Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

That's pretty otm. The problem MoFi helped build up with their marketing is the idea that for a vinyl record only an all-analog chain will suffice with the aim of getting close to that original master as if you were playing directly off it - it's strong implied in all the hype arguing for the appeal of their vinyl products. But it's not that simple or doctrinal, it's really just the mastering that makes something sound good, and that can encompass a ton of things, not just a single puritanical approach. Even MoFi's own engineers have said this in the past (but on their own, not on MoFI's behalf), if you hand in a straight copy of a master tape, that's NOT mastering. Doing nothing except making a high-quality transfer is not what a mastering engineer is supposed to do and it's highly unusual for a recording artist to want that.

That second sentence probably needed to be chopped into two. (also, strongly, not strong)

A lot of the MOFI site isn't loading correctly for me, so I'm not getting product descriptions other than the very basic lists of titles. But as I understand it, these one-step, 45 RPM 'Box Sets' are dividing formally single-LP albums into doubles, which to me is extremely funny when we're talking about Roth-era Van Halen albums which they have in the pipeline and were all 30-35 minutes to start with, so in that case the MOFI audience is paying $125 per title to get the fancy pants experience of listening to two 12-inch EPs and flipping sides every 8-10 minutes just so they can say they hear Dave & Ed & Mike & 'Lex better than ever before.

I look forward to the book of 78's that will be the next generation of MoFi album reissues.

Galaxie 500 guy otm.

When CDs first came out, many of them sounded awful in part for this very transparency — they were duplicating analog master tapes more or less directly, rather than interpreting how they were meant to sound at the end of the process for reproducing records. Digital was blamed for those “harsh” CDs - but that is also simply how some analog master tapes can sound.

This is true to an extent, but early CDs were all over the map. You had what Damon describes -- essentially a flat transfer -- but then you also had CDs that used excessive noise reduction, so much so that on, for instance, the early CD(s?) of Kind of Blue sticks-on-cymbals went missing, as did parts of solo bass passages, and everything else sounded like it was trying to get out from under a heavy blanket. Labels were essentially throwing a bunch of different approaches to mastering at a wall to see what stuck, but in the meantime, selling those trial runs to consumers.

also the highly obscure “de-emphasis” flag which was set for tracks where the CD player was supposed to apply a high frequency roll off filter - perhaps to combat the high end “goose” Damon was talking about? I don’t think it’s been used since the early 80s but a rip which doesn’t take that into account can sound godawful.

Pre-emphasis was not compensating for RIAA equalisation, it was for boosting SNR with early ADC gear that was sometimes only 14-bit (Philips originally specced for 14-bit redbook but Sony rounded it up a nice, computer-friendly 2 bytes). 14-bit would have been plenty for playback but less than ideal for ADC, even 16-bit is cutting it close unless proper attention is given to signal levels when recording

obviously there's been no reason at all for using pre-emphasis for over 3 decades now

There are occasional discs from the 90s and probably beyond that have the pre-emphasis flag set on, possibly by mistake in at least some cases. And also some older discs that seem to have been mastered with pre-emphasis while the flag is off.

if the ADC process was never updated beyond the point where preemph is justified then it should still be used even today

it's impossible for a listener to know if it's intended or not without details of what happened in the studio or at least having a different CD pressing of the same master that "sounds right" to compare against

could always compare it to the vinyl I guess

When it should be on and it's left off, the sound is really unpleasant - thin, piercing and shrill. I don't know if there's been a case where it was left on when it should be off, but if that did happen, you'd have an extremely dull sound. Anyway, since the sound quality would be really bad, it almost becomes a moot point of whether the PE flag should be on or off.

As matttttkkkkk says, rips generally won't take it into account (there was even something about EAC having to remove support for it?) and I've spotted a couple just by the sound, it's quite pronounced.

Ah, that's right. I recommend SoX if you have a Mac.

install SoX tools first: https://macappstore.org/sox/

Or another way to install is to run in the Terminal app the following:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"; < /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Press enter/return key. Wait for the command to finish - this took about 5, maybe ten minutes, it could vary depending on your internet connection as it is downloading the appropriate tools.

Run:
brew install sox

Then with Terminal still open, type in the right command for each wav or aiff file that needs to be converted.

sox thepath/name/for/your/track.aiff thepath/name/for/whereyou/wanttoput/your/track-withnewname.aiff deemph

I do have an old version of EAC that can read the flag. It doesn't apply the EQ, for that I use a plugin in Foobar.

How often was this flag used? Never heard of it. Is it well supported by CD players?

I think it's standard for all CD players. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's baked into the standard authoring of CD's, even when it's not used - there's basically a data set that specifically addresses it - so even though it isn't picked up by a computer when creating files that are supposed to duplicate the audio data, it's not something that can be dropped from standard playback on any standalone CD player.

