes with dolbyC sounded better when recorded from CD onto decent tapes (they were a little louder) and it was hard to tell the difference anyway. Maybe in the quiet passages you could hear hiss... CDs were a better format though and we knew it. Becuase cars and cd walkmans were rare, my CDs were often copied to cassettes. At some point its good enough, just enjoy the performance.
politelemon 4y ago
> That visit resulted in a second video, published July 20, in which MoFi’s engineers confirmed, with a kind of awkward casualness, that Esposito was correct with his claims. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE
egypturnash 4y ago
Syd Schwartz, Mobile Fidelity’s chief marketing officer, made an apology. “Mobile Fidelity makes great records, the best-sounding records that you can buy,” he said. “There had been choices made over the years and choices in marketing that have led to confusion and anger and a lot of questions, and there were narratives that had been propagating for a while that were untrue or false or myths. We were wrong not to have addressed this sooner.” That sure is a lot of words to say “Yeah, uh, we lied, and we got caught. Sorry.” All these “choices” and “narratives” that just sort of… appeared… without any source to them.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Heavy use of the passive voice -- the dead giveaway for BS. It's interesting whether "digital is better than analog" but hardly relevant here. There are people who believe it's not true, and MoFi lied to them.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Seems like now that it's out in the open, there'd be a lucrative market in selling the DSDs directly, rather than waiting until it goes to the labels or vendors to re-rip the vinyl remasters into FLAC/MP3?
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  There is a market for DSD albums: https://www.nativedsd.com/ https://www.nativedsd.com/ I can see why people would be angry about the deception, but DSD is probably the highest fidelity audio anyone has ever heard (with the right equipment). Audiophiles should be celebrating a situation in which we today can listen to albums in higher fidelity than anyone except those who were around when they were being recorded... and that quality is accessible basically anywhere via the internet.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    You can't edit DSD data in any conventional sense. This makes the use of fully DSD recordings rather limited in more or less any style of recorded music.
- jccalhoun 4y ago
  DSD is used for SACD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD
eventhorizonpl 4y ago
allears 4y ago
People who claim CDs have more dynamic range than analog are missing the point. Think of it in terms of graphics. 8 bit graphics can represent totally black, or totally white. That's a complete dynamic range. But it's the in-between shades that require more bits to specify. It's the same with audio. It's not how soft or how loud a recording can get. It's the subtle shades of variation. 16 bits is pretty good, but not as good as 24 bits. You can tell by listening to the shimmer of a cymbal, or a plucked string fading to silence. You may not experience it as "stair-stepping," but there's an added degree of realism that more bits can confer. And similarly about frequency range. Any audio system or media has more linear reproduction in the middle part of its range. So if you design a system that exceeds the range of human hearing, you'll get more linearity within the audible part of that range.
- bfgoodrich 4y ago
- apohn 4y ago
  > You can tell by listening to the shimmer of a cymbal, or a plucked string fading to silence. I don't think this is true. A long time ago I was involved in the headphone audiophile community and people were always using the shimmer of a cymbal as how they could tell the difference between MP3s and Lossless, Analog vs Digital, CD vs SACD or whatever. Then they'd do a blind test using Foobar2000 and start saying the whole blind testing methodology is flawed because surely they can hear the difference under normal listening conditions with their $1000 headphone connected to their $3000 amp using their $2000 DAC. My favorite quote was from somebody who said "Nobody in this community cares about music. They only care about their equipment."
  - allears 4y ago
    I'm a recording engineer, and I can tell you that there definitely is such a thing as high quality audio. Certainly there are people who believe in snake oil and like to parade their ignorance as though it were knowledge. But if you bother to study the science of audio, read trade magazines, or hang out with engineers and studio owners, you will find that just quoting frequency range or dynamic range, or even noise floor, is not enough to specify an excellent audio signal. And if you think CD audio is as good as it gets, and nobody can tell the difference between that and a studio master tape, for instance, you are dismissing the expertise of the people who have studied and worked to make the recordings you love.
everyone 4y ago
This does seem more like a religious issue, eg. its more about faith, dogma, orthodoxy, and heresy, than it about anything tangible.
- focusedone 4y ago
  Bingo. Audio religion begging to be marketed to.
thih9 4y ago
> “These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.” But was there an album without DSD to compare to and hear the difference? I guess most people heard just the album with DSD (that admittedly sounded great). What would happen if there was also a One Press version without DSD? Would people with “golden ears” be able to recognize it in a blind test?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Almost nothing has ever been recorded and released using only DSD. Why not? Most fundamentally because you can't edit DSD data, it has to be converted to PCM format first. This means it can only be used for live takes, with nothing done except topping & tailing the recording. There are are few "ultra-audiophile" recordings that have been made this way, but so few of them that the question of whether it's better or audibly different is almsot irrelevant.
  - thih9 4y ago
    > Almost nothing has ever been recorded and released using only DSD. I don’t understand; I was talking about an album without DSD. Why are you referring to albums produced with only DSD?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      My point was tha an album with DSD (only) is so rare that asking about a comparison to album without DSD is a little strange. Almost all albums are produced with digital technology that is not DSD, even the ones that include DSD.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - thih9 4y ago
        I still don’t get it. Why does it matter here whether DSD is rare or not?
radicaldreamer 4y ago
It's likely these records are still better than anything else out there because DSD is an extraordinary format for audio and they were still pulling directly from the masters (if anyone trusts that clarification of the story at this point).
post_break 4y ago
This is so funny. Company touts no digital, then goes on record saying yeah we used digital, completely ruining their reputation. Meanwhile I'm over here still mourning OiNK.
- Nav_Panel 4y ago
  Don't worry, its legacy lives on. Other sites have taken up the mantle (hmu). OiNK is gone, but not forgotten.
  - post_break 4y ago
    How do I get in touch?
    - Nav_Panel 4y ago
      check my profile, twitter is a good easy way, or email me via substack
deltree7 4y ago
Audiophiles:vinyl::HNers:Privacy This is no different than a section HNers fooled by companies like DuckDuckGo and VPNs
tptacek 4y ago
