Good one here Steve! I looked through my collection of 500+ record's, and I don't have one MOFI 😮! I have quite a few AP records, but no MOFIs , unbelievable! I have to get on it, I've gotten back into collecting in '17 ! I'm shocked at myself 😮!
Thanks Steve. All good choices. There are many more from the 80's and 90's that are outstanding. Joe Jackson's Night and Day, both Jethro Tull's, King Crimson and Donald Fagen to name just a few. I miss the original MOFI.
Yep, have their Aqualung. As I posted above, I really like the dynamics of it and feel that on my system it sounds FAR better than the dead, lifeless DCC that everyone likes 😊
You being Canadian need to do a segment on A&M half speed albums. Especially the Supertramp releases. As far as the MFSL releases from the 1970's George Benson & Blondie.
Cool video, i have several of the must own mofi lps you highlighted. The Poco Legend album is wonderful as is the Bowie and Supertramp. I have some personal faves mastered by Stan Ricker that i think are in my top 10. Tony Bennett & Bill Evans, Hiroshima, Vince Guaraldi's Black Orpheus and Wes Montgomery' Bumpin' all are in my list. Thanks for sharing your faves, with i had a copy of the Fleetwood Mac ;)
when i come across any older MFSL title or Nautilus or the CBS half speed mastered albums,(thrift shops, rummage sales) i always snatch em up,, i think they all sound pretty good, the few that i have.
Nice special excursion, Steve. I have abt. 20 1st gen Japanese vinyl pressings from the 80s and Anadisq 200 pressings from the 90s. Except the Beatles and the Who, mostly the lesser popular titles, e.g. Atlanta Rhythm Section, Average White Band, Baez, Bloomfield, BB King, Klugh, Modern Jazz Quartet. From a re-/mastering standpoint they were certainly highlights back then but analogue technology and mastering skills have advanced and audiophile buying options are far greater today. Nevertheless, the much thinner JVC vinyl pressings from the 80s are next to none. So, 1st gen MFSLs are keepers for me also for technology legacy reasons, and MFSL was a business ethical company back then. PS The Who‘s Face Dances is one of my all-time MFSL favorites.
Great video. Personally, I love a late 70’s/early 80’s MOFI. I probably have around 20 including a couple of the ones you you showed, but I’m always looking out for more. The Band ‘Music From Big Pink’ and Hall & Oates ‘Abandoned Luncheonette’ are two of the very best I have. The Who ‘Face Dances’ and Earl Klugh ‘Finger paintings’ are also excellent. I have a few of those Superdisks as well and they all sound excellent.
Re: Hotel California… I was listening to my dad’s system and he put on the Chris Bellman cut. We both agreed that for a newly pressed, readily available bog standard record, it sounded great. Then I put on my MoFi SACD, and we both agreed that it shits all over that Bellman cut in every aspect. The difference is not subtle. Now the question is, is that Bellman cut overrated, or does using a format that has such a high resolution that it can capture a master tape (or, if you really want, a vinyl record) in its totality and reproduce it perfectly every time, lead to a closer representation of that master tape than trying to teach an Edison cylinder new tricks? I’m sure the first pressing sounds phenomenal, being sourced from a fresher master tape and pressed better on purer vinyl. Probably beats the SACD in some areas if it’s still mint, although I guarantee it won’t kick your ass as hard in the dynamics. But new vinyl pressings offer absolutely nothing over just listening to a well mastered optical disc, unless your turntable+phono stage are an entire product class higher than your CD player. And when it’s mass produced stuff, you don’t even have a guarantee of no surface noise, no skips, no scratches and no warping. All four of those goodies tend to be thrown in with your £30 Amazon delivery these days! Chris Bellman did a great job, but he was mastering an ancient and degraded tape for a stamper that was going to live out the rest of its days in a nasty pressing plant, being used far beyond its sell by date on poor quality vinyl slab after poor quality vinyl slab. And he didn’t even have access to an all-analog mastering chain.
7:17 I like the 2012 40th anniversary edition with multiple audio formats on supplemental DVD. It's a bit cheaper than a MOFI copy but also hard to find for less than 3 figures at present.
Interesting reviews Steve. I visited Heddon St. in London, UK where they show the front cover of Ziggy. Glad it's not really Kanye - but K West first. You can notes people wrote and stuck in the wall. I would have added Little Feat Waiting For Columbus
I got quite a few MFSL promos back then, but it was hit and miss on the titles, have perhaps 30 total, including some nice clean used ones in past few years, including Ziggy and Rickie Lee Jones, $10 each at a local store. BTW, fellow readers do not call these early ones MoFi, MoFi is the most recent incarnation, no one ever called them that back then, we always called them Mobile Fidelity. Some folks I know, now after what the current folks have done, use the term MoFi as a slur.
Agree... I have the Steve Miller and several other original MFSL pressings that I can't remember right now 😊 One that I have that I bought long ago is the Jethro Tull Aqualung. I know bloody EVERYBODY loves the DCC, but I had that one too and on my system I just found it rather dead and lifeless sounding. But, I do like the MFSl pressing which I feel is far more dynamic.
I do own it. I don’t have an original to compare it to. Mine sounds Greta a lot detail on Mullins drums. It def sounds better then my reissue from a few years back. But I think the MOFI version for a clean copy will run you big bucks.
One you might want to add to your list of great sounding original MFSL titles, is Gerry Rafferty 'City To City'. Right up there with the original UK 'George "Porky" Peckham' pressing.
The original Mofi’s are very rare to find here in Oz, but i do have 3 of them and they are all brilliant. One of them will have Mazzy disappointed that you didnt mention - Little Feat Waiting for Columbus (1979) the other 2 i have are both Supertramp - Crime, that you had from 78 but also Breakfast from 82 (I also have the 2018)
Just an aside... when MCA took over ABC in 1978, Poco's record label, Legend was actually cut half-speed by Darrell W. Johnson at JVC Mastering. Deadwax has DWJ on it.
Regarding "old" MoFi, i've only listened at a friends house to the Sinatra box, which is pretty good -haven't compared it to the latest Mofi Sinatra's though- and the Dark Side Of The Moon, which, to me, sounds better than every other one, although I know it can be controversial, since the sound profile is super different from the original, which is quite dark.
@@stevewestman7774 I listened to that one on some other occasion, also to a UK 70s pressing, I don't own any of them, but will try to organize a proper shootout. I remember liking the fact that the Mofi had a little sparkle in the highs.
I picked up what I thought would be a great vinyl pressing of Bob Seeger "Night Moves" off of ebay. The vinyl was/is in great (near mint) condition. This MFSL's version is awful! It's muddy, little clarity and/or dynamics. It just falls flat. I'm no expert but somewhere between engineering and pressing a lot of detail was lost. Mine's a Japanese pressing according to the 'cardstock' inner sleeve. But, the record label states a copyright of 1976, while the inner sleeve jacket states a 1979 date. It is dead silent vinyl. I wish all of my albums were...
@stevewestman7774 I agree, I even like the James Guthrie digital remaster better than the MoFi, atleast to my ears. Steve is the 30th anniversary cut the last time the original master tapes were used to cut dark side?
@@michaeledwards7668 well Kevin did mention last Friday on the Roundtable the original master was used for his 30th anniversary cut so I would assume yes.
The format is, the recordings are not. If you want to listen to those early Chess recordings it's your only option i realise that; but new stuff? @@Groover71
