Mobile Fidelity’s Digital Vinyl Debacle: Are your records really analog?

[jeffca]

Quite interesting. A guy from an audio web site hasn't offered thoroughly non-truthful, opinionated info.

I'm quite taken aback. It happens so rarely.

Keep it up.

 

[jeffca]

Taking hi-res digital and porting it to vinyl is directly equivalent to taking a Blu-ray disc and putting it on VHS tape. If you think you can hear the difference because of the source, you are fooling yourself.

Also, all of the points made about analog tape in the article are thoroughly valid.

Hi-res digital recordings were perfect to the human hearing system 20 years ago. They are even better now with the latest equipment. That is a fact.

Compared to most animals, humans' ability to hear is not very good. Sorry about your lousy hearing.

 

[VonMagnum]

@jeffca - Is there someone that said something you're replying to I'm not seeing?

 

[killdozzer]

I read the article and really liked it. Some great points were made.

Although I'm a "better performing medium is always better" kind of a guy, I still think a fraud is a fraud is a fraud.

Some might say it's a lesser fraud to give someone something better than they expected and I might agree that on a fraud scale it probably is. Still all frauds should be way below the bar and shouldn't be allowed.

If you claim you're offering a product that is a result of an entire chain being analogue, provide exactly that or clearly state where it wasn't.

Just advertise it for what it is.

 

[VincentL]

From the view comments I see here, that some people are total folowers, like Apple bigots, Trump followers, Beta tape proponents from the 70s, and now the vinyl gang, as well as any other cult type followings/groups. I think what is hard for the 'Die Hard' vinyl followers is an attempt, that will probably remain for 'ages', to try to recover from the obvious fact that what they touted for so long, and with fantastic amount of money, is simply not true. Their very outdated notion that vinyl is the best sound past over 40 years ago. It appears that Killdozzer implied this with his comment “better performing medium is always better” that vinyl was a product that gives better sound, although it is not totally clear what he really meant. But if he was, this is utterly ridiculous. Then I see VonMagnum was questioning and also implying that MoFi did nothing wrong! More ridiculousness! Then he went on to say that laser discs (and the implication goes to say that CDs as well would also be in this group), are not digital, which is more utter BS. Analog MEANS that there is no processing going on when the medium is being played, other than perhaps some frequency adjustments, which ALL vinyl albums go thru when played. Tape decks do this as well, and also have a bias setting as well that is used when laying the music/sounds onto tape. Jeffca is more in tune with reality, and it is a delight to hear his comments.

If anyone cares, and really opens their eyes, not that the truth is out of the bag, I have all the forms of recorded music in my home theater, which includes a turntable, a reel-reel tape deck (one of the best ever made for home use), a dedicated CD player, a DVD/SACD/AUDIO DVD player, a DVR, streaming input from Roku/Prime, and a very high end tuner - another analog device. The best sounding source is the SACD, although I have had a SACD that sounded quite bad, and the equivalent straight CD of the same album (a Diana Krall album) sounded great. This means that any music medium can be made poorly sound wise. The next best sound is from CD payer. The next best is from DVD movies or music videos. The next best sound is from my reel-reel tape deck. The next best is from vinyl, but only from records that have not been played much. Each time you play vinyl, it wears the record. I use to buy records (pretty much before CDs came out), record them onto my tape deck when the vinyl was new, and sell them to my friend for half the cost of the album. I put the tape deck listening above the vinyl because the recording on my tape deck does not change, no matter how often I play them, but records do wear. They also sometimes get clicks and pops when playing them back, which is not just a wear issue.

 

[Big-Q]

The vinyl-only group just prefers the sound of music through the "tone control" of their playback chain. While I certainly love my record ritual (play one most days), for me CDs or SACDs are the best overall. I can play the CD or I can rip it to FLAC and also enjoy it through my ROON core or ROON ARC when on the go. I have done the A/B comparison many times and in only a few instances do I prefer a record pressing. To each his own.

 

[highfigh]

Bias is used only during recording, not playback. Your other points are valid.

He knows that. Applying bias during playback would destroy the recording.

 

[highfigh]

From the view comments I see here, that some people are total folowers, like Apple bigots, Trump followers, Beta tape proponents from the 70s, and now the vinyl gang, as well as any other cult type followings/groups. I think what is hard for the 'Die Hard' vinyl followers is an attempt, that will probably remain for 'ages', to try to recover from the obvious fact that what they touted for so long, and with fantastic amount of money, is simply not true. Their very outdated notion that vinyl is the best sound past over 40 years ago. It appears that Killdozzer implied this with his comment “better performing medium is always better” that vinyl was a product that gives better sound, although it is not totally clear what he really meant. But if he was, this is utterly ridiculous. Then I see VonMagnum was questioning and also implying that MoFi did nothing wrong! More ridiculousness! Then he went on to say that laser discs (and the implication goes to say that CDs as well would also be in this group), are not digital, which is more utter BS. Analog MEANS that there is no processing going on when the medium is being played, other than perhaps some frequency adjustments, which ALL vinyl albums go thru when played. Tape decks do this as well, and also have a bias setting as well that is used when laying the music/sounds onto tape. Jeffca is more in tune with reality, and it is a delight to hear his comments.

