MFSL (Anadisq)

Labels With Shortcomings – Mobile Fidelity (Anadisq 200)

Boston’s First Album on MoFi Anadisq

More of the Music of Boston

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Boston

Sonic Grade: F

The MoFi Anadisc of Boston’s first album has the same problems that seem to have plagued the whole of the Anadisq 200 series. The sound was:

  • thick,
  • opaque,
  • blurry, and
  • murky.

A real slogfest. Audiophile trash of the worst kind. If this isn’t the worst version of the album ever made, I cannot imagine what would be.

Many of the worst releases from MoFi in this era were mastered by 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.

Do people still pay good money for this kind of awful sound?

Yes they do!

Go to ebay and see the high prices these kinds of records are fetching. This is in equal parts both shocking and disgusting. 

Here is what is available for the MoFi pressing on Discogs today (2/2/2022). If you have $400 you can order one there.

Marketplace 3 For Sale from $399.99

And people complain about our prices? At least we send you a great sounding record for all the money we charge.

The typical album MoFi remastered on Anadisq suffered from many of the shortcomings you see listed below. If you want to avoid records with these faults, you would be well advised to keep a safe distance from any of the records we’ve linked to here:

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.

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Joan Baez – Another TAS Listed Anadisq Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings of Folk Rock Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Joan Baez

Sonic Grade: F

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.

Our advice for the longest time has been that, while you are actively improving your stereo, room and setup, the best way to use your remastered audiophile pressings is as stopgaps and benchmarks. As you make more and more progress, eventually you will find the vintage pressing that can show you what your audiophile pressings don’t do well, or at the very least, not as well as they should.

They were falling short in many ways for all the years you’d owned them, but until you improved your playback, those problems were hidden from you.

As your stereo improves, you can actually chart your success by how many of these kinds of records you are able to eliminate from your collection. Once you can count the number of modern reissues you still own on one or at most two hands, there is a good chance you have reached a much higher level of playback quality.

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 — but I sure never recommended them or had anything good to say about them.

The typical album MoFi remastered on Anadisq suffered from many or most of the laundry list of shortcomings you see below. If you want to avoid records with these faults, we advise you to avoid any of the records we’ve linked to here.

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.

You can find this one in our Audiophile Hall of Shame, along with more than 250 others that — in our opinion — qualify as some of the worst sounding records ever made. On some records in the Hall of Shame the sound is passable but the music is bad.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

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.

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Cat Stevens and the Mobile Fidelity Hall of Shame

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

Our Mobile Fidelity Hall of Shame listings totaled more than 40 back in 2010, and we noted at the time that the real number would be at least double that and probably more than triple that figure if we took the time to make listings for all the bad records this label has released, It stands at 50 or so as of 2022.

In case you don’t already know, one of the worst sounding, if not THE worst sounding pressing of all time, of our beloved Teaser and the Firecat is the Mobile Fidelity Anadisq pressing that came out in the ’90s.

If you own that record, you really owe it to yourself to pull it out and play it. It’s just a mess and it should sound like a mess, whether you have anything to compare it to or not.

If I were in charge of the TAS Super Disc List, I would strike this record from it in a heartbeat.

Here are some others that we do not think qualify as Super Discs.

We offer a number of Hot Stamper pressings of TAS List titles that actually have audiophile sound quality, guaranteed. And if for some reason you disagree with us about how good they sound, we will be happy to give you your money back.

Here’s a good question:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

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Neil Young / Old Ways – Another Anadisq Disaster

More of the Music of Neil Young

Hot Stamper Pressings of Country Albums Available Now

Some time in the 2000s we reviewed this pressing from 1996. We did not care for it much.

The MoFi is a 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.

We guarantee any Hot Stamper LP will make your MoFI pressing sound like the bad joke it was even as far back as 1996, the stone age in audio, or your money back including shipping.

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

As of 2015, this label may have entered a new and even more disgraceful era, but considering how bad their records have been from the very start, (something that should be obvious to any audiophile with a high quality playback system, the kind of system that should have no difficulty exposing the manifold shortcomings of their remastered pressings), how much lower can they possibly fall?

Only time will tell!

Further Reading

Here’s a good question:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one rare exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please consult our FAQs:

More Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

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The Moody Blues / To Our Children’s Children’s Children on Mobile Fidelity Anadisc

More of the Music of The Moody Blues

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Moody Blues 

Sonic Grade: F

We here present yet another MoFi pressing that we played and found seriously wanting.

Pure Anadisc murky mud, like all the Moody Blues records MoFi remastered and ruined in the ’90s with their misbegotten foray back into the world of vinyl. By 1999 they were bankrupt and deservedly so.

Their records were completely worthless to those of us who play them and want to hear them sound good but, unsurprisingly, a quick search on ebay indicates that they’re still worth money to the audiophile types who collect the kind of trash this label put out.

Folks, seriously, you really have to work at it to find pressings of the Moody Blues albums that sound worse than the ones MoFi did in the ’90s.

To be honest, we really don’t know of any. Which means that, as far as we’re concerned, their pressing of To Our Children’s Children’s Children is the worst version of the album ever made.

Head to Head It’s Simply No Contest

Visit our Audiophile Hall of Shame (270+ strong) to see what, in our opinion, are some of the worst sounding records ever made that were marketed to audiophiles.

Over the many decades we have been in the audiophile record business, we’ve gone through the all-too-often unpleasant experience of comparing these audiophile pressings head to head with our best Hot Stampers.

When you can hear them that way, up against an exceptionally good record, their flaws become that much more obvious and, frankly, much less tolerable.