In 2021, on the MoFi page, about their one-step process: MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. Today: MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings, painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. Meanwhile, Michael Fremer, "the dean of audiophile writing": I’ve now spoken to someone who would know and who confirmed, out of necessity off the record for now, that in 2018 Mobile Fidelity cut lacquers using analog master tapes (not copies). Will speculative click bait YouTube videos claiming otherwise be taken down after reading this? (A bunch of this is in the article, I just think the quotes are kind of funny).
Nav_Panel 4y ago
Afaict the cool thing about MoFi pressings (at least, ones from back in the day) is they were done at half speed. So, when the lacquer is cut from the master tape, they'd do it at half playback speed rather than full playback speed, which allowed the physical cutting head to track the high frequencies more accurately. I can say that this absolutely does make a difference during playback; my MoFi copy of Aja sounds very good (almost as good as the digital version!). That said, vinyl is effectively an obsolete medium. I say this as someone who owns upwards of 1k vinyl records. I buy them because many recordings remain inaccessible or very challenging to find digitally. But I would never buy a newly released album on vinyl over digital if I had the choice and if both were using the same master.
- notRobot 4y ago
  I'm genuinely really curious, what kinds of recordings remain inaccessible in digital formats? How do you find out about them? And where do you procure them from? Do you mind sharing a couple examples?
  - Nav_Panel 4y ago
    Biggest one was country. Lots of impossible to find stuff from the 50s thru the 70s. I'd learn about it by digging at the record shop near where I went to college. There's not much of an audience for it anymore, so the labels have no incentive to dig through their catalogs. Here's a country album I've never find a proper digital version of, only bad vinyl rips: https://www.discogs.com/master/402577-Mike-Auldridge-Dobro https://www.discogs.com/master/402577-Mike-Auldridge-Dobro In a completely different direction, 80s Japanese pop (city pop). I would listen to compilations, look up my favorite tracks on discogs to find the album it came from, and then... No dice. Often they're available on both CD and vinyl, but the vinyl version is often cheaper (because they made more original pressings than CD reissues). Sometimes they never get reissued on CD and vinyl is the only option. Here's a random example I found while digging around at a record store in Japan: https://www.discogs.com/release/20947423-%E7%9B%B8%E9%A6%AC%E7%BE%8E%E5%A5%BD-%E6%B1%90%E9%87%8C-Shiori https://www.discogs.com/release/20947423-%E7%9B%B8%E9%A6%AC%... Last case is dance music, which comes in 12" singles rather than albums. To find that stuff, I used to go to a used junk store that devoted its entire basement to records. Again, a lot of 80s and even 90s material never made it to digital.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ben7799 4y ago
Audiophile is full of nonsense but one of the more hilarious ones in something like this where the goal is "no digital" is it's been a long time since you could guarantee there was no digital going on between the instrument and the master. They talk about Thriller a lot. Is it possible to have a completely analog copy of Thriller if it turned out a guitar went through a digital rack unit or a digital synthesizer was used? I don't know the answer to the question but in 1982 there were plenty of digital effects available. The more recent you get the more unlikely it is the signal got from the instrument onto the master without going digital at some point, even if the recording is done on tape and then transferred to vinyl in a completely analog old fashioned sense. If I plug my guitar directly into my amp and you're in the room you hear 100% analog. If I use the pedal board it got transferred A <->D <-> at least once before it went into the amp. Possibly with a dry signal staying analog but the effects might be digital and mixed back in.
- swores 4y ago
  I don't agree with the "no digital!" crowd, but surely their claim is that digital can't accurately reproduce the original intended sounds, so (even if they were right) that wouldn't make them need to boycott anything where the original intended sound includes something produced digitally? It's not like they're claiming to be allergic to digital noise, just that it loses fidelity in the transfers.
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  There are digital pedals? Honest question - I had a side gig at school repairing and modifying pedals - it was all just transistors and op-amps, bistable oscillators, etc. - nothing digital at all.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Oh yeah totally. There are pedals these days that are a ADC->DSP->DAC. What's actually on the DSP can be programmable, so you have pedals who's function can be changed with the twist of a knob. They kept the same interface (aka quarter inch cables, and foot-stompable buttons), just modernized the interior. They range from something like the Zoom MS-70 CDR at $150, to $1,200 for one with multiple buttons, an analog pedal, and is laptop controllable via USB. (Line 6 Helix LT or Boss GT-1000.)
brightball 4y ago
I spent a year working on a site that catered to the audiophile world and it blew my mind at the time. The lengths that people will go to are incredible. There was one guy who had a $200,000 house with over $2 million worth of audio to setup his sound system. He had these special electrical units installed outside his house that were supposed to guarantee a perfectly steady current.
user_7832 4y ago
(Meta) I was hoping HN would stay civil and while it mostly is, I’d like to remind that what people do in their homes for themselves isn’t really something worth circle jerking over. If you like expensive gear and find a difference, great. If you don’t find a difference, that’s also fine. Please don’t bother attacking either group for their (relatively) harmless views.
zac23or 4y ago
Audiophile world is strange... Monster cables vs Coat hangers: https://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables/ https://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-... Warm up new headphones: https://soundsightheadphones.com/guides/do-i-need-to-warm-up-new-headphones/ https://soundsightheadphones.com/guides/do-i-need-to-warm-up...
jef_leppard 4y ago
This whole thing reminds me of the time some renowned wine connoisseurs blind taste tested vintage wines and they slipped 2 buck chuck in there. A few of them picked the 2 buck chuck as their favorite. None of them called it out as inferior wine. They all said stuff like "hints of smoke. Berry finish."
- iasay 4y ago
  I've heard a "wine expert" spew a load of rubbish like that and when offered it was obviously corked. Tasted like vinegar.
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  I recall reading a similar piece where they gave expert wine judges flights of wines to judge but some glasses would be the same wine from the same bottle and they'd judge it differently.
- ip26 4y ago
  I'm no pro but have found 2 buck chuck is pretty obvious. If only because it makes me feel ill. Was the test perhaps using midgrade rather than rotgut?
Beltalowda 4y ago
In 2006 a "Controversies" section was removed from their Wikipedia page[1] after "a letter of complaint". You can still read it of course[2], part of which is: "Additionally, some both inside and outside the audiophile community have criticized MFSL's [aka MoFi] willingness to stretch its "Original Master Recording" logo. For example, critics note that several MFSL Mk I releases are not from the original masters; one notorious example is the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour". More troublesome to some, though, is MFSL's recent habit of releasing gold CDs that are sourced from digital master tapes instead of the original analog masters." So it seems these allegations go back quite some time. For what it's worth, I don't really buy in to the whole "audiophile" stuff and am skeptical you can hear the difference, but delivering "B" while it says "A" on the label is essentially defrauding your customers, and possibly illegal (or at least, it ought to be). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab&oldid=40484875#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Fidelity_S...