If anyone cares, and really opens their eyes, not that the truth is out of the bag, I have all the forms of recorded music in my home theater, which includes a turntable, a reel-reel tape deck (one of the best ever made for home use), a dedicated CD player, a DVD/SACD/AUDIO DVD player, a DVR, streaming input from Roku/Prime, and a very high end tuner - another analog device. The best sounding source is the SACD, although I have had a SACD that sounded quite bad, and the equivalent straight CD of the same album (a Diana Krall album) sounded great. This means that any music medium can be made poorly sound wise. The next best sound is from CD payer. The next best is from DVD movies or music videos. The next best sound is from my reel-reel tape deck. The next best is from vinyl, but only from records that have not been played much. Each time you play vinyl, it wears the record. I use to buy records (pretty much before CDs came out), record them onto my tape deck when the vinyl was new, and sell them to my friend for half the cost of the album. I put the tape deck listening above the vinyl because the recording on my tape deck does not change, no matter how often I play them, but records do wear. They also sometimes get clicks and pops when playing them back, which is not just a wear issue.

If you want to pick on Beta, you should at least know that it was inherently better than VHS because the head drum is larger, so it can use the higher read/write speed to produce better recordings & playback. Also, VHS stresses the lower edge of the tape to the point of stretching, which causes tracking problems. The only thing BHS did that was 'better' is 8 hour tapes, which produced video that looked like absolute crap.

Also, Beta & VHS sales were roughly equal, worldwide- it was the US market where VHS had a major sales advantage because, 'MORE'.

 

[VincentL]

If you want to pick on Beta, you should at least know that it was inherently better than VHS because the head drum is larger, so it can use the higher read/write speed to produce better recordings & playback. Also, VHS stresses the lower edge of the tape to the point of stretching, which causes tracking problems. The only thing BHS did that was 'better' is 8 hour tapes, which produced video that looked like absolute crap.

Also, Beta & VHS sales were roughly equal, worldwide- it was the US market where VHS had a major sales advantage because, 'MORE'.

Point well taken, although I only saw the activity here in the US, and those few that lingered on about Beta. Also, don't forget that there was a Super VHS, which came close to SD resolution (the TV resolution at that time) back then (400 lines vs. standard VHS of 220), which is what all my VCRs were.

 

[isolar8001]

Point well taken, although I only saw the activity here in the US, and those few that lingered on about Beta. Also, don't forget that there was a Super VHS, which came close to SD resolution (the TV resolution at that time) back then (400 lines vs. standard VHS of 220), which is what all my VCRs were.

What really sealed Betas fate is when the porn industry adopted VHS....a real shame as Beta was far better quality.

 

[highfigh]

What really sealed Betas fate is when the porn industry adopted VHS....a real shame as Beta was far better quality.

Same reason BD won over HD-DVD- porn industry.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Same reason BD won over HD-DVD- porn industry.

BD won over HD-DVD due to the PS3. Porn had pretty much gone entirely online when BD/HD-DVD were having their battle. I followed the HD-DVD/BD format war from before either format came out. Porn was pretty much a non-player in that market. Neither format was selling a ton of players, but HD-DVD was the one selling more due to subsidized players. Toshiba hoped to flood the market with cheap HD-DVD players so that Blu-ray wouldn't have a chance. They were doing well in this! They had twice as many players on the market, maybe more. Their movies were selling better as well. More players = more buyers = more movies sold.

Then the PS3 dropped and in a week everything changed. I mean, literally in a week. Warner Brothers dropped HD-DVD movie releases the week after the PS3 was released, The PS3 was a incredibly successful product, as we all know, and sold over 87 million units.
When the PS3 was released in November of 2006, about 270,000 HD-DVD players, in total, had been sold. This included Toshiba players and add-on units for the XBox. That was after being available since April of that year. By March of the following year, nearly 3.7 million PS3s had been sold. Ten times the total number of HD-DVD players which had been sold in total.

HD-DVD died because of the PS3 and because studios only wanted to make discs in a single format, so they went with the format that had the most players in people's homes.

I still have my fat boy PS3 console that I got on day-one release.
I also still have a brand new Toshiba HD-DVD player in the box.

Oh, and on topic: Vinyl is dumb. Not really, anyone that enjoys listening on vinyl should enjoy it. But, seriously, if someone is shocked that their vinyl came from a high quality digital master, then changes their opinion because now their perfect ears and sensibilities are at odds with each other has some real personal f'd up issues. It's not the type of person I would ever want to meet or deal with. Enjoy the music, screw the format it is on.

