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Mobile Fidelity Analog Vinyl Controversy

Head_Unit

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6:14 - Why not just cut the vinyl step out completely and just get the DSD file?
Because it stands for "Devil Sells Digital" (though you'll never get the Sony executives involved-who are secretly robots piloted by miniature people inside, the predecessors of the Neon Genesis Evangelion conspiracy to come in the future-to admit it).
 

Head_Unit

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Keep in mind if MoFi tries to defend this in court and win on a technicality such as, "We never said those exact words...bah, blah, blah..."
Puts me in mind of Ozzy not playing Ozzfest when Sharon was having cancer surgery-they refused to refund anyone because the back of the tickets said lineup not guaranteed. Oh sure but gee it's called OZZFEST. Aren't those MoFi called "one step"? Or am I mixing something up?
 

antcollinet

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People didn't pay $125 for a digital transfer and they knew it. They paid for an analog process regardless of how it sounds.
Just one in the long list of things that makes them a bunch of idiots.

And of course MOFI'll defend it. It doesn't matter what people think they "knew", it matters what can be proven in court to form part of the contract of sale - and they'll be wiped out by a default judgement if they don't. If I were MOFI I'd offer every class member a none admission of liability, full refund for return of the product and dropping the suit. They probably wouldn't take it because they are idiots all fired up with righteous indignation.

The plaintiffs would then only be left with the meritless (IMO) future value claim and would lose** with costs awarded against them for such a meritless case.

** unless the plaintiffs have a smoking gun none of us have seen. At the moment though, it looks to me as though the only smoking gun is pointed squarely at their own collective temple.
 

rdenney

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The vinyl production master tape (or digital master file) would NOT have the RIAA curve applied. That is always done during every cutting itself.
I wasn’t talking about the tape master, but rather the master cutting, from which the molds for the mothers are made. Hence “when being cut.”

Rick “just to make that clear” Denney
 

Angsty

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Read this article on Secrets of Home Theater yesterday. It’s a good overview of analog to digital transfer. I like Secrets for their measurement suites, as well.

 

Sal1950

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I find it totally hilarious that the vinyl lovers have beem paying through the nose for their "pure
analog" recordings on vinyl and been listening to DSD digital the whole time. ROTFLMAO
 

ROOSKIE

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Just one in the long list of things that makes them a bunch of idiots.

And of course MOFI'll defend it. It doesn't matter what people think they "knew", it matters what can be proven in court to form part of the contract of sale - and they'll be wiped out by a default judgement if they don't. If I were MOFI I'd offer every class member a none admission of liability, full refund for return of the product and dropping the suit. They probably wouldn't take it because they are idiots all fired up with righteous indignation.

The plaintiffs would then only be left with the meritless (IMO) future value claim and would lose** with costs awarded against them for such a meritless case.

** unless the plaintiffs have a smoking gun none of us have seen. At the moment though, it looks to me as though the only smoking gun is pointed squarely at their own collective temple.
Honestly these pressings probably sound as good as one can get in terms of Vinyl.

There is dishonestly involved, but how do plaintiffs show they lost something of monetary value and how do them demonstrate that the lie was egregious enough to warrant meaningful punitive damages of more than $100 in total? I just don't see anyway to win. Seems like a wrist slapper.

Mofi actually helped these folks move a bit closer to reality. They might actually be able to use that in their defense, not kidding here.

There are so many other products a lot of Audiofools have purchased that are far more of a scam and rip off. I wish these folks knew that and focused on that with the same energy. Sue Shunyata Research.


On the collectibility / rarity front, that is where I think the plaintiffs might get something. Their purchase was based on beliefs about rarity that were inherently tied to claims about the analog process. I am not sure if MoFi would have had to specifically claim anything about collectible value, to be found liable for the loss in value. I think they could be, but again not sure.
A buddy or two have very valuable albums that they sometimes do sell from time to time for great $$.
One dude who I lost track of, last I heard is making his living horse trading vinyl.

Most of this is due to rarity and not really anything else. So if the albums are still rare, the value proposition is there. Nothing is lost.
I actually don't know anyone who cares if their vinyl is AAA but I do know folks who care if it is a good sounding release and if it has cool extra stuff and great liner notes.