Sporktacular 4y ago
Seems like if they had used high quality analog tape instead of DSD they would only be getting criticism for not calling it 'two-step'. There are some amazing analogue mastering recorders like the Ampex ATR-102 which they could have used. Tape wear would have been an eventual issue if they had to re-press hundreds of times, but that's just what the vinyl nuts want right? But on the other hand, they lied. Seems Jim Davis deserves every bit of criticism he gets. As do some of the golden-eared audiophile journalists who also happily oiled the BS machine.
peanut_worm 4y ago
Audiophiles are funny. I remember seeing some guy on the internet was selling expensive “sound crystals” that you would put near your stereo that would make the sound “warmer” or “clearer”.
- creakingstairs 4y ago
  Someone shared this link last time there was a thread about audiophiles. This person claims their custom memcpy makes the sound better. https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/11/119979.html https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/11/11997...
  - akaij 4y ago
    Thank you for this! Made my day :)
topgun77 4y ago
Sporktacular 4y ago
Any article involving high end digital vs. analogue audio is guaranteed to spawn a huge HN discussion about how gullible audiophiles are vs. how high quality audio is more subtle than a few good numbers. You can count on it, like a precisely timed quartz oscillator. And as long as the power is on, it likewise will never be settled.
dopylitty 4y ago
Honestly the thing that surprised me most was how real everyone in the story was. The record store owner is a real dude. The record company has a bunch of real engineers who care about the product. Even the executives seem somewhat human. It’s such a refreshing change from faceless stores with ever changing all caps names on faceless enormous e-commerce sites selling mass produced garbage. And fleecing audiophiles is just good clean fun anyway.
- nikau 4y ago
  > And fleecing audiophiles is just good clean fun anyway My dad ran a small manufacturing business in the 80s, one guy he did a lot of work for wanted a small batch run of spikes with a top thread made from titanium. My dad did the quotes and asked what's its for, they were spikes for putting under speakers. Of course my dad mentioned it would make more sense and be much cheaper to make from stainless steel, to which the guy just responded "I'm selling to idiots with more money than brains who want a talking point, that's why its titanium." He also machined a bunch of titanium inserts for wooden volume knobs that supposedly clarified the sound or some rubbish like that.
ernestespinosa 4y ago
iamwil 4y ago
As I was reading the title, I was thinking...Phoenix web framework...Elixir...record store, database? influenced the audio world? Had a read it a couple times til I realized it was talking about AZ, and literally a record store.
Night_Thastus 4y ago
"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively, vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have nearly the resolution or nearly the dynamic range that a high-quality digital recording will have. Not to mention the higher noise floor. You lose a lot of the original audio with vinyl. I dislike peddling it as somehow the objectively superior option. Or more "natural" or close to the original. That's nonsense. Don't get me wrong, DACs aren't perfect. But with good recordings and mastering, a good DAC and overall system, it'll sound great. If someone still likes vinyl knowing its faults, that's 100% fine. Nothing wrong with that, everyone in audio likes the sound a bit differently. Some people absolutely love the sound of vinyl and having a cool physical collection with gorgeous cover art. Power to them!
- iamacyborg 4y ago
  > Vinyl doesn't have nearly the resolution or nearly the dynamic range that a high-quality digital recording will have. Not to mention that setting up a tonearm just right appears to be a feat of wizardry, or being sure that the recording was properly mastered for vinyl.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things better, imo.) https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
  - jstanley 4y ago
    I don't agree with the characterisation in your first sentence (nothing is ever perfect in analogue), but the video was very interesting, thanks for sharing!
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
So I was debugging / documenting last night and put the "smoking gun" video on the background. I don't know why. I guess I felt if the WaPo was raving it must be good. It was four middle aged men crammed into a cupboard, talking. And while I was not paying attention to every word, I missed the gun and the smoke. Where is the bit where a MoFi employee says "we use digital"? All I heard was waffle and self congratulatory
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE 2:12, “we do have 4x DSD” i.e. digital stream 3:50, about making copies of tapes, “we bring a computer with 4x DSD analog to digital converters”
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    Oh is that what that meant - I guess I am used to journalists "telegraphing" things but the youtuber just seemed to carry on. That sounded like "oh yes we do that" to me but the lack of reaction meant Inmisunderstood Maybe I am too used to over the top influencers and presenters signalling everything I should react to. But sometimes if I am in a jargon filled world it would be nice for a guide.
    - pmyteh 4y ago
      That's part of the skill of a good interviewer: making sure that the audience can follow along, understanding what's actually being said. The interviewer here is obviously an audio enthusiast/record shop owner rather than a journalist, so it's not surprising that they haven't had so much practice at this! (I've done interviewing for academic research, which has different goals but is also a skill. It's interesting how difficult it is at first.)
KingOfCoders 4y ago
So a company used digital, audiophiles bought thousands of these, loved them and didn't hear anything.
dieselgate 4y ago
Cool article, wasn’t familiar with MoFi or them being a small shop based in Sebastopol. Interesting context as this seems very appropriate for the current times. As a society we are increasingly facing the digitization of basically everything. I’m not an audiophile but like vinyl when possible, too bad “purer” all analog recordings are so “difficult” to produce. But hey these recordings are pretty old and maybe we should just be glad with what we have. (Obviously false/misleading advertising is lame but at least the MoFi staff was honest)
codedokode 4y ago
> These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t. That's not fair because they didn't have both analog and digital records to compare.
gadders 4y ago
I wonder how many of the people upset about this could even tell the difference on a blind listen? I don't know if it's very, but I'd bet its a very low %.
rramadass 4y ago
Question: Is "Hi-Res Audio" just snake oil or is there any Science behind it? Technical answers please.
xtiansimon 4y ago
Sounds like guaranteed “organic”, “vegan”, “fair-trade”—take your pick—failure to disclose. Whatever you believe about digital or analog, lying to the faithful has its consequences.

