Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now
There actually is such a person who does exactly that, can you imagine?
Only an Audiophile True Believer could be fooled by sound so ridiculously unnatural.
But the world is full of such people. They bought into the audiophile BS of Mobile Fidelity in the 80s and apparently haven’t learned much since.
Now they think Heavy Vinyl is the answer to the world’s problems. The more things change…
If your stereo is any good at all, you should have no trouble hearing the sonic qualities of this album we describe below. If you are on this blog, and you have tried some of our Hot Stamper pressings, there is a good chance you’re hearing pretty much what we’re hearing. Why else why would you pay our prices?
One thing I can tell you: we would never charge money for a record that sounds as weird and wrong as this MoFi.
A well-known reviewer has many kind things to say about this pressing, but we think it sounds like a hi-fi-ish version of a 70s London, which means it’s opaque and the strings are badly lacking in Tubey Magical sheen and richness.
The bass is like jello on the MoFi, unlike the real London, which has fairly decent bass.
If an audiophile reviewer cannot hear the obvious faults of this pressing, I would say there’s a good chance one or both of the following is true:
- His equipment is not telling him what the record is really doing, and/or,
- His listening skills are not sufficiently developed to notice the shortcomings in the sound.
The result is the worst kind of reviewer malpractice.
But is it really the worst kind? It seems to be the only kind!
MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. 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.
Dull playback equipment? An attempt to confuse detail with resolution? Whatever the reasons, the better and more accurate your equipment becomes, the more obvious this shortcoming will be. My tolerance for their phony EQ is at an all time low. But hey, that’s me.
