10k-boost

When Did You First Hear that 10k Boost on Sittin’ In?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Loggins and Messina Available Now

UPDATE 2026

It took us a long time to recognize it, I can tell you that. 30 years? Maybe even more.

And how about the boost to the low end?

This commentary is from many years ago, perhaps as far back as 2010.

Of course it could not have been written until the stereo had reached the level where these anomalies and others like them could be easily recognized, the clearest kind of evidence of progress in audio.

If you’re not noticing these kinds of things on the vintage vinyl you play, then it’s probably time for a serious upgrade or two.

The anomalies are there, of that there can be no doubt. They’re everywhere. You just need a more accurate and revealing system and room to show them to you.

In that respect, you my find our shootout notes are helpful at pointing you in the right direction as to what you should be listening for. They are especially helpful in recognizing when one side or another falls short in some specific area.

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Stan Ricker’s Fingers Are All Over these Paintings

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Guitar Recordings Available Now

We have been planning on doing a shootout for this Earl Klugh’s 1977 Blue Note release, Finger Paintings, for more than a year, and over that time we were fortunate enough to pick up a MoFi pressing of the album locally for the very reasonable price of ten bucks. (The price tag on the jacket is visible at the bottom of this post.)

The notes for our 2025 Shootout Winner included phrases such as “huge, weighty and punchy, ” along with “natural, rich and sweet.” Most copies may not have those qualities, but the best ones sure do.

Contrast that with the Mobile Fidelity pressing that Stan Ricker mastered in 1980. It was one of their biggest early sellers, and one that they no doubt felt had such good sound that it would be sure to sell at triple the price of the regular Mobile Fidelity pressing!

WTF you say? Yes, it would be released in 1981 in a box (not a box set!) as a Numbered, Limited Edition, Ultra High Quality Record (UHQR) at the retail price of $50. $178 in 2026 dollars, if you can believe that records used to cost that kind of dough (cough).

OK, that’s all well and good, but this is supposed to be a blog for audiophiles, so forget all that history stuff and just tell us what the record sounds like.

Fair enough. After having played a big batch of standard issue pressings and getting to know the sound of the record well, feast your eyes on the notes we took.

This MoFi may actually set a new standard for screwing up a perfectly good sounding record. (I was going to say tape but I have never heard the tape and have no idea what it sounds like. John Golden (JG) at Kendun cut the originals. Maybe he was able to somehow make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The possibility exists.)

Side One

Track Four

  • Really sucked out and clean
  • How bizarrely awful!

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MoFi Mastering Variations – Will the Real Sgt. Pepper Please Stand Up?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Sgt. Pepper can be a pretty good sounding MoFi when it’s mastered by the right guy.

Say what?

Yes, dear reader, this album was mastered by two different engineers at Mobile Fidelity, and one of them, based on experiments we carried out years ago, did a much better job than the other.

This copy, which is far more rare by the way, has the better mastering — much less top end boost was added. As an aside, I used to like the other version better, but as I’ve gotten older and wiser, I realize that this pressing is superior, being noticeably less phony sounding.

It sounds much more like a good Parlophone and less like the typical Mobile Fidelity album.

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Classic Records Had an Epiphany in 2007 – UHQRs Actually DO Sound Good

More Records Perfectly Suited to the Stone Age Stereos of the Past

Don’t believe your ears!

Listen to Mike Hobson. After all, he’s the expert, right?

This commentary was written in 2007 and we admit it may be a bit long in the tooth for the brave new world of Heavy Vinyl we currently find ourselves in. Classic Records has been gone for a while now and when that blessed day came we were finally able to say good riddance to their bad records.

Mike Hobson thinks he knows why his pressings often don’t sound good and/or are noisy. We’ll let him explain it. If you want the whole story (which goes on for days) you can find it on the Classic Records website, assuming it’s still active. While you’re there, remember the sound.

One day, while out for a run, I had an epiphany and rushed home to dig out a JVC pressing from the 1980’s pressed for Herb Belkin’s Mobile Fidelity. The Mobile Fidelity UHQR pressings were always revered as sounding better than the standard weight pressings from JVC [citation needed, big time] – but why I thought? To find out, I cut a UHQR pressing in half and guess what I found? First, it weighed 195 grams and IT WAS A FLAT PROFILE! I cut a 120g JVC pressing in half and found that it had the conventional profile that, with small variations, seems to be a record industry standard and is convex in it’s [sic] profile – NOT FLAT.

So, that is why the UHQR JVC pressings sounded better than their standard profile pressings and further confirmation of why our Flat Profile pressings sound better than 180g conversional pressings! [italics added]

This is a classic (no pun intended) case of begging the question, asserting the very thing that Mr. Hobson is trying to prove.

There was no need to saw up a record. Mofi actually explained in the booklet for every UHQR how its shape differed from a conventional disc.