268 points by mtg 4y ago

It’s a religion and now someone proved „there is no god“. Besides the money they spent, these people must really have a hard time. Really feel sorry for them.

taylodl 4y ago

Nyquist Theorem - learn it, love it, live it. I'm a musician and my mates and I have been going round and round on this issue for years. They swear analog is "warm" and "captures the whole wave." It's all BS. It's always been BS. What the vinyl lovers never stop to realize is the audio signal has to be modified to record on vinyl - you're not listening to the music as recorded on the master tape, you're listening to an altered copy of it. Why is that? Because of limitations of the playback mechanism - you can't impart too much kinetic energy into the needle. So, the bass gets rolled off, pop filters and transient filters are employed, and high hats get dialed back. All to keep that stupid needle in its groove. Bottom line - the music is altered, the dynamics have been diminished, and it all sounds muddier, i.e. "warm", as a result. The problem is a couple of generations grew up listening to this and thinking it was what music sounded like. The musicians making the music always complained that it never sounded right, but had to accept the limitations of the playback medium. I grew up in a musical family. All my friends played music. We always knew, and thought everybody else knew, that the music on records didn't sound right, it sounded muddy and compressed. Then CD Audio came out in the 80's and what a difference! The bass was punchy instead of muddy, the high-hats and riding cymbals rang, the dynamic range was breathtaking and the stereo separation was unreal! I was elated the first time I heard an audio CD. Then the critics came. It sounds "harsh" or "cold", it lost that "warmth", computers can't capture the actual analog waveform. That's when I began to realize that these audiophiles and critics didn't know what they were talking about. They obviously weren't musicians. Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this topic are the rock & metal guys. The Jazz and Classical musicians quickly recognized the superiority of digital audio. But the masses don't listen to Jazz and Classical music, they listen to rock and metal (and pop - but the pop world doesn't seem to care one way or the other). I don't even know what to say to the rock and metal guys anymore (full disclosure - I'm a guitarist primarily playing rock, metal, prog and folk - they're pretty much all in the same camp on this issue). Rare is the guitarist that isn't using a pedal board. Extremely rare is the guitarist using an all-analog pedal board. Many guitarists are using SS (solid-state) amps now. They're recording into a DAW (digital audio workstation). Then they claim that somehow distributing the end result of vinyl is somehow pure? It's nuts, it's simply nuts. Add to that almost none of us are playing our amps clean and pristine, so what - you think it matters how accurately you capture our harmonic distortion? Yet I see people lining up paying $40-$50 to get these albums thinking they're getting something different. Which I guess they are, they're getting an altered recording. This only reinforces what I've been saying for decades - vinyl is a scam and these people are laughing all the way to the bank. I'm hoping now we can finally put this issue to rest and get everyone on board with digital audio. Now if we can talk to the recording engineers about these stupid "loudness wars"...

GuB-42 4y ago
> Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this topic are the rock & metal guys. An it makes sense. Rock and metal are played with electric guitars, and electric guitars are not much unless they are plugged into an amplifier. What it means is that the amp is not just part of sound reproduction, it is actually part of the instrument. It is especially true in metal, where amps are frequently overdriven for that characteristic sound, here the idea of sound reproduction completely goes out of the window, the sound characteristics come as much from the amp as they come from the guitar itself, if not more. And if you look closely during rock/metal concerts, guitars are almost never plugged directly into the PA system, the band come with their own amps and if necessary, the sound is picked up using microphones and then sent to the PA system. So it make as much sense for guitarists to want a specific kind of tube amp as it is for a violinist to care about the wood their instrument is made of.
- netr0ute 4y ago
  That all goes out the window if you use a DSP effects box, where you can "have your cake and eat it too" by having pedals (regular and expression types), amps, cabinets, and a mic for that cabinet all in one package. I use one because it's a lot cheaper than getting the individual parts and it fits in the palm of my hand!
conqueso 4y ago
I get your frustration at the popular misconceptions around sound quality, but see no need to evangelize this issue. If people enjoy spending money on records, good for them, and good for the industry.

