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Mobile Fidelity, ‘One Step’ etc

robbyd said:
Might be interesting to compare the One Step Eagles 'Desperado' against the old Nimbus Supercut pressing... think that's about the only one that overlaps both labels
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I’d personally never bet against a Nimbus. They are very, very good IME. Don’t look anything special, cheap ‘80s sleeves, often reissue labels (e.g. KoB is a ‘70s UK gradient CBS, not a US six-eye), but the mastering and pressing is always superb.
 
daytona600 said:
The first commercial digital recording was Nippon Columbia NCB-7003, "Something" by Steve Marcus, released January 1971.

The first digital communication Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) transform voice signals into digital 1936
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Bop till you drop, 1979 generally credited as the first digital album, I remember considerable publicity at the time, but wasn't there a New Years day Concert of classical as well?
Bop doesn't sound as good as his earlier conventionally recorded albums, and I seem to remember Cooder himself being critical of the sound achieved.
 
New labels
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ff1d1l said:
Bop till you drop, 1979 generally credited as the first digital album, I remember considerable publicity at the time, but wasn't there a New Years day Concert of classical as well?
Bop doesn't sound as good as his earlier conventionally recorded albums, and I seem to remember Cooder himself being critical of the sound achieved.
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I actually like the sound of Bop Till You Drop. My copy is a good pressing
 
Dozey said:
I actually like the sound of Bop Till You Drop. My copy is a good pressing
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I like the sound of it too, but compared to Boomers Story, Paradise and Lunch etc it is less dynamic and in the room sounding. Cooder himself said getting a good guitar sound with the digital system had been difficult and that he wasn't entirely satisfied, and indeed electric guitar does sound processed rather than raw as on the earlier recordings.
If I were giving marks out of ten I'd give it a solid 7.5, and the earlier recordings 8.5 or 9.

It's a great album, though - musically almost perfect. Think I'll go and stick it on now...
 
It definitely has a sound of it's own - presumably perhaps not the production, but a manifestation of the 3M system? However, Fagen's 'Nightfly' used the same system and though it also has a unique sound, doesn't have the same acoustic character as 'Bop...' -
 
There’s a good article on digital recording history here on AES (.pdf). The technology had been around in the classical world quite a long time before Ry Cooder, Donald Fagen etc. I’ve got a couple of the old Telarc albums and they are pretty decent (very dynamic).
 
Listening to Bop now, and there's no way you could describe the acoustic guitars as sounding realistic... they're sounding almost flanged at times. Bass is very nimble, and drums sound ok, if not as realistic as earlier albums.
 
ff1d1l said:
Listening to Bop now, and there's no way you could describe the acoustic guitars as sounding realistic... they're sounding almost flanged at times. Bass is very nimble, and drums sound ok, if not as realistic as earlier albums.
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I have to admit I don’t know Bop Until You Drop at all, (I like Paris Texas, never really bothered with anything else). That aside it is quite risky to blame the recording technology for an album of that time-frame as a lot of digital FX was starting to appear at the time, delay, reverb etc, and a lot of it with very low bit-depth (8 or 12 bit) and quite a distinctive sound. Flangers, phasers and chorus were all the rage too, so what sounds like flanged guitars may well be just that and very deliberately so. The Roland Jazz Chorus amp was hugely popular too. Far better to judge recording technology with classical and jazz IMO.
 
ff1d1l said:
Listening to Bop now, and there's no way you could describe the acoustic guitars as sounding realistic.
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They sound in places like they're recorded with a piezo pickup - the acoustic on "Go Home Girl" for example.
 
Tony L said:
I have to admit I don’t know Bop Until You Drop at all, (I like Paris Texas, never really bothered with anything else). That aside it is quite risky to blame the recording technology for an album of that time-frame as a lot of digital FX was starting to appear at the time, delay, reverb etc, and a lot of it with very low bit-depth (8 or 12 bit) and quite a distinctive sound. Flangers, phasers and chorus were all the rage too, so what sounds like flanged guitars may well be just that and very deliberately so. The Roland Jazz Chorus amp was hugely popular too. Far better to judge recording technology with classical and jazz IMO.
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Never heard it! You should remedy that ASAP, it's a great album, really is one of the greats, much more soul/gospel influence than Paris and fantastic guitar playing.
No, most of the guitars, much of the electric ones too sound slightly phased, flanged. The acoustic ones shouldn't, as Cooder is a peerless acoustic player and has no need of this neither is it evident on other albums. It could indeed be low bit depth on early digital effects... don't think he's a Roland man...
 
This is interesting:

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/roger-nichols-digital-digital-transfers

"These early 3M digital 32-track machines did not have digital outputs, so the transfers were to be made via analogue cables into new 24-bit converters. There was no such thing as a 16-bit converter when the 3M machine was designed, so they used a unique combination of a 12-bit converter with an additional four bits of an 8-bit converter for gain ranging. This required a very expensive HP spectrum analyser to set the tracking of all the converter elements."

So any remasters made by revisiting the original 3M master tapes won't be wholly digital. As to how much of a difference that makes? Difficult to tell.
 
According to this post on Billboard, Mobile Fidelity has settled the lawsuit against them out of court:

“MoFi Reaches Multi-Million Dollar Settlement Over Analog Vinyl Controversy, But Some Buyers Object
The company wants to end litigation claiming it deceived customers about "all-analog" records, but a battle over the settlement's fairness is already brewing.

Vinyl producer Mobile Fidelity has reached a settlement that could be worth as much as $25 million to resolve allegations that the company’s pricey “all analog” records were secretly created using digital methods. But some customers strongly object to the deal, saying it’s “tainted by the stink of collusion.””
 
Whilst people enjoy their share of the payout I’d be delighted if one of them could come on here and confirm that they knew all along which albums they owned had a digital part of the process and which did not. Instead of people simply enjoying the format they enjoy I have long since gotten bored of people telling me how superior vinyl is and so this story makes me laugh long and loud every time I think about it.
 
They seem to have got off very lightly there considering it's fraud in the US. Some people would pay $25 m pretty easily out of their back pockets over there.
 
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I’ve merged the new thread into the main one and in doing so I edited a post slightly as I’d lost the settlement figure as that was in the new thread title.

PS $25m seems a huge amount for an audiophile record label even in the case of obvious fraudulent advertising. I’m amazed the business is worth that figure. The irony is none of this impacted the record collector market much, rare Mo-Fi albums remained valuable.
 
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