MFSL (Older)

Labels With Shortcomings – Mobile Fidelity (Older)

Fly Like an Eagle – Decent at Best on Mobile Fidelity

More of the Music of Steve Miller

The top end of this album is a problem on most pressings — dry and somewhat brittle — but on the best pressings the highs are extended, sweet and fairly natural. The soundfield is open and transparent with three-dimensional space that brings out the “trippy” sound the band threw in all over this album.

The MoFi has a bit more going on up top than most domestic pressings (forget the dubby imports) but the combination of blurry bass and compressed, lifeless sound fail to let this album sound the way you remember it in your head from back in the day.

Finding a good sounding copy of this record is not easy. Most of them sound like they’re playing underwater.

(more…)

Abandoned Luncheonette – More Stone Age Audio EQ from MoFi

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Hall and Oates Available Now

Those of you who have had the misfortune to play the MoFi LP know that they absolutely ruined this album. They boosted the hell out of the top end, the last thing in the world this recording needed. 

Actually, that’s probably not true. People who collect MoFi records apparently like the kind of phony sound found on the MoFi of this title and hundreds of others. If they didn’t, why would they keep buying them?

To the extent that a MoFi collector is not happy with the sound, my guess is he would more than likely place the blame on the recording, not the mastering.

Of course, since such a collector would never lower himself to buy a standard domestic copy of the record, he would have no way of knowing that it trounces his so-called audiophile pressing. If your stereo likes that MoFi sound in this day and age, you shouldn’t be buying records. You should be buying new equipment, which hopefully will allow you to recognize bad records when you play them.

(more…)

Disastrous MoFi and Direct Disk Labs Remasters for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Hot Stamper Pressings Only Offered on Import Available Now

Sonic Grade: F (DD Labs) / D (MoFi)

If you have the Direct Disc Labs Half-Speed of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road you have one truly awful record in your collection, so sucked out in the midrange, so compressed everywhere, what the hell were they thinking making this rockin’ album sound like that? It’s positively disgraceful.

It makes MoFi look like they knew what they doing, and we know that sure isn’t true.

To be honest we did not actually have a copy of the MoFi handy for this shootout, but in our defense let us just say that we’ve heard their pressing many times over the course of the last twenty years. It’s better than the DD Labs version but not good enough for me to want to play it — compressed and sucked-out like practically every record they ever made, just not as badly as the DD Labs version.

The most obvious problems with the sound of this album are ones common to many if not most rock records of the era: lack of presence, too much compression, smear, lack of weight from the lower mids on down — we hear lots of Classic Rock records with this litany of shortcomings.

But it’s not the fault of the master tape, it’s probably not even the fault of the mastering engineer most of the time.

It’s just plain bad pressing quality. The sound simply doesn’t get stamped onto the vinyl right and the result is one or more of the problems above.

And if you don’t know how to clean your records properly, forget it, you have virtually no chance of hearing good sound on GYBR. Our last shootout was 2022 if that tells you anything, and it’s rare for us to have any Hot Stamper pressings of any of his albums in stock on any given day.

(more…)

Sticky Fingers on Mobile Fidelity – Can It Get Any Worse?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

The MoFi pressing of Sticky Fingers is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in bottom end punch that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting.

I consider it one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

It’s an “Audiophile” record in the most damning sense of the word. It’s a Half-Speed mastered disaster if there ever was one.

A well-known reviewer actually was still defending the sound of the MoFi as late as 2010. 

2010! You can’t make this stuff up.

In one of his reviews earlier in 2008 he had used it to test a piece of equipment he was evaluating. In 2010 he wrote this:

Mo-Fi’s half-speed mastered edition (MFSL 1-060) was controversial when issued in 1980, with its jacked up lower bass, icy top end, sucked out midrange and low overall level. I’ll tell you though, as my system has improved, the more I’ve come to appreciate it. It offers outstanding focus and clarity and its portrayal of inner detail and transient snap is unsurpassed. Admittedly the sound is not for everybody.

It’s not for me, that’s for damn sure.

And “unsurpassed” simply means you have never had the experience of hearing a good sounding copy of Sticky Fingers.

Which is sad, don’t you think? Especially if you fancy yourself a “record expert.”

(more…)

City To City – MoFi Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Gerry Rafferty Available Now

A hall of shame pressing and another MoFi LP reviewed and found seriously wanting.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a complete disaster — it’s fat, muddy and compressed.

