Half-Speed Reviews

Close to You on Mobile Fidelity Vinyl – Is This the Sound Audiophiles Were Clamoring For in ’83?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Sinatra Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for the first of Frank’s many releases from 1957, Close to You. We were fortunate to have the Mobile Fidelity pressing from the ’80s box set to play against the mostly original pressings we had accumulated since our last shootout in 2020.

It takes a long time to find enough clean copies to get a shootout going. Four years is fairly typical these days I would imagine.

As you can see from our notes, side one of this MoFi was just awful. Can you blame us if we didn’t bother to play side two?

P.S. I Love You

  • Over-textured violin
  • Spitty, gritty vocals
  • Hollow and dry

Close To You

  • Very clean
  • Bass and vocals really lacking body and warmth

Our grade, had we given it one, would have had to have been a big fat F.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

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The Fantasy Film World of… “Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bernard Herrmann Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Obviously our customers know by now that a Hot Stamper London or Decca pressing is going to be far better than the Anadisq that MoFi cut in the mid-90s.

How much better?

Words fail me.

Their record was a complete disaster. Perhaps some of the MoFi collectors didn’t notice because they had nothing to compare it to. 

God forbid they would ever lower themselves to buy as common a pressing as a London. Had they done so, what they would have heard is huge amounts of musical information that is simply nowhere to be found on the MoFi.

There is a place on this album, I failed to note exactly where, in which a group of tubas play a descending scale that is somewhat buried in the mix. On the London, they can clearly be heard and recognized as tubas. On the MoFi, I don’t think they can be heard except as some general group of low notes, and anyone thinking that they were tubas would be guessing, the sound is that murky, muddy, and ill-defined.

Robert Pincus once left a Post-It note stuck to the MoFi jacket of a copy he was playgrading for me that summed up our thoughts on the quality of their mastering to a “t”:

“Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

It’s positively shameful. This music is so good. On top of that, it’s custom made for audiophiles. Audiophiles are the ones who can appreciate the new colors Herrmann created, using what a wise man once called the single greatest instrument ever invented: the symphony orchestra.

If this Mobile Fidelity LP isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I can’t imagine what would be. To find a more poorly remastered record, you would really have to work at it.

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Sounds Unheard Of! – Another Analogue Productions Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring Shelly Manne Available Now

Remember the 90s Acoustic Sounds Analog Revival series mastered by Stan Ricker? This was one of the titles they did, and completely ruined of course, as was the case with all the titles from that series that we played.

Ricker boosted the hell out of the top end, as is his wont, so all the percussion had the phony MoFi exaggerated sizzle and tizziness that we dislike so much around here at Better Records.

Yes, it’s the very same phony top that many audiophiles do not seem bothered by to this day. 

The whole series was an audio disaster, but oddly enough, I cannot remember reading a single word of criticism in the audiophile press discussing the shortcomings of that series of (badly) Half-Speed mastered LPs — outside of my own reviews of course. Has anything in audio really changed?

If I were to try to “reverse engineer” the sound of a system that could play this record and hide its many faults, I would look for a system that was thick, dark and overly smooth, with no real extension on the top end to speak of. Stan’s 10k boost — along with other the colorations he favors — is just what the doctor ordered for such a system.

I know that sound. I had a system in the 90s with many of the same shortcomings, but of course I didn’t know any of that.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then.

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MoFi’s Pictures at an Exhibition Is as Wrong as Wrong Can Be

moussmofiHot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mussorgsky Available Now

If you like orchestral spectaculars, have we got the record for you.

It’s the same recording of the works, but the one you want is on the real EMI label and pressed on UK import vinyl, not this awful Half-Speed recut from Japan.

The record you see pictured is awful sounding, a true hall of shame pressing.

And why are the colors of the album jacket so washed out? Compare their cover to the real thing below. As we often find ourselves asking after reviewing one of these MoFi records: What were they thinking?

The MoFi mastering of Pictures at an Exhibition and The Firebird here are a bad joke played on credulous audiophiles. And yes, I bought them both back when they came out. I was as credulous as everybody else buying these so-called superior pressings.

All that phony boosted top end makes the strings sound funny and causes mischief in virtually every other part of the orchestra as well. Not surprisingly, those boosted highs are missing from the real EMIs.

These appear to be the unbearably bright strings that Stan Ricker favors — why, we have no idea.

The proof? Find me a Mobile Fidelity classical record with that little SR/2 in the dead wax that does not have bright string tone. I have yet to hear one.

The last time I played a copy of the MFSL I found the sound so hi-fi-ish I couldn’t stand to be in the room with it for more than a minute. Of course the bass is jello as well.

The EMI with the right stampers is worlds better.

(Warning: The domestic Angel regular version and the 45 are both awful.)

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. (More reviews here.) I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another.

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The CBS Half-Speed of Off the Wall Is a Joke

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Pure MUD. No top end whatsoever!

I remember when we audiophiles looked down our noses at CBS Half-Speeds because they weren’t pressed in Japan and sold at a notable discount to the offerings of Mobile Fidelity and their competitors.

But we were so desperate back then for top quality pressings that we bought them anyway!

Are audiophiles any less desperate today? They seem pretty desperate to me. They approach these new Heavy Vinyl records naively instead of skeptically, assuming they will be better sounding in exactly the same way I assumed the Half Speeds I was buying forty years ago would be better sounding.