So I guess whenever they had to cut vinyl from DSD transfers, it would have been DSD64 from 2011 to January 2014. More details here:

https://mofi.com/blogs/news/mofi-president-jim-davis-addresses-the-digital-lp-mastering-controversy

It's too bad they didn't say this from the start because I think a lot of people would've been sympathetic. I was surprised when they got Dylan, Miles Davis and other Sony owned titles because Sony rarely licensed any of their titles to audiophile labels - like if people knew that was the "catch," it wouldn't have been a huge problem because at least they finally got those titles on audiophile reissues. Hiding that fact just created this looming thing that snowballed over time.

(The "catch" being they needed to create DSD transfers as the master tapes could never leave Sony's facilities.)

check out this record cut straight from the Universal masters

https://craftbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/chip-dip-lp.jpg

LMAO

that Damon post is very good!

What's the benefit of the of the DSD multiples? With DSD128/256/etc you can push the quantisation noise further out of the audible band? Cos that's the thing with 1-bit, right - shedloads of noise, that has to be shaped somewhere. Also, according to Lipshitz et al, you can't dither it, so the noise remains correlated with the signal, therefore A Bad Idea as an archive medium. But I really don't remember the back and forth on that, it was 20 years ago... Team PCM here ;)

Quite agree with the idea that MoFi should've just got ahead of this, and owned it. What a terrific tool to have at your disposal as a maker of boutique editions of LPs - the ability to go and make a completely transparent clone of a precious original master (set up and calibrated by yr expert tape-op) on site, and take it away on an SSD, and do what you like down the line. I wonder if the agreement was "delete that file in one month".

This didn't get mentioned - and at this point it's too late - but people could point out the Steve Hoffman masterings for DCC Compact Classics as an example of reissues that were often mastered from copies (typically analog copies if it was for a gold CD). The company never mentioned it, and it ceased to exist 20 years ago anyway. It's not really a secret anymore, but those gold CD's still fetch a good deal of money and to be fair usually sound great.

yeah the absolutist "every atom on the master tape intact" attitude is absolutely smoked by the right EQ choices and attention to phase etc. But it remains hilarious how banal the records are which are subjected to this degree of fetishisation.
I would buy some good Throwing Muses remasterings in a heartbeat - those records are tangled and dense, and some of the CDs sound like absolute crap. Thinking of looking into the vinyl but I have a great digital setup which is so much easier to navigate.

I don't know, stuff like the Muses LPs and Husker Du - they sound the way they do because of how they were recorded. No remastering is going to change that.

Oh and "House Tornado" is glorious in its opaqueness.

My dream reissue project would have been Hüsker Dü at DCC Compact Classics. Restoring the bass and bringing in some warmth via vacuum tubes would probably have done wonders, especially given how it was recorded. Hoffman's masterings never used additional compression, but they typically went for a BIG sound.

EDIT: Hah, was just about to post this before Gerald's above. I know what he means, but tubes in a mastering chain can do wonders for hard-sounding solid state recordings.

xxp I've never heard anything up to House Tornado on CD aside from the "In A Doghouse" reissue! which ones would you say sound bad, and is the aforementioned reissue included in that assessment?

GMBB House Tornado is the album I was specifically thinking of - I love the opacity and density, but the overall sound of the CD is like when I used to set a graphic EQ aged 13, with the treble and the bass pushed up and the midrange scooped out. I love that album so much I am almost willing to take a punt on an LP in the hope it would be less tiring of a listen.
I quite like the CD of the debut, but Hunkpapa has horrible 80s production flourishes so I'm not sure it would ever sound natural. Real Ramona is better and pretty much everything after is fine to good, The Curse excepted. The 2003 self-title is an example of how to nail the complexity with a good master, despite being scraped together on weekend sessions via Pro Tools iirc. And having had a poorly pressed EP of Chains Changed I was so happy they did it justice on the Doghouse comp.

I'd be happy to do a "needle drop" (as the young ppl say) of my House Tornado LP, at 16/48k-PCM (I think that's what my Pro-Ject Phono Box USB V does), but I bought it 33 years ago and I played it to death for at least the first decade ;) And the first few years were on a late-'70s Crown music-centre :/

I have to admit, the last time I listened to songs off that record were through streaming services, but it did visit the turntable through the audiophool years, so I guess it must sound ok?

(For want of a longer USB cable, I can never be bothered digitising vinyl).

To my great embarrassment I have a Sire promo LP I bought years ago when I didn't have a working turntable, and since I've had a working turntable the LP has been at my ex-wife's house, so I need to get my shit together and reclaim my vinyl ... thank you though!