gwern 4y ago

"The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile community into something of an existential crisis. The quality of digitized music has long been criticized because of how much data was stripped out of files so MP3s could fit on mobile devices. But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good they can fool even the best ears. Many of MoFi’s now-exposed records were on Fremer and Esposito’s own lists of the best sounding analog albums...“One of the reasons they want to excoriate MoFi is for lying,” says Howarth. “The other part that bothers them is that they’ve been listening to digital all along and they’re highly invested in believing that any digital step will destroy their experience. And they’re wrong.”...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.”" Hard to imagine a better A/A-test.

allears 4y ago
That's a little simplistic. You can certainly tell the difference between a good analog recording played on a high quality system vs. an MP3. But once you throw enough samples and bit depth at it (more than are on a standard CD), you get quality that's equivalent to, or better than, most analog media.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  >(more than are on a standard CD) Sorry, but CD (16bit PCM) has better dynamic range than vinyl. The best vinyl systems can have dynamic range of around 80dB. 16bit PCM is 96dB.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Unless it’s brick-wall normalized during mastering.
    - masklinn 4y ago

eertami 4y ago

https://archive.ph/z83rO https://archive.ph/z83rO

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago

Audiophools got played yet again.

bayindirh 4y ago
There’s a fine line between a healthy audiophile and an over-obsessed one. Latter is a bad slippery slope, too.
isatty 4y ago
Audiophile here - if they were using a proper master, minimally a true lossless file I don’t really see the problem. On the other hand, it seems to me like I meet more people who are just into buying new gear rather than enjoying the music, which is what the hobby is to me. Don’t even get me started on snake oil like cables.
- criddell 4y ago
  Can you reliably hear a difference between a lossless file and a modern high bit rate MP3 (or other lossy format)? I can't, but then I have tinnitus...
  - isatty 4y ago
    Depends on the music. 320k mp3 is actually pretty good. Anyway in this case I want a studio promising that their records were pressed from a high quality master to actually use a high quality master. It doesn’t matter if I can’t distinguish it. Just because a Camry can also transport my ass from a to b does not mean the Porsche dealership gets to sell me one over another car I specifically wanted.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      Yes, this is a very important point that a lot of people miss. How are people supposed to learn to appreciate a genuine thing is if they are constantly swindled? Also, people are not rational beings first and foremost. Sentimentalism makes them vulnerable, but that shouldn't mean that it's open season for swindlers. I can make my origami from any paper basically, but it feels good in a certain way to order special paper from Japan just for this reason. And I'd feel cheated if the paper turned out to be from anywhere else - despite being no different on a material level.

kazinator 4y ago

> But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good they can fool even the best ears. "These days" being what, 1982-2022?

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

Who knew that snake oil might not turn out even to be made from snakes?!

acomjean 4y ago

Digital was a badge of honor back in the 80s and 90s when CDs were new. No hiss, better sound. They Used to label CDs with 3 letters (the SARS code) : A for analog D for digital. For recording, mixing and mastering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code We had a high school radio station (10 Watts, mono FM). One kid had all these great classic rock albums he was getting from his neighbor who was giving him them when he got the redone CD versions. Even my old Sony V6 headphones have a "For Digital" sticker on them which thinking about it is pure marketing. I mean we tried A/B testing when I was kid, CD vs Cassettes. The Cassettes with dolbyC sounded better when recorded from CD onto decent tapes (they were a little louder) and it was hard to tell the difference anyway. Maybe in the quiet passages you could hear hiss... CDs were a better format though and we knew it. Becuase cars and cd walkmans were rare, my CDs were often copied to cassettes. At some point its good enough, just enjoy the performance.

politelemon 4y ago

> That visit resulted in a second video, published July 20, in which MoFi’s engineers confirmed, with a kind of awkward casualness, that Esposito was correct with his claims. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE

egypturnash 4y ago

Syd Schwartz, Mobile Fidelity’s chief marketing officer, made an apology. “Mobile Fidelity makes great records, the best-sounding records that you can buy,” he said. “There had been choices made over the years and choices in marketing that have led to confusion and anger and a lot of questions, and there were narratives that had been propagating for a while that were untrue or false or myths. We were wrong not to have addressed this sooner.” That sure is a lot of words to say “Yeah, uh, we lied, and we got caught. Sorry.” All these “choices” and “narratives” that just sort of… appeared… without any source to them.

AlbertCory 4y ago
Heavy use of the passive voice -- the dead giveaway for BS. It's interesting whether "digital is better than analog" but hardly relevant here. There are people who believe it's not true, and MoFi lied to them.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

Seems like now that it's out in the open, there'd be a lucrative market in selling the DSDs directly, rather than waiting until it goes to the labels or vendors to re-rip the vinyl remasters into FLAC/MP3?

