Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joan Baez Available Now
Mobile Fidelity released their version of Diamonds and Rust on Anadisq in 1995, and if you want to hear a pressing that’s not murky, compressed and opaque, you would be wise to avoid their Heavy Vinyl Half-Speed.
Somehow it ended up on the TAS Super Disc List, but we could find nothing “super” about it. We felt it more properly belonged on our list of records that have no business being called Super Discs.
It was a real muckfest, as was to be expected from a record mastered by this awful label during the Anadisq era, the darkest chapter in the disgraceful history of Mobile Fidelity, which, considering the consistently dismal quality of their output, is really saying something.
Ken Lee Strikes Again
Many of the worst of them were mastered by a Mr. Ken Lee. If you happen to come across a record in a store with his name in the credits, or his initials in the deadwax, you are best advised to drop it back in the bin and keep moving. Anything else is just asking for trouble.
To be fair, MoFi made some reasonably good sounding records too. For those of you whose budget is on the limited side, if you find an affordable copy of any of these MoFis, you are probably not wasting your money.
Although I had a long way to go in this hobby in the early days of my audiophile record business, even then I could tell how bad the Anadisq series that Mobile Fidelity released in the 90s was. They produced one awful sounding record after another, with not a single winner that I knew of. I sold them — my bad, an ethical lapse for which I must apologize — but I sure never recommended them or had anything good to say about them.
The typical album MoFi remastered on Anadisq suffered from a great many of the list of shortcomings you see below.
If you want to avoid records with these faults — and you should — we advise you to avoid any of the records that are linked to here.
- More titles that are dark,
- More titles that are murky,
- More titles that are recessed,
- More titles that are compressed,
- More titles that are thick,
- More titles that are veiled, and
- More titles that are opaque.
We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record loving friends at Better Records.
Is this the worst sounding pressing of Diamonds and Rust ever made?
That’s hard to say. But it is the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be fair warning for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of trash.
Further Reading
- Turning skeptics into believers
- Forget your theories, just get more data
- Letters comparing top quality pressings to their Half-Speed mastered counterparts
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.