Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

We recently auditioned the Mobile Fidelity One-Step pressing of Blue and made the notes regarding the sound you see below.

We focussed on the quality of their pressing’s vocal reproduction, for the simple reason that a Joni Mitchell album that gets the vocals wrong is a Joni Mitchell album that no music lover and certainly no audiophile  would ever want to play.

The fact that some audiophiles do want to play this record speaks poorly of their ability to reproduce it properly. Accurate playback will reveal the problems with Joni’s voice described in detail below. The post-it for side one is on the left, for side two on the right.

Side One

• Tonally not far off, a bit too stringy and flat. Not awful. Congested vocals at peaks, harsh. 1+

Side Two

• Vocal peaks like “traveling, traveling, traveling…” or “California” get squashed and harsh, lacking the real dynamics, presence and space of the vocals. No grade. (Awful in other words.)

Notice that only the vocals are mentioned in the notes — not how deep the bass goes, not how high the highs are, not the tone of the piano, not the pluck of the lap dulcimer, not the black background, not the soundstaging — none of those things that audiophiles — including us! — like to talk about endlessly in our reviews so that everyone will know how attuned we were to every aspect of the recording.

For this album that kind of listening is unnecessary.

When the voice is wrong, the sound is wrong. What more do you need to know?

And when the voice is wrong on a Joni Mitchell record, you have a worthless piece of vinyl no matter how much you may have paid for it.

(Other titles that get the voice wrong and therefore should be avoided by audiophiles of all stripes can be found here.)

We noted in our first ever Hot Stamper listing for Blue what the best pressings of the album are able to offer the discriminating audiophile:

The best copies bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and our better playback equipment) have revealed nuances to this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with the music all over again.

Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

That was probably wrritten in 2007 or thereabouts and simply carried over to subsequent listings in the ensuing years.

Nowadays we find little to fault in the sound of the best pressings of Blue. There is no need to ignore shortcomings that were never really there.

To be fair, not all of our Hot Stampers will be completely free from congestion and harshness in the loudest passages. As you would expect, the lowest-graded copies will have some problems that are not heard on the higher-graded copies.

But the kinds of problems one hears on this MoFi, to this degree, in the midrange? Not a chance.

Which means this one belongs in the Mobile Fidelity hall of shame.

My CD sounds better.

All three of the Mobile Fidelity One-Step pressings we have played to date have been awful — Blue, Tapestry, and Thriller. The fact that this company is still in business is astonishing to those of us who can hear how badly they screw up every tape they get their hands on.

Further Reading

You can read Robert Brook’s excellent review of the MoFi Blue here.

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Further Reading

• More on the subject of Half-Speed mastering
• More letters, reviews and commentaries for the music of Joni Mitchell
• First get good sound – then you can recognize and acquire good records