Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Hall and Oates Available Now
We here present a set of ideas about remastering that Mobile Fidelity could have used to guide them as they went about cutting their version of Hall and Oates’ masterpiece, Abandoned Luncheonette.
This is the approach they could have taken when it came time to produce an audiophile pressing of Abandoned Luncheonette, an album originally released in 1973.
By the time Mobile Fidelity released their version of the album in 1980, the record was already being offered as a Super Saver reissue, of minimal quality at a reduced price, produced solely for the purpose of keeping record store bins stocked with back catalog. (In our experience it is the rare Super Saver pressing that is worth the vinyl it’s pressed on.)
However, there is nothing inherently wrong with such a budget release. And the Super Saver version may even have some merit. But let’s assume for a moment that it does not.
Why Abandoned Luncheonette?
Now imagine that Mobile Fidelity knows, or at least believes, two things.
One, the album is a Masterpiece that belongs in any right-thinking audiophile’s collection, and two, the current version does not sound very good. The wise men at MoFi recognize that an opportunity to do some good for the audiophile community and make a buck at the same time has presented itself.
Audiophiles may not know it, but they are in need of a good sounding copy of this brilliant album, and they deserve one that sounds every bit as good as the shockingly good sounding originals (like the ones we sell).
In addition, we at MoFi can go Atlantic’s original one better.
We can now press the album on quieter vinyl than Atlantic ever could.
Next, Mobile Fidelity greenlights this project and gets a real master tape from Atlantic. (There are many tapes that masquerade as masters and aren’t any such thing, but let’s assume for the moment that Mobile Fidelity did get a real tape.)
They would also need a nice batch of original pressings, which in our opinion are the best, and would easily be recognized as being the best sounding by anyone playing the album on good equipment. The best originals are lively, rich and smooth, befitting an expensive, high quality studio recording from the era.
So instead of Mobile Fidelity trying to create a new sound for this album, they could have taken a different approach. They could’ve just said to themselves: let’s make a copy of the record that sounds as good as the original, and because we can press it on expensive, high-quality Japanese vinyl, we can justify selling it at a premium price to audiophiles looking for the best sound and quiet vinyl.
They could then cut a number of reference lacquers trying to re-create the best qualities of the originals, and then test those lacquers up against the best originals, in something that might be called a “shootout” long before the term was commonly used bu audiophiles of our persuasion.
The Counterfactual Part
This is what they could have done. That’s why we are calling this commentary a counterfactual.
They did something else entirely.
They tried to make the record sound better than any of the copies they had at hand. They tried to fix the sound. In trying to fix the sound, they made it worse because they simply were not capable of recognizing how right the good originals were.
They must have thought them dull, because the Brain Trust at Mobile Fidelity boosted the hell out of the upper midrange and top end. (Using the concept of reverse engineering, I assume their playback equipment was dull, a fairly safe assumption considering how many Mobile Fidelity records are bright enough to peel the paint.)
They Were on a Mission
They of course would never have been able to get the bass right, because half speed mastering always causes problems down low.
But they could have made the record tonally correct, and fairly transparent in the midrange, and then could have pressed that sound onto state-of-the-art Japanese vinyl.
But none of these things interested Mobile Fidelity at the time. They were hell-bent on making everything they touched better. In the process, practically everything they touched got worse, as anyone with good equipment and two working ears who has played a large selection of their records can attest.