The more things change…

If you are buying these modern pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed masters.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy. And if for some reason you disagree that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the best.

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Imagine on MoFi Heavy Vinyl from 2003

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Lennon Available Now

Sonic Grade: B

The last time I played this record was probably in the mid-2000s. Not sure what I would think of it now. Probably not much. Back in those days we thought it was a reasonably good sounding pressing, but it’s doubtful we had ever heard an exceptionally good version of the album, as it would be years before we managed to do our first shootout for it. To see what we have to say about the record now, please click here.

Our review from many years ago:

I played this when it came out, and I have to hand it to the new MOFI, they did a great job with this one. It sounds better than I’ve ever heard it, and KILLS the old MoFi vinyl, which is the version we did the shootout with.

It was a short comparison, as in, no comparison. The earlier MoFi Half Speed (a different master tape, but still…) has that classic MoFi midrange suckout this awful label is famous for, so that Lennon and his piano on the first track sound like they are coming from another room. 

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Powerful People on MoFi – What Was I Thinking?

More Entries in the Mobile Fidelity Hall of Shame

UPDATE 2024:

I just found my old review notes from 2014! They can be seen below. Please to enjoy.

At the time of our last shootout in 2014, I still had the MoFi pressing of Powerful People in my personal, very small (at that point) record collection.

Almost all the best sounding records from my collection had been sold off long before, going to good homes that I can only assume would play them more than I had in the last ten years.

If it’s a record you see on our site, chances are good I’d have listened to it until I’d practically turned blue in the face.

But I had kept my Powerful People Half-Speed these 30+ years because the domestic pressings I’d played were just too damn midrangy to enjoy.

At least the MoFi had bass, top end and didn’t sound squawky or hard on the vocals.

Well, let me tell you, played against the best domestic pressings, the MoFi is laughable. (In that respect it shares much with the current crop of audiophile reissues.)

It’s unbelievably compressed, a problem that is easily heard on the biggest, most exciting parts of the tracks. They never get remotely as big or as loud on the MoFi as they do on the lowly A&M originals.

It’s also sucked out in the midrange, like most MoFis, and, like most MoFis and Half-Speeds in general, the bass is not well-defined, punchy, and it never goes very deep.

There is also the issue of the MoFi 10k boost on the top end — it’s clearly audible and as bothersome as ever.

In summation, like most of the better audiophile records — from long ago as well as those being produced today — the most you can hope for from these reissues is that they can fix a few problems you might be saddled with on the particular pressing you own.

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Today’s Half-Speed Mastered Mess Is Meddle

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Same sonic shortcomings as the MoFi Thick As a Brick. Twenty years ago we wrote:

“The MoFi is TRANSPARENT and OPEN, and the top end will be lush and extended. If you prize clarity, this is the one.”

But if you prize clarity at the expense of everything else, you are seriously missing the boat on Meddle (and Thick As A Brick too).

The MoFi is all mids and highs with almost nothing going on below.

This is a rock record, but without bass and dynamics, the MoFi pressing doesn’t rock, so why would anyone want to own it or play it?

I suppose you could argue that on small speakers the shortcomings of this pressing would be much less bothersome, but on the reference system we use — including the one we had twenty years ago — the lack of low end is a real dealbreaker.

The One Thing They Do

The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.

It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. They took out the bottom end so that the midrange would be clearer.

That’s one of the tricks these labels use to get their records to impress the audiophiles with small speakers, or ones that are pressed up against the wall, perhaps with a television screen mounted between them.

For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with blurry bass.

That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with those qualities and we don’t think audiophiles should be paying good money for records that sound like that.

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Ziggy Stardust – MoFi Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

Sonic Grade: C-

The MoFi pressing is decent, probably better than the average domestic copy I suppose, since those are clearly made from dubbed tapes.

The colorations and limitations of their cutting system would make it far too painful for me to listen to it though, especially the sloppy bass and dynamic compression.

You can do worse but you sure can do a whole lot better, hence the C grade.

MoFi did two of the greatest Bowie albums of all time, Ziggy and Let’s Dance, and neither one of them can hold a candle to the real thing. If you want to settle for a mediocre imitation of either or both of those albums, stick with Mobile Fidelity.

If you want to hear the kind of Demo Disc sound that Bowie’s records are capable of, try a Hot Stamper pressing. It’s guaranteed to blow your mind or your money back.

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With Abraxas, MoFi Manages to Disgrace Itself Even Further

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

The remastered Abraxas never got past the first elimination round; it had to have been one of the worst half-speeds I have ever heard. Dead, dead, dead as a doornail.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

Santana’s first album on MoFi is a record we admit to having liked a bit when it first came out. Since then we have changed our minds. It’s just too damn compressed and lifeless. The Whomp Factor on this pressing is Zero. Since whomp is critical to the sound of Santana’s music, it’s Game Over for us. The review below is exactly what we wrote at the time the record came in. We tried to like it, but it’s clear to us now that we tried to like it too hard. Please accept our apologies.

I noted in my old blog: “But now I would have to say that the MoFi LP is far too lifeless to be acceptable to anyone, even those with the worst kinds of audiophile BS systems.”

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