aphile-transp

One quality audiophiles tend to like about audiophile pressings is their transparency. Many have zero-distortion, clear, spacious, see-through sound.

But listen past that and what do you hear? Nothing has any weight. Nothing has any solidity. Nothing has any real life. It’s pretty, maybe, but it sure ain’t right.

It’s the kind of sound that shouts out to the world “Hey, look at me, I’m an audiophile record! See how I sound? So clear! So clean!”

The records you see below have that sound. There was a time, long ago, when we were impressed by them.

Now we find them insufferable.

Rainbow Seeker – Live and Learn

Reviews and Commentaries for Mobile Fidelity Records

A classic case of Live and Learn

[This commentary is at least fifteen years old. We mention Disc Doctor below, and once we had discovered the Walker System in 2007, we stopped using it to clean our records.]

Hot Stampers discovered! It took years, decades even, but it FINALLY happened. This copy has a side one with all the sound I always knew must be on the tape but somehow never seemed to make it to the vinyl. This copy has that sound!

Let me backtrack a bit. I’ve been recommending the MOFI for as long as I can remember, because it has always been the only copy that didn’t sound like a bad cassette.

The domestic pressings and imports I had run into over the years had no top end whatsoever, no bass below 50 or 60 cycles, and enough veils over the midrange to cover an entire harem. (No top and no bottom is our definition of boxy sound.)

The sound was also Pure Compressed Cardboard.

The best MOFI copies had an actual top end; a real bottom too. (Not a tight or deep one but that’s MOFI for you.) I’ve always loved the music, so even though the sound was somewhat washed out and lifeless, you could listen to the MOFI and enjoy it for what it was: not perfect, but a whole lot better than the alternatives. (The CD was hopeless by the way, no surprise there.)

Ah, but all that changed this week. We finally broke through.

I had just picked up a sealed original copy at a local store and was considering putting it up on the site, sealed of course. Then a thought went through my mind. I’ve always loved this record. What if this copy is The One? So I did the unthinkable. I cracked it open, and soon enough the needle was in the groove on my favorite track, Fly With Wings of Love.

To my surprise it had the BEST SOUND I had EVER heard for that song. When all was said and done, when all the copies in the backroom had been disc doctored, along with my three MOFI copies, and each carefully evaluated, sure enough this is the side two that turned out to be the King. I give it an A with Two Pluses. The typical domestic copy gets an F.

Wait, there’s more.

So with all our copies cleaned and ready to play, it was now time to play all the side ones. Even more shocking and surprising, one copy had a side one that was OUT OF THIS WORLD. Master tape sound, As Good As It Gets, perfection.

That’s this copy. Side two is pretty good, maybe a B+ or so. Better than average, but no Hot Stamper.

Since this is one of my favorite pop-jazz albums, I can’t recommend this album highly enough. It may not be deep — for real piano trio jazz check out Sample’s The Three — but it’s not trying to be. It is what it is — sophisticated, melodic, well-crafted piano-based easy-going jazz. With the awesome Eric Gale on guitar too.

Further Reading on Half-Speeds

The best place to start is here:

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

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Joan Baez on Nautilus – The Half-Speed that Beats Most Pressings

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joan Baez Available Now

Sonic Grade: B+

This review is from many years ago, at least ten I would think, so take it for what it’s worth.

One of the best Half Speed mastered records we have ever played.

In our recent shootout we were shocked — shocked — to hear how good our old copy of Diamonds and Rust on Nautilus sounded head to head against some of the best pressings we could find.

If I hadn’t heard it with my own two ears, I wouldn’t have believed it.  (more…)

The Doors’ Debut – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of The Doors

Sonic Grade: D 

If anyone still thinks that this pressing is anything but a bad joke played on the audiophile public — so sucked out in the midrange, bass shy and compressed to death — that person still has a way to go in this hobby.

A very long way.

You can hear that something is off with this pressing from another room. The sound is bad enough to have earned a place in our Mobile Fidelity Hall of Shame.

But wait just a gosh darn minute.

I liked the MoFi just fine when it came out. I guess I had a way to go in this hobby too.

That was back in the early ’80s. I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two in the last forty years.

Some reviewers and a great many audiophiles may be stuck in the 80s, but I sure as hell don’t think I am one of them.

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The Captain and Me – A Nautilus Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Doobie Brothers Available Now

We actually recommended the Nautilus Half-Speed in the old days, but the last time we played one (2012 maybe?) the sound was Pure Audiophile BS — compressed to death and totally whomp-free.

The average domestic copy is terrible too, but that’s no reason to recommend this crappy remaster.

Stick to the green label originals.  They can rock with the best of them.

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Ghost in the Machine on Nautilus Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sting and The Police Available Now

And to think we used to actually like the sound of the Nautilus pressings! They suffer from all the same shortcomings other Nautilus and similar half-speeds suffer from: the kind of pretty but lifeless and oh-so-boring sound that we describe in listing after listing. 

Three of the Best, Or So We Thought

I just did shootouts with three of the best Nautilus Half-Speeds: Heart, The Police’s Ghost in the Machine, and Little Feat. None of them sound like the real thing, and especially disappointing was one of my former favorites, the Little Feat album.

On the title track the Nautilus is amazingly transparent and sweet sounding. There are no real dynamics or bass on that track, so the “pretty” half-speed does what it does best and shines. But all the other tracks suck in exactly the same way Night and Day does. Cutting the balls off Little Feat is not my idea of hi-fidelity.

We put audiophile beaters up for sale every week. Each and every one of them is a lesson on what makes one record sound better than another. If you want a wall full of good sounding records, we can help you make it happen. In fact it will be our pleasure. Down with audiophile junk and up with Better Records.

These kinds of records used to sound good on the systems of their day, and I should know, I had an old school stereo even into the 90s.

Some of the records that sounded good to me back then don’t sound too good to me anymore.

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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.”

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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