Are there that many people who are angry at Mofi or just loud people?
 
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Phorize

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Honestly these pressings probably sound as good as one can get in terms of Vinyl.

There is dishonestly involved, but how do plaintiffs show they lost something of monetary value and how do them demonstrate that the lie was egregious enough to warrant meaningful punitive damages of more than $100 in total? I just don't see anyway to win. Seems like a wrist slapper.

Mofi actually helped these folks move a bit closer to reality. They might actually be able to use that in their defense, not kidding here.

There are so many other products a lot of Audiofools have purchased that are far more of a scam and rip off. I wish these folks knew that and focused on that with the same energy. Sue Shunyata Research.



A buddy or two have very valuable albums that they sometimes do sell from time to time for great $$.
One dude who I lost track of, last I heard is making his living horse trading vinyl.

Most of this is due to rarity and not really anything else. So if the albums are still rare, the value proposition is there. Nothing is lost.
I actually don't know anyone who cares if their vinyl is AAA but I do know folks who care if it is a good sounding release and if it has cool extra stuff and great liner notes.

Are there that many people who are angry at Mofi or just loud people?
Agree, MOFI were grifting, but they weren’t the only ones. Step forward Michael Fremer and other self proclaimed experts who touted a branch of pseudo-knowledge and scoffed at digital audio whilst utterly failing to spot the very thing that they relentlessly pronounced was obvious.
 

Vladimir Filevski

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Most of this is due to rarity and not really anything else. So if the albums are still rare, the value proposition is there. Nothing is lost.
They are not rare - the whole MoFi scam was discovered when the number of copies far exceed what is possible with genuine One-Step process.

There is dishonestly involved, but how do plaintiffs show they lost something of monetary value and how do them demonstrate that the lie was egregious enough to warrant meaningful punitive damages of more than $100 in total?
See above.


There are so many other products a lot of Audiofools have purchased that are far more of a scam and rip off. I wish these folks knew that and focused on that with the same energy. Sue Shunyata Research.

Yes, there are much more scams and rip-offs around. But you can't sue Shunyata Research solely on their belief that according to their listening tests Shunyata gear improves the sound. Maybe they do know it is a scam and are lying intentionally, but you can't prove that.
In MoFi case they did know what they were doing, and it was proven!


Mofi actually helped these folks move a bit closer to reality. They might actually be able to use that in their defense, not kidding here.
Ironically, that defense is the same as Shunyata Research may take if someone sue them.
 
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krabapple

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Read this article on Secrets of Home Theater yesterday. It’s a good overview of analog to digital transfer. I like Secrets for their measurement suites, as well.


almost right off the bat I read:

DSD formats such as DSD128 and DSD256 are higher resolution than SACD.

Questionable. They are all 1-bit formats.

All digital formats are subject to several artifacts which include Jitter, Quantization Errors, and Aliasing, but the biggest issue is the clipping of intersample peaks. Jitter, quantization errors, and aliasing can easily be controlled to levels that reduce the resulting noise and distortion to levels that are 110 dB to 140 dB below the peak level of the music. These artifacts are well below audibility in a good digital system. In contrast, clipped intersample peaks are very audible. They produce bursts of distortion that are just 30 to 40 dB lower than the peak level of the music. These bursts of distortion are well above audibility.

Certainly they are not necessarily audible. The density of intersample overs -- quantity over time -- matters to audibility.

The sound produced by the clipping of intersample peaks is what distinguishes digital from analog systems. When this clipping is eliminated, digital systems are felt by many to be indistinguishable from pure analog systems. Unfortunately, very few DACs can reproduce audio without clipping intersample peaks.

Prove it, sir.

And then later, saying he prefers the sound of DSD over PCM. :rolleyes:
 
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Sal1950

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"When this clipping is eliminated, digital systems are felt by many to be indistinguishable from pure analog systems."

??? When this clipping is eliminated, it's sound is superior to analog systems and indistingusable from a microphone feed!

And then later, saying he prefers the sound of DSD over PCM.
Just more repetition of DSD myth.
I wish we could bury this BS.
 

subframe

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so MoFi’s marketing onslaught for its new speakers was not just to distract people and paper over the controversy, but also to raise funds for to pay the settlement.