radicaldreamer 4y ago
There is a market for DSD albums: https://www.nativedsd.com/ https://www.nativedsd.com/ I can see why people would be angry about the deception, but DSD is probably the highest fidelity audio anyone has ever heard (with the right equipment). Audiophiles should be celebrating a situation in which we today can listen to albums in higher fidelity than anyone except those who were around when they were being recorded... and that quality is accessible basically anywhere via the internet.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  You can't edit DSD data in any conventional sense. This makes the use of fully DSD recordings rather limited in more or less any style of recorded music.
jccalhoun 4y ago
DSD is used for SACD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD

eventhorizonpl 4y ago

allears 4y ago

People who claim CDs have more dynamic range than analog are missing the point. Think of it in terms of graphics. 8 bit graphics can represent totally black, or totally white. That's a complete dynamic range. But it's the in-between shades that require more bits to specify. It's the same with audio. It's not how soft or how loud a recording can get. It's the subtle shades of variation. 16 bits is pretty good, but not as good as 24 bits. You can tell by listening to the shimmer of a cymbal, or a plucked string fading to silence. You may not experience it as "stair-stepping," but there's an added degree of realism that more bits can confer. And similarly about frequency range. Any audio system or media has more linear reproduction in the middle part of its range. So if you design a system that exceeds the range of human hearing, you'll get more linearity within the audible part of that range.

bfgoodrich 4y ago
apohn 4y ago
> You can tell by listening to the shimmer of a cymbal, or a plucked string fading to silence. I don't think this is true. A long time ago I was involved in the headphone audiophile community and people were always using the shimmer of a cymbal as how they could tell the difference between MP3s and Lossless, Analog vs Digital, CD vs SACD or whatever. Then they'd do a blind test using Foobar2000 and start saying the whole blind testing methodology is flawed because surely they can hear the difference under normal listening conditions with their $1000 headphone connected to their $3000 amp using their $2000 DAC. My favorite quote was from somebody who said "Nobody in this community cares about music. They only care about their equipment."
- allears 4y ago
  I'm a recording engineer, and I can tell you that there definitely is such a thing as high quality audio. Certainly there are people who believe in snake oil and like to parade their ignorance as though it were knowledge. But if you bother to study the science of audio, read trade magazines, or hang out with engineers and studio owners, you will find that just quoting frequency range or dynamic range, or even noise floor, is not enough to specify an excellent audio signal. And if you think CD audio is as good as it gets, and nobody can tell the difference between that and a studio master tape, for instance, you are dismissing the expertise of the people who have studied and worked to make the recordings you love.

everyone 4y ago

This does seem more like a religious issue, eg. its more about faith, dogma, orthodoxy, and heresy, than it about anything tangible.

focusedone 4y ago
Bingo. Audio religion begging to be marketed to.

thih9 4y ago

> “These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.” But was there an album without DSD to compare to and hear the difference? I guess most people heard just the album with DSD (that admittedly sounded great). What would happen if there was also a One Press version without DSD? Would people with “golden ears” be able to recognize it in a blind test?

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Almost nothing has ever been recorded and released using only DSD. Why not? Most fundamentally because you can't edit DSD data, it has to be converted to PCM format first. This means it can only be used for live takes, with nothing done except topping & tailing the recording. There are are few "ultra-audiophile" recordings that have been made this way, but so few of them that the question of whether it's better or audibly different is almsot irrelevant.
- thih9 4y ago
  > Almost nothing has ever been recorded and released using only DSD. I don’t understand; I was talking about an album without DSD. Why are you referring to albums produced with only DSD?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    My point was tha an album with DSD (only) is so rare that asking about a comparison to album without DSD is a little strange. Almost all albums are produced with digital technology that is not DSD, even the ones that include DSD.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - thih9 4y ago
      I still don’t get it. Why does it matter here whether DSD is rare or not?

radicaldreamer 4y ago

It's likely these records are still better than anything else out there because DSD is an extraordinary format for audio and they were still pulling directly from the masters (if anyone trusts that clarification of the story at this point).

post_break 4y ago

This is so funny. Company touts no digital, then goes on record saying yeah we used digital, completely ruining their reputation. Meanwhile I'm over here still mourning OiNK.

Nav_Panel 4y ago
Don't worry, its legacy lives on. Other sites have taken up the mantle (hmu). OiNK is gone, but not forgotten.
- post_break 4y ago
  How do I get in touch?
  - Nav_Panel 4y ago
    check my profile, twitter is a good easy way, or email me via substack

deltree7 4y ago

Audiophiles:vinyl::HNers:Privacy This is no different than a section HNers fooled by companies like DuckDuckGo and VPNs

tptacek 4y ago

In 2021, on the MoFi page, about their one-step process: MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. Today: MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings, painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. Meanwhile, Michael Fremer, "the dean of audiophile writing": I’ve now spoken to someone who would know and who confirmed, out of necessity off the record for now, that in 2018 Mobile Fidelity cut lacquers using analog master tapes (not copies). Will speculative click bait YouTube videos claiming otherwise be taken down after reading this? (A bunch of this is in the article, I just think the quotes are kind of funny).

Nav_Panel 4y ago

Afaict the cool thing about MoFi pressings (at least, ones from back in the day) is they were done at half speed. So, when the lacquer is cut from the master tape, they'd do it at half playback speed rather than full playback speed, which allowed the physical cutting head to track the high frequencies more accurately. I can say that this absolutely does make a difference during playback; my MoFi copy of Aja sounds very good (almost as good as the digital version!). That said, vinyl is effectively an obsolete medium. I say this as someone who owns upwards of 1k vinyl records. I buy them because many recordings remain inaccessible or very challenging to find digitally. But I would never buy a newly released album on vinyl over digital if I had the choice and if both were using the same master.