 

[Trebdp83]

Yeah, had the fat PS3 and XBOX 360 with HD DVD add on. Went through about three of each console. Didn’t exactly run cool those things. Still have my Toshiba HD-A35 in my setup.

It certainly didn’t help that the PS3 came with a blu-ray player built in, even if it was gimped in a few ways. The XBOX 360 HD DVD add on was even more gimped at HDMI 1.2, not 1.3 so no lossless audio could be had using it. Funny, both the PS5 and XBOX Series X have 4K blu-ray players in them today and both are gimped.

Besides the crazy number of blu-ray players out in the wild with the PS3 release, HD DVD was not region locked. This was not a plus for the movie studios and only helped blu-ray even more. Even without the shift from movie studios, PS3 games themselves were on blu-ray disc while XBOX games were on DVD. The HD DVD add on just didn’t do much of anything for the format. We now continue with your regularly scheduled program already in progress.

 

[fmw]

Yes, but what a waste of time, effort and expense, when they could have just issued a digital disc. That is why I have no new vinyl in my collection. It is pointless.

You can really guess this, as there are now so few tape machines in top condition, and fewer and fewer people left who no how to keep them in perfect condition and alignment. That is quickly becoming a lost art. There really is only one source of master tape, and it is very costly. In addition they made their tapes very high bias for some reason, and many machines can not provide that degree of record bias, as the record amps do not have the output voltage from the bias oscillator.

This ship sailed long ago, and the audiophools have to face it. Turntables are fine for legacy collections pre nineties, and for that odd LP you just have to have for collectable reasons and it is not available in digital format. I have not bought any new vinyl since the digital era.

I went further than that. I dubbed all of my vinyl to digital and now play it from a computer drive, clicks, pops and all. The records and the turntables are in storage.

 

[Audiophile Heretic]

Mobile Fidelity has been caught in a lie. After years of falsely claiming to produce pure analog vinyl, the audiophile record label must face the music. It has recently been revealed that the company regularly uses digital DSD transfers in the production of its acclaimed remasters. Ironically, many analog audiophile purists praised the sound of these digital records without ever knowing any better. Now that the cat is out of the bag, will this devalue the MoFi records or will audiophiles continue to embrace them?

Technically, the vinyl records are still analog. Only the masters are digital. There is that thing in the signal path called a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) before the compressors and equalizers that lead to the lacquer cutting lathe.

So, if the MoFi listeners are ultimately listening to digital masters transferred to analog vinyl, why not move the DAC to their location and listen to digital recordings directly and skip the entire analog vinyl record creation and playback process?

This proves that there is no inherent superiority to the sound quality of analog vinyl. Any difference in the sound quality between digital audio and analog vinyl is distortion added by the analog vinyl media creation and playback process. The analog vinyl media creation and playback process must also distort original analog masters.

Has anybody built an analog electronic signal processor that can duplicate the distortion added to an analog audio signal by the analog vinyl media creation and playback process? Maybe with settings for an audiophile's favorite turntable, tonearm, phono cartridge, and phono preamplifier combinations? Different combinations provide different distortion. You would need to duplicate the gradually changing stylus tracking error due to deviation from tangency produced by a pivoted tone arm, the changing linear groove speed due to non-radial arc motion of the pivoted tonearm, and the decreasing linear groove speed due to decreasing radial distance from the center of the constant angular velocity turntable.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

 

[j_garcia]

I started watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple. In one of the episodes, one of the characters has a bit of a commentary on vinyl and they argue "it sounds better" "no it doesn't" so someone on the production/writing team is an Audioholic

 

[Mikado463]

good video, I enjoyed watching it.

I had mentioned I believe in an earlier post that 17 years ago I helped organized the Martin Logan owners group on a pilgrimage to the home of ML in Lawrence, Ks. We took a day trip to Salina and toured Blue Heaven Studios, I believe it to be all analog.........

http://www.blueheavenstudios.com/images/1878.PAR.Blue%20Heaven%20Studios%20website-ready%20PDF.pdf

 

[davidscott]

Don't any newer Vinyl releases include some sort of digital

If you want to pick on Beta, you should at least know that it was inherently better than VHS because the head drum is larger, so it can use the higher read/write speed to produce better recordings & playback. Also, VHS stresses the lower edge of the tape to the point of stretching, which causes tracking problems. The only thing BHS did that was 'better' is 8 hour tapes, which produced video that looked like absolute crap.

Also, Beta & VHS sales were roughly equal, worldwide- it was the US market where VHS had a major sales advantage because, 'MORE'.

I had a Sony Super Betamax back in the mid 80s. That sucker cost a relative fortune at the time. Currently I have a Toshiba combo VHS high fi DVD player that's not even hooked up. I keep it as a backup to my Sony DVD players in case one should crap out. I guess I could record some music if I wanted, I do have a couple of TDK super VHS tapes. But these days what's the point? Recording LPs or CDs to a lesser format makes no sense and I can stream anything that I don't own. Hope I didn't open a can of worms.