By: Austin Deng
Mobile Fidelity, or MoFi, often prided itself on its analog recordings of its best and most expensive albums. However, on July 14th, Mike Esposito, the owner of a Phoenix record shop, released a Youtube video claiming that an anonymous tip told him MoFi used digital files in its production chain.
At first, many people didn’t believe Esposito. Shane Buettner, the owner of Intervention Records, defended MoFi. “I know their process and it’s legit,” he wrote. Michael Fremer, a writer for an online magazine, was more aggressive. “Will speculative
click bait YouTube videos claiming otherwise be taken down after reading this?” he tweeted.
Esposito’s Youtube videos caught the attention of MoFi’s vice president of product development, John Wood. Wood invited Esposito to California for a tour of the production process. There, it was revealed that Esposito had been correct, and digital files had been used in the making of many of MoFi’s albums.
On July 20th, Esposito released a video revealing his discoveries and an interview with the engineers at MoFi, who confirmed that the company had used digital copies. Later, Wood apologized for not correcting the labeling of its albums, and promised that MoFi would make sure to correctly label recordings as digital or analog.
MoFi relied heavily on marketing high quality analog albums, and the use of digital files stirred up anger amongst audiophiles. Digital files are often believed to be less natural and have worse quality.
“Not that you can’t make good records with digital, but it just isn’t as natural as when you use the original tape,” says Bernie Grundman, the mastering engineer who worked on the original recordings of Steely Dan’s “Aja,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” and Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic.”
The audiophile community was also thrown into confusion. The community often criticized the usage of digitized files, however, many of MoFi’s best records used digital files.
Jamie Howarth, the creator of Plangent Process, a revolutionary technology to digitize files, says that “The…part that bothers them is that they’ve been listening to digital all along and they’re highly invested in believing that any digital step will destroy their experience. And they’re wrong.”
People like Randy Braun, a music lover and Hoffman message board member, hope that the revelation will prove what he has been saying. Braun had been trying to convince people that digital recordings can be just as high-quality as analog recordings for years. “These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.”
Link to Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/05/mofi-records-analog-digital-scandal/