notRobot 4y ago
I'm genuinely really curious, what kinds of recordings remain inaccessible in digital formats? How do you find out about them? And where do you procure them from? Do you mind sharing a couple examples?
- Nav_Panel 4y ago
  Biggest one was country. Lots of impossible to find stuff from the 50s thru the 70s. I'd learn about it by digging at the record shop near where I went to college. There's not much of an audience for it anymore, so the labels have no incentive to dig through their catalogs. Here's a country album I've never find a proper digital version of, only bad vinyl rips: https://www.discogs.com/master/402577-Mike-Auldridge-Dobro https://www.discogs.com/master/402577-Mike-Auldridge-Dobro In a completely different direction, 80s Japanese pop (city pop). I would listen to compilations, look up my favorite tracks on discogs to find the album it came from, and then... No dice. Often they're available on both CD and vinyl, but the vinyl version is often cheaper (because they made more original pressings than CD reissues). Sometimes they never get reissued on CD and vinyl is the only option. Here's a random example I found while digging around at a record store in Japan: https://www.discogs.com/release/20947423-%E7%9B%B8%E9%A6%AC%E7%BE%8E%E5%A5%BD-%E6%B1%90%E9%87%8C-Shiori https://www.discogs.com/release/20947423-%E7%9B%B8%E9%A6%AC%... Last case is dance music, which comes in 12" singles rather than albums. To find that stuff, I used to go to a used junk store that devoted its entire basement to records. Again, a lot of 80s and even 90s material never made it to digital.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ben7799 4y ago

Audiophile is full of nonsense but one of the more hilarious ones in something like this where the goal is "no digital" is it's been a long time since you could guarantee there was no digital going on between the instrument and the master. They talk about Thriller a lot. Is it possible to have a completely analog copy of Thriller if it turned out a guitar went through a digital rack unit or a digital synthesizer was used? I don't know the answer to the question but in 1982 there were plenty of digital effects available. The more recent you get the more unlikely it is the signal got from the instrument onto the master without going digital at some point, even if the recording is done on tape and then transferred to vinyl in a completely analog old fashioned sense. If I plug my guitar directly into my amp and you're in the room you hear 100% analog. If I use the pedal board it got transferred A <->D <-> at least once before it went into the amp. Possibly with a dry signal staying analog but the effects might be digital and mixed back in.

swores 4y ago
I don't agree with the "no digital!" crowd, but surely their claim is that digital can't accurately reproduce the original intended sounds, so (even if they were right) that wouldn't make them need to boycott anything where the original intended sound includes something produced digitally? It's not like they're claiming to be allergic to digital noise, just that it loses fidelity in the transfers.
madaxe_again 4y ago
There are digital pedals? Honest question - I had a side gig at school repairing and modifying pedals - it was all just transistors and op-amps, bistable oscillators, etc. - nothing digital at all.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Oh yeah totally. There are pedals these days that are a ADC->DSP->DAC. What's actually on the DSP can be programmable, so you have pedals who's function can be changed with the twist of a knob. They kept the same interface (aka quarter inch cables, and foot-stompable buttons), just modernized the interior. They range from something like the Zoom MS-70 CDR at $150, to $1,200 for one with multiple buttons, an analog pedal, and is laptop controllable via USB. (Line 6 Helix LT or Boss GT-1000.)

brightball 4y ago

I spent a year working on a site that catered to the audiophile world and it blew my mind at the time. The lengths that people will go to are incredible. There was one guy who had a $200,000 house with over $2 million worth of audio to setup his sound system. He had these special electrical units installed outside his house that were supposed to guarantee a perfectly steady current.

user_7832 4y ago

(Meta) I was hoping HN would stay civil and while it mostly is, I’d like to remind that what people do in their homes for themselves isn’t really something worth circle jerking over. If you like expensive gear and find a difference, great. If you don’t find a difference, that’s also fine. Please don’t bother attacking either group for their (relatively) harmless views.

zac23or 4y ago

Audiophile world is strange... Monster cables vs Coat hangers: https://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables/ https://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-... Warm up new headphones: https://soundsightheadphones.com/guides/do-i-need-to-warm-up-new-headphones/ https://soundsightheadphones.com/guides/do-i-need-to-warm-up...

jef_leppard 4y ago

This whole thing reminds me of the time some renowned wine connoisseurs blind taste tested vintage wines and they slipped 2 buck chuck in there. A few of them picked the 2 buck chuck as their favorite. None of them called it out as inferior wine. They all said stuff like "hints of smoke. Berry finish."

iasay 4y ago
I've heard a "wine expert" spew a load of rubbish like that and when offered it was obviously corked. Tasted like vinegar.
libraryatnight 4y ago
I recall reading a similar piece where they gave expert wine judges flights of wines to judge but some glasses would be the same wine from the same bottle and they'd judge it differently.
ip26 4y ago
I'm no pro but have found 2 buck chuck is pretty obvious. If only because it makes me feel ill. Was the test perhaps using midgrade rather than rotgut?

Beltalowda 4y ago

In 2006 a "Controversies" section was removed from their Wikipedia page[1] after "a letter of complaint". You can still read it of course[2], part of which is: "Additionally, some both inside and outside the audiophile community have criticized MFSL's [aka MoFi] willingness to stretch its "Original Master Recording" logo. For example, critics note that several MFSL Mk I releases are not from the original masters; one notorious example is the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour". More troublesome to some, though, is MFSL's recent habit of releasing gold CDs that are sourced from digital master tapes instead of the original analog masters." So it seems these allegations go back quite some time. For what it's worth, I don't really buy in to the whole "audiophile" stuff and am skeptical you can hear the difference, but delivering "B" while it says "A" on the label is essentially defrauding your customers, and possibly illegal (or at least, it ought to be). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Fidelity_Sound_Lab&oldid=40484875#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Fidelity_S...