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Sgt. Pepper’s and Mistaken Audiophile Thinking (Hint: the UHQR Is Wrong)

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sgt. Peppers Available Now

This commentary was probably written between 2005 when we did our first shootout for the album and 2008, by which time it would have been a regular feature on the site. 

We charge hundreds of dollars for a Hot Stamper Sgt. Pepper, which is a lot to pay for a record. But consider this: the UHQR typically sells for a great deal more than the price we charge and doesn’t sound remotely as good. 

Of course the people that buy UHQRs would never find themselves in a position to recognize how much better one of our Hot Stampers sounds in a head to head shootout with their precious and oh-so-collectible UHQR.

They assume that they’ve already purchased the Ultimate Pressing and see no reason to try another.

I was guilty of the same mistaken audiophile thinking myself in 1982. I remember buying the UHQR of Sgt. Pepper and thinking how amazing it sounded and how lucky I was to have the world’s best version of Sgt. Pepper.

If I were to play that record now it most likely would be positively painful. All I would hear would be the famous MoFi 10K Boost on the top end (the one that MoFi lovers never seem to notice), and the flabby Half-Speed mastered bass (ditto).

Having heard really good copies of Sgt. Pepper, like the wonderful Hot Stampers we put on the site from time to time, now the MoFi UHQR sounds so phony to me that I wouldn’t be able to sit through it with a gun to my head.

UPDATE 2025

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.

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed mastered title ever made (with one exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please go to our Half-Speed mastering main page .

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This Beethoven Ninth Started Out with Two Strikes Against It

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Beethoven Available Now

MoFi took the shortcomings of a mediocre-at-best Decca recording from 1972 and made them even worse by means of their ridiculously misguided mastering decisions and wacky cutting system.

They should not have chosen this performance of the Ninth Symphony in the first place, and they certainly should not have added the treble they chose to add, which they did to this title and to every classical recording they remastered without regard to whether or not the recording needed brightening. None that I know of did. Try telling that to the brain trust running MoFi.

(They hired this guy to do their one-step digitally remastered pressings and from the get-go he’s been giving audiophiles the most ridiculously phony sounding records that collectors with way too much money can buy.)

The Decca recording of the Ninth from 1972 is opaque, lacks size and space, and comes off as a bit flat and dry.

Like practically every later Decca pressing we play, it’s passable at best.

Londons and Deccas from this era (1972 in this case) rarely sound very good to us.

Here is what we specifically don’t like about their sound.

If you want to know what’s wrong with the Mobile Fidelity pressing, take the above faults and add some others to them.

Start with an overall brighter EQ, add a 10k boost for extra sparkly strings, the kind that MoFi has always been smitten with, and finish with the tubby bass caused by the half-speed mastering process itself.

Voila! You are now in the presence of the kind of mid-fi trash that may have fooled some audiophiles way back when but now sounds as wrong as the records this ridiculous label is still making today.

Here are some other pressings with bright string tone that are best avoided by audiophiles looking for top quality sound.

1981 Was a Long Time Ago

Old school audio systems are notorious for being dark, dull and lacking in transparency. They might need bright records in order to sound good, but high quality modern systems do not.

If these two MoFi pressings sounds right to you, you are very likely living with one of those old school systems and it is long past time to get rid of it.

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Mobile Fidelity’s Approach to Mastering – I Have a Theory

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

I have a theory about why MoFi’s mastering approach tended to work for the Waiting for Columbus album when it failed so miserably for so many others. It goes a little something like this. 

Back in their early days, MoFi tended to add bass and treble to practically every record they mastered, regardless of whether or not the master tape they were using needed a boost.

A little extra sparkle up top and a little extra kick down low was what the audiophile public seemed to want.  We call this the smile curve and lots of audiophile records have a case of it.

Truth be told, I was a member of that group and I know I did.

Fortunately for them, Waiting for Columbus is an album that can ofteny use a little at both ends. Rarely did The Mastering Lab supply it, making the original domestic pressings somewhat bass-shy and dull on the extreme top. The MoFi clearly corrected the poor EQ choices The Mastering Lab had often made. 

UPDATE 2024: Poor EQ Choices?

Or perhaps it could have been one or more of the following:

  • Perhaps the band liked it better that way.
  • Perhaps The Mastering Lab found it easier to cut that way.
  • Perhaps the cause of the records lacking extension on both ends comes from some other factors that cannot be known.

Or, if you don’t like those three, just make up some other reasons that sound plausible, or ones that fit in with other ideas you may have, even though there is probably not an iota of evidence to support any of it.

This is the way of the audiophile record collector — theories galore, but not much experimental evidence to back them up (or falsify them as the case may be). We are more inclined to the No Theory approach to finding good records, which you can read about here. We believe it has served us well and can do the same for you.

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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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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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