New to the Blog? Start Here

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

A Confession

Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still somewhat impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem to like.

We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.

After playing some of the worst of the worst of these audiophile pressings, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them. If you have any of these titles in your collection, now is the time to hear just how bad they are and to get rid of them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.

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

More of the Music of Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann Records We’ve Reviewed

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 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 to it. 

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.

Further Reading

Cat Stevens on Mobile Fidelity and Thoughts on the TAS List

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

TAS List Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for TAS Super Disc Recordings

I Ask You: How Is This Awful Record a Super Disc?

We here at Better Records would like to give a shout out to The Man, Harry Pearson, for putting one of the worst MoFis of all time on his so-called Super Disc List.

Many many years ago we wrote:

In case you don’t already know, one of the worst sounding, if not THE WORST SOUNDING VERSION OF ALL TIME, is the Mobile Fidelity Anadisq pressing that came out in the ’90s. If you own that record, you really owe it to yourself to pull it out and play it. It’s just a mess and it should sound like a mess, whether you have anything else to compare it to or not.

More Reviews and Commentaries for One of the Worst Remastering Houses of All Time: Mobile Fidelity

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Traffic – Another Disgraceful MoFi Anadisq Release

More of the Music of Traffic

More of the Music of Steve Winwood

Sonic Grade: F

Another MoFi LP debunked.

Of course our Hot Stamper pressings are going to be better than the Anadisq LP from the mid ’90s.

How much better?

Words fail me.

The MoFi of Low Spark of High Heeled Boys was an out and out 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 a “common” pressing such as one of our domestic Islands.

Had they done so what they would have heard is huge amounts of musical information that is simply missing from the MoFi pressing.

The MoFi has no leading edges to any of the transients; they’re shaved off, how they achieved this I cannot begin to fathom. Bad cutting equipment using a dull needle?

Blunted and smeared, their version is positively unlistenable. Robert Pincus once left a Post-It note stuck to a MoFi jacket of a record he was playgrading for me that pointedly summed up our shared thoughts on the quality of their mastering: “Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

Boston Hot Stamper Testimonial – Shooting Out the Big Three

More of the Music of Boston

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Boston

This week’s letter comes from our good customer Roger, who did a little shootout of his own among three very different sounding pressings: two Half-Speeds, one by MoFi and one by CBS, probably the two most popular pressings among audiophiles, and our very own Hot Stamper LP.

Here are his findings. Keep in mind that Roger bought a copy priced at $125, half the price of the best copy in our shootout.

“Hi Tom,

I got your Boston hot stamper today and enjoyed comparing it to MFSL and CBS half-speed versions in a shootout. I had long since given up on listening to this record since it became part of a communist ploy to brainwash us by playing Boston repeatedly on the radio until we would give up any information they desired. “Deep Purple Lite” was what my college buddies and I used to derisively call it. Now I only wish we had this type of music still around. So I had fun reliving my college days and listening to this LP.

“For a pop recording, it is a pretty good recording soundwise, and all 3 pressings were indeed good, if not interesting. I tried the CBS half-speed first, and it was tonally lean with good speed and detail, and bass was extended and quick. However, its Achilles heel was that it had too much energy on top and excessive brightness, something that couldn’t hide from my speakers’ ion tweeters.”

Roger, you seem to be using the phrase “tonally lean” unpejoratively (if I can make up such a word), whereas for us here at Better Records, that is the kiss of death for Half-Speeds, and in fact Audiophile Records of All Kinds. Lack of weight down below, lack of Whomp Factor, is the main reason half-speed mastered records are so consistently and ridiculously bad. If not bad, certainly wrong. You can be very sure that Boston would not want, nor would they put up with, that kind of anemic sound for a minute.

“The CBS is cut clean from a good tape, so it easily beats the bad domestic pressings, of which there are many. But it can’t rock. What good is a Boston record that doesn’t rock? It’s a contradiction in terms; the band, as well as their debut album, have no other reason to exist.

“So the MFSL was somewhat of a relief in that regard, being more sweet and rolled-off on top. However, it sounded bland, blah, slow and murky by comparison. It was still OK sonically with a fuller midband, but didn’t have the midrange energy or dynamics of the CBS and it just seemed slow and plodding, no other way to put it. Bass on the MFSL copy was weightier but more midbass than the quick and extended bass on the CBS.”

Agreed. The MoFi Anadisc had the same problems that plagued that whole series: turgid, thick, blobby, murky, mucky sound. A real slogfest. In short, audiophile trash of the worst kind.

“Now for the hot stamper, it was closer in tonal balance to the CBS, tending to be leaner, but the bass was quicker and more impactful, and the treble, while still as extended, was more balanced with the rest of the sonic spectrum. There was more instrumental detail, like on the rimshots on More Than A Feeling, better dynamic range, and a more transparent soundstage than with either half-speed copy. I actually had a great time listening to Smokin and the other cuts on side 2 that I actually haven’t heard in a while.

“I would highly recommend anyone who can still stand this record to get a hot stamper and get their feet tapping.”

Here here. I would recommend the same. Thanks for taking the time to do your own shootout and writing up your results.

Best, TP

Further Reading

Oscar Peterson Trio with Milt Jackson / Very Tall and Very Awful on MFSL Anadisq

Reviews and Commentaries for Mobile Fidelity Records

If you made the mistake of buying the atrocious Anadisq pressing MoFi put out in the ’90s, our Hot Stamper pressings will let you hear what a wonderful recording Val Valentin cooked up with these cats back in the day.

FURTHER READING on Half-Speed Mastered Records

The best place to start is here:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one rare exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please consult our FAQs:

More Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

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