Sporktacular 4y ago

Seems like if they had used high quality analog tape instead of DSD they would only be getting criticism for not calling it 'two-step'. There are some amazing analogue mastering recorders like the Ampex ATR-102 which they could have used. Tape wear would have been an eventual issue if they had to re-press hundreds of times, but that's just what the vinyl nuts want right? But on the other hand, they lied. Seems Jim Davis deserves every bit of criticism he gets. As do some of the golden-eared audiophile journalists who also happily oiled the BS machine.

peanut_worm 4y ago

Audiophiles are funny. I remember seeing some guy on the internet was selling expensive “sound crystals” that you would put near your stereo that would make the sound “warmer” or “clearer”.

creakingstairs 4y ago
Someone shared this link last time there was a thread about audiophiles. This person claims their custom memcpy makes the sound better. https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/11/119979.html https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/11/11997...
- akaij 4y ago
  Thank you for this! Made my day :)

topgun77 4y ago

Sporktacular 4y ago

Any article involving high end digital vs. analogue audio is guaranteed to spawn a huge HN discussion about how gullible audiophiles are vs. how high quality audio is more subtle than a few good numbers. You can count on it, like a precisely timed quartz oscillator. And as long as the power is on, it likewise will never be settled.

dopylitty 4y ago

Honestly the thing that surprised me most was how real everyone in the story was. The record store owner is a real dude. The record company has a bunch of real engineers who care about the product. Even the executives seem somewhat human. It’s such a refreshing change from faceless stores with ever changing all caps names on faceless enormous e-commerce sites selling mass produced garbage. And fleecing audiophiles is just good clean fun anyway.

nikau 4y ago
> And fleecing audiophiles is just good clean fun anyway My dad ran a small manufacturing business in the 80s, one guy he did a lot of work for wanted a small batch run of spikes with a top thread made from titanium. My dad did the quotes and asked what's its for, they were spikes for putting under speakers. Of course my dad mentioned it would make more sense and be much cheaper to make from stainless steel, to which the guy just responded "I'm selling to idiots with more money than brains who want a talking point, that's why its titanium." He also machined a bunch of titanium inserts for wooden volume knobs that supposedly clarified the sound or some rubbish like that.

ernestespinosa 4y ago

iamwil 4y ago

As I was reading the title, I was thinking...Phoenix web framework...Elixir...record store, database? influenced the audio world? Had a read it a couple times til I realized it was talking about AZ, and literally a record store.

Night_Thastus 4y ago

"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively, vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have nearly the resolution or nearly the dynamic range that a high-quality digital recording will have. Not to mention the higher noise floor. You lose a lot of the original audio with vinyl. I dislike peddling it as somehow the objectively superior option. Or more "natural" or close to the original. That's nonsense. Don't get me wrong, DACs aren't perfect. But with good recordings and mastering, a good DAC and overall system, it'll sound great. If someone still likes vinyl knowing its faults, that's 100% fine. Nothing wrong with that, everyone in audio likes the sound a bit differently. Some people absolutely love the sound of vinyl and having a cool physical collection with gorgeous cover art. Power to them!

iamacyborg 4y ago
> Vinyl doesn't have nearly the resolution or nearly the dynamic range that a high-quality digital recording will have. Not to mention that setting up a tonearm just right appears to be a feat of wizardry, or being sure that the recording was properly mastered for vinyl.
naikrovek 4y ago
if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things better, imo.) https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
- jstanley 4y ago
  I don't agree with the characterisation in your first sentence (nothing is ever perfect in analogue), but the video was very interesting, thanks for sharing!

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

So I was debugging / documenting last night and put the "smoking gun" video on the background. I don't know why. I guess I felt if the WaPo was raving it must be good. It was four middle aged men crammed into a cupboard, talking. And while I was not paying attention to every word, I missed the gun and the smoke. Where is the bit where a MoFi employee says "we use digital"? All I heard was waffle and self congratulatory

gregsadetsky 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE 2:12, “we do have 4x DSD” i.e. digital stream 3:50, about making copies of tapes, “we bring a computer with 4x DSD analog to digital converters”
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Oh is that what that meant - I guess I am used to journalists "telegraphing" things but the youtuber just seemed to carry on. That sounded like "oh yes we do that" to me but the lack of reaction meant Inmisunderstood Maybe I am too used to over the top influencers and presenters signalling everything I should react to. But sometimes if I am in a jargon filled world it would be nice for a guide.
  - pmyteh 4y ago
    That's part of the skill of a good interviewer: making sure that the audience can follow along, understanding what's actually being said. The interviewer here is obviously an audio enthusiast/record shop owner rather than a journalist, so it's not surprising that they haven't had so much practice at this! (I've done interviewing for academic research, which has different goals but is also a skill. It's interesting how difficult it is at first.)

KingOfCoders 4y ago

So a company used digital, audiophiles bought thousands of these, loved them and didn't hear anything.

dieselgate 4y ago

Cool article, wasn’t familiar with MoFi or them being a small shop based in Sebastopol. Interesting context as this seems very appropriate for the current times. As a society we are increasingly facing the digitization of basically everything. I’m not an audiophile but like vinyl when possible, too bad “purer” all analog recordings are so “difficult” to produce. But hey these recordings are pretty old and maybe we should just be glad with what we have. (Obviously false/misleading advertising is lame but at least the MoFi staff was honest)

codedokode 4y ago

> These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t. That's not fair because they didn't have both analog and digital records to compare.

gadders 4y ago

I wonder how many of the people upset about this could even tell the difference on a blind listen? I don't know if it's very, but I'd bet its a very low %.

rramadass 4y ago

Question: Is "Hi-Res Audio" just snake oil or is there any Science behind it? Technical answers please.

xtiansimon 4y ago

Sounds like guaranteed “organic”, “vegan”, “fair-trade”—take your pick—failure to disclose. Whatever you believe about digital or analog, lying to the faithful has its consequences.