By: Sarah Zhong

On July 14, Mike Esposito, a record store owner, went public with a shocking claim.

Esposito said in a YouTube video that “pretty reliable sources” told him the MoFi (Mobile Fidelity) in California, a company that has proudly said it was using original tapes for its pricey reissues, had been using digital files. In the audiophile world-where the origin is everything, and the task is to get as close as possible to the original recording–digital is blasphemy.

Shane Buettner, the owner of Intervention Records, another company that works with reissues, defended MoFi on the issue. He remembered running into one of the company’s engineers at a studio working with a master tape. “I know their process, and it’s legit,” he said.

At MoFi’s headquarters, John Wood, the company’s vice president of product development, knew what was true. He felt defeated as he watched Esposito’s video. He has worked for the company for more than 26 years. Wood could hear the disappointment as Esposito said that some of MoFi’s albums were his favorites. Wood called Esposito and invited him to fly to California for a tour.

The tour resulted in a second video in which the company’s engineers confirmed that his claims were right. The company admitted that they had been lying to their fans.

MoFi’s chief marketing officer, Syd Schwartz, made an apology. He said, “Mobile Fidelity makes great records, the best-sounding records that you can buy. There had been choices made over the years and choices in marketing that have led to confusion and anger and a lot of questions, and there were narratives that had been propagating for a while that was untrue or false or myths. We were wrong not to have addressed this sooner.”

With this development, Mobile Fidelity has changed its process and will continue to sell reissues but will be honest and improve its marketing and problem-solving in the future.