Sonic Grade: B
This is an IMMACULATE Mobile Fidelity LP with EXCELLENT SOUND. I’m surprised how good this copy is. The mids and highs are close to Right On The Money (ROTM). The bass is not as deep and well defined as it should be, but that’s the fault of Half-Speed mastering, not MOFI.
One of their best titles. And quite rare to boot.
More of the Music of George Benson
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of George Benson
Sonic Grade: B-
Another MoFi reviewed, and surprisingly this one isn’t awful.
It has an excellent side two backed with a pretty good side one.
Side two has excellent bass — for a MoFi — and lots of energy — for a MoFi.
It’s slightly smooth, but overall it’s very musical. The best domestic copies are going to eat its lunch, but try to find one that sounds good. Most of them are awful.
This MoFi copy, though lacking in many ways, is MUCH BETTER sounding than the other MoFi copies we played it against, which were muddy and compressed.
Side one of this copy has some of that sound. Side one lacks the transients we found on other copies and it’s a tad recessed and compressed. However, it does have relatively good bass definition and the strings are nicely textured.
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Elvis Presley
Sonic Grade: B-? C+?
As you can imagine, this album changed everything for Elvis. I first heard it the way I heard so many albums back in the late ’70s and early ’80s: on the Mobile Fidelity pressing.
I was an audiophile record collector in 1981 when this album was remastered and if MoFi was impressed enough with the sound and the music to offer the album to their dedicated fans, of which I was clearly one, then who was I to say no to music I had never heard?
Soon enough I would learn my lesson about MoFi’s A&R department. The MoFi release of Supersax Plays Bird, a record that had virtually nothing going for it, was the last time I took their advice seriously.
Turns out, they did a pretty good job on the Elvis album, not that I would have had any way to know that. Back then it would never have occurred to me to buy a standard RCA pressing and compare it to my Half Speed mastered with tender loving care, pressed-in-Japan, double-the-price-of-a-regular disc LP.
A decade or thereabouts later it would be obvious to me that MoFi had fooled around with the sound and that the right (heavy accent on the word “right”) real RCA pressing would be more correct and more natural (though probably not as quiet of course, but advances in cleaning technology fixed most of that and left MoFi in the dust). (more…)