It was mastered by Jack Hunt, a man we know to be responsible for some of the thickest, dullest, deadest MoFi recuts from their shameful catalog.

(more…)

Blind Faith – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

Hey, you could do worse!

UPDATE 2026

By the time we got around to doing a shootout for this album in 2009, it was already clear to us that even the Half-Speeds we used to consider good — like this one — were a joke next to the real thing, in this case the right UK pressing.

Our latest shootout this time around (07/09) left us with a fairly large serving of egg on our face concerning the commentary we had written for the MoFi pressing of Blind Faith, a textbook example of We Was Wrong.

It’s rich and sweet with SHOCKINGLY GOOD SOUND. MFSL did a masterful job with this one, I’d put it in the top 10 MoFi’s of all-time!

I regret to say that none of that is true.

Blind Faith has many of the same problems as the later Japanese-pressed MoFis like Thick As A Brick and Meddle, which we discuss below.

About Thick As A Brick we wrote:

As we noted last time we listed the MoFi LP:

“This MoFi is super TRANSPARENT and OPEN, and the top end should sound 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 Thick As A Brick. 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 can’t rock, so what exactly is it good for?

Like Meddle, one of the last of the MoFi titles to be pressed in Japan, it’s a pale shadow of the real thing. It has no business in the collection of any audiophile worth his salt. If you want to hear this music right, let us get you a Hot Stamper pressing. It’s guaranteed to blow your mind. We’ll even take your MoFi in trade and sell it to some unsuspecting audiophile who still buys into that Half-Speed Mastered nonsense. [This offer expired in about 2007.]

Further Reading

Tea For The Tillerman – MoFi Reviewed (UHQR too)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

Sonic Grade: MoFi LP: D / Sonic Grade: MoFi UHQR: F 

Tea for the Tillerman is, I hope it goes without saying, one of the greatest folk rock records of all time, music that belongs in any collection.

I’ve been playing this album for more than 30 years [now more than 50] and I can honestly say I’ve never once tired of hearing it.

I do get tired of hearing bad copies. I become absolutely incensed when I play the Mobile Fidelity version of this album, because what they did to this record is a travesty. If you want to know what the guitars on this album are NOT supposed to sound like, play the MOFI.

And if you want to hear an even worse version, play the UHQR.

(more…)

Takin’ It To The Streets – MoFi Reviewed

Sonic Grade: B

This is an IMMACULATE Mobile Fidelity LP with EXCELLENT SOUND. I’m surprised how good this copy is. The mids and highs are close to Right On The Money (ROTM). The bass is not as deep and well defined as it should be, but that’s the fault of Half-Speed mastering, not MOFI.

One of their best titles. And quite rare to boot.

(more…)

Year Of The Cat – Is the MoFi Good or Bad?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Al Stewart Available Now

Sonic Grade: D to B-

If you own the typical MoFi version of this album you happen to own one of the All Time Mastering Disasters of the modern era. Ridiculously boosted at both ends, their version is all but unlistenable on a high end stereo. 

Some copies are worse than others, so we are conservatively giving MoFi’s pressing a sonic grade of D. We’ve played some in the past that clearly deserved an F (F as in Failing), but we also once played one that sounded pretty good, which we describe below. If you’ve played half a dozen MoFi copies and plucked out the best one, yours might be good too. If you haven’t heard a bunch, chances are slim that yours is any better than awful.

There’s only one way to tell of course, and that’s to pull it off the shelf and give it a spin. You may be shocked at just how hyped-up it has gotten since the last time you heard it.

If you play your records back on an old console, with maybe a blown woofer or two, okay, I can see how the sound of the MoFi might work. But I’m guessing most of you have something better than that, and since you do, one of our Hot Stamper pressings will absolutely positively blow your mind, showing you the real Year of the Cat. We guarantee it. (more…)

Sticky Fingers Is a MoFi Disaster to Beat Them All – Now With Video

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

If you click on the video you can read some of the silly comments people are making about this awful pressing, which happens to be one of the worst sounding versions of Sticky Fingers ever committed to vinyl.

When you stop to consider how awful most pressings are compared to the only version that has ever sounded good to us, the right original domestic LP,  that’s really saying something.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in low end weight and power that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting. I consider it one of the worst sounding versions ot the album ever made.