Needledrops are funny. I was thinking of upgrading my table until I downloaded some well regarded needle drops that I couldn't distinguish from my table when A/B'ing. My digital chain is no slouch neither.

Matt - we're on the same page as far as assessment of the Muses catalog. I even sold "The Curse", it's just an irredeemable bootleg. I guess I just adjust to the sound of things I love, though it's true I can sort of "hear what's missing" if I really think about it, but it doesn't bother me much. The Chameleons debut, "Script Of The Bridge" was remastered once, and then Mark Burgess did it himself, and I really can't tell the difference. That just points to the weakest link in the digital chain - our ears!

Ha, this reminds me of my very earliest internet encounters - mentioning how terrible I thought The Curse sounded on rec.music.4ad in summer '93 and getting "flamed" for it. Also singing the praises of His Name Is Alive's "heavy metal" set at 13 Year Itch and being told it didn't happen. And here we are.

Yeah I've read an interview with Kristin where she expressed bafflement that 4AD wanted to released a bad recording of a pretty average show. At least the cover is beautiful!

oh and to anyone 4AD sympathetic interested in sound quality, avoid the Cocteau Twins remasters, they sound comically bad under the sure guidance of "tin ears" Guthrie.

His Name Is Alive's "heavy metal" set at 13 Year Itch and being told it didn't happen. And here we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KO3pWCgBrY
!!

Hurrah! Metal might be overstating it but, skipping through that, there’s a bit 13-14min in where I thought “well, this isn’t like the records”. I think it was also Unrest and Muses that night. A lifetime ago.

I remember being in Australia while people on the 4ad-l mailing list were going to those shows, it was very weird.

I should sell the Curse CD I have but it's so pretty I'm not going to. Also then there would be a Throwing Muses release I didn't have, that's no good either.

Yup "The Curse" was disappointing to me, mostly because the vocals are way too low in the mix and the guitar is way too loud in the mix; BUT I wouldn't call it irredeemable - the "Hunkpapa" tracks are more raw than the de-clawed studio versions, for example. Oddly, the usually superb Guy Fixsen mixed the album!

I remember those rec.music.4ad days (and the 4AD-L list) and the reports from "The 13 Year Itch"! I have vague memories of someone saying that in addition to the HNIA sets, Karin Oliver did a short a cappella set too (or am I remembering that incorrectly)? And indeed the "heavy metal" HNIA was controversial (like the "Mouth By Mouth" version of "The Dirt Eaters") for fans! I love it all.

I also remember around that time on rec.music.4ad or 4AD-L, when someone posted about having HNIA stay at their place and then photographing them when they slept! And then years later, there's some interview with Warren Defever where he mentions that...

Thanks for the YouTube link, assert! Hadn't heard that before. That same account also posted HNIA's second set at *The 13 Year Itch*.

nice that we were on 4ad-l at the same time, iirc it was about 500 people? One time I dropped my lengthy Muses discography beefed up with quotes etc on the list, and felt like I was their official biographer or something.

Was it maybe even 4ad-l I was on? I can't be sure now; a long summer as a postgrad with a Liverpool University email address and access to WWW. Four years later, when I had web access at home, it was the Usenet groups I subscribed to.

Ok wow digging into my memory banks now - yeah maybe it was the 4AD-L mailing list rather than a Usenet newsgroup, because regarding Usenet I think I only religiously checked alt.music.alternative (?) and rec.music.gaffa (Kate Bush board) back then. Good times.

For what it's worth a bit of googling suggests that the group was alt.music.4ad rather than rec.etc:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.music.4ad

Searching for "the curse sounds terrible" is unhelpful. Google Groups is pretty poor. It'd be great if you could sort the messages by reverse chronological order, for example. But you can't. I remember posting on Usenet but I can't find my own messages, although I remember that I could in the past.

You'd think that the total contents of Usenet wouldn't be too hard to archive. It was text, which compresses well. If you ignore the binaries groups the entire contents of Usenet from the 1980s to the early 2000s can't have been that large.

The 4AD-L mailing list was different from the rec.music.4ad Usenet group. The listservs generally had a moderator somewhere who could rein in the spammers/bad actors, not so for Usenet. Looking back over the last 25% of the Google Groups archive of r.m.4ad, you can see the spam/off-topic posts/noise increasing until everyone just gives up.

tbh the same thing happened to 4ad-l, at least for me in 1997

You'd think that the total contents of Usenet wouldn't be too hard to archive. It was text, which compresses well. If you ignore the binaries groups the entire contents of Usenet from the 1980s to the early 2000s can't have been that large.

:(

This whole MoFi DSD-to-vinyl thing isn't blowing over.