Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now
The last time I played a copy of the MoFi Chicago debut was at least twenty years ago. The all tube system I had back then was much darker and dramatically less resolving than the one I have now, having made score upon score of improvements in every area of reproduction in the interim.
I actually had some nice things to say about it. I didn’t find it too bright the way so many MoFi pressings are. Here’s what I wrote all those years ago:
What do we like about this MoFi?
For one thing it doesn’t have the phony boosted top end most of their pressings do. It was mastered by Jack Hunt, not Stan Ricker, and Jack Hunt likes to EQ his projects without all the extra top end that made Mobile Fidelity famous. (Great for dull speakers, don’t you know.)
The other thing this MoFi has going for it is tons of weight down where it needs it, in the all-important lower midrange, and extending well into the mid-bass area.
Chicago is about brass and you want that brass to have weight and power.
So many domestic copies are leaned out, and many are hard sounding. On both counts this MoFi excels over copies with those problems. Our White Hot Stamper was definitely better, but we don’t find those very often, not to mention the fact that we happened to charge a ton of money for it.
I did take issue with the MoFi bass though.
This is where your MoFi falls apart, as good as it may be in other areas.
There IS no lower octave of bass on their pressing.
It’s just not there, so don’t bother looking for it. And the bass that is there has that sloppy quality that Half-Speed mastered records are famous for. At least they’re famous for that around here.
For some reason nobody else seems to notice how bad Half-Speed bass is except for us and a few of our customers.
This to me is a clear sign that the vast majority of modern audiophile stereos are seriously bass-deficient, something I’ve been writing about for more than two decades.
I don’t see any sign of improvement either. Why the newly resuscitated Mobile Fidelity chose to master their records at half speed is a complete mystery to me. They can only sound worse that way. There is no benefit to that technology that I am aware of.
If you know of one please drop me a line.
Further Reading
- Collecting better sounding records
- Some stereos make it difficult to find better sounding pressings
- Stop doing these things and you too can find better sounding LPs
If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.
At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is lacking on your copy of the album.
And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.
