Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now
Sonic Grade: D
Same sonic shortcomings as the MoFi Thick As a Brick. Twenty years ago we wrote:
“The MoFi is TRANSPARENT and OPEN, and the top end will be 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 Meddle (and Thick As A Brick too).
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 pressing doesn’t rock, so why would anyone want to own it or play it?
I suppose you could argue that on small speakers the shortcomings of this pressing would be much less bothersome, but on the reference system we use — including the one we had twenty years ago — the lack of low end is a real dealbreaker.
The One Thing They Do
The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.
It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. They took out the bottom end so that the midrange would be clearer.
That’s one of the tricks these labels use to get their records to impress the audiophiles with small speakers, or ones that are pressed up against the wall, perhaps with a television screen mounted between them.
For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with blurry bass.
That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with those qualities and we don’t think audiophiles should be paying good money for records that sound like that.