And people seem to be happy to fall for it.
 

anmpr1

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so MoFi’s marketing onslaught for its new speakers was not just to distract people and paper over the controversy, but also to raise funds for to pay the settlement.

And people seem to be happy to fall for it.

So let me get this straight, the company offered to to reimburse customers who believed they were defrauded, the full purchase price? Is that correct?

But the plaintiffs argued that they could have gotten more if the settlement hadn't been approved. Right?

From the article: Among other things, the challengers had argued that the settlement’s payouts were insufficient based on how much they might have won at trial.

Looks to me that the folks arguing as much simply wanted some x-tra cash, in addition to whatever they actually spent. I would be embarrassed and ashamed to be associated with anyone acting in such a low-level grifting way. All for a freaking piece of plastic.

Yeah, MoFi was wrong in advertising. But give me a break. Imagine-- feeling so bereaved over a record, and so entitled, that not only did they want their money back, but also wanted an additional pound of flesh. Greed, even in such petty occasions, seems to have no limit. Pathetic behavior, IMO.

Oh well, I'm sure the attorneys are laughing at both parties.
 

SuicideSquid

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So let me get this straight, the company offered to to reimburse customers who believed they were defrauded, the full purchase price? Is that correct?

But the plaintiffs argued that they could have gotten more if the settlement hadn't been approved. Right?

From the article: Among other things, the challengers had argued that the settlement’s payouts were insufficient based on how much they might have won at trial.

Looks to me that the folks arguing as much simply wanted some x-tra cash, in addition to whatever they actually spent. I would be embarrassed and ashamed to be associated with anyone acting in such a low-level grifting way. All for a freaking piece of plastic.

Yeah, MoFi was wrong in advertising. But give me a break. Imagine-- feeling so bereaved over a record, and so entitled, that not only did they want their money back, but also wanted an additional pound of flesh. Greed, even in such petty occasions, seems to have no limit. Pathetic behavior, IMO.

Oh well, I'm sure the attorneys are laughing at both parties.
I imagine the issue here was one of punitive damages. In most jurisdictions, punitive damages are only awarded to sanction particularly egregious conduct, but in the US, they seem to be given out as a matter of course. In this case, I imagine some plaintiffs thought they could get $25 million in actual damages and a further $25 million (or something like that) in punitive damages.

In any other common law jurisdiction there'd be no chance, but in the US it's not unrealistic. This is part of the reason why some folks have been calling for tort reform in the US for decades.

Say what you want about the lawyers, it was the plaintiffs' lawyers who talked them down from "go to trial and take them for everything they're worth" to "just accept the damn fair settlement and be done with it".
 

VQR

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So let me get this straight, the company offered to to reimburse customers who believed they were defrauded, the full purchase price? Is that correct?

But the plaintiffs argued that they could have gotten more if the settlement hadn't been approved. Right?

From the article: Among other things, the challengers had argued that the settlement’s payouts were insufficient based on how much they might have won at trial.

Looks to me that the folks arguing as much simply wanted some x-tra cash, in addition to whatever they actually spent. I would be embarrassed and ashamed to be associated with anyone acting in such a low-level grifting way. All for a freaking piece of plastic.

Yeah, MoFi was wrong in advertising. But give me a break. Imagine-- feeling so bereaved over a record, and so entitled, that not only did they want their money back, but also wanted an additional pound of flesh. Greed, even in such petty occasions, seems to have no limit. Pathetic behavior, IMO.

Oh well, I'm sure the attorneys are laughing at both parties.
The mix of understandable anger and obsessive fervor over MoFi's fraudulent advertising seems only equalled by the tendency of many of these same people to defend fraudulent audiophile tweaks.

You can proclaim your outlet plug reduces EMI, your cables improve audio fidelity, your upscaler improves 'time resolution' yet never need to prove any of your claims.

So long as your lie for profit fits into the audiophile religion, your lies are accepted. Quite ironic, no?
 

krabapple

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so MoFi’s marketing onslaught for its new speakers was not just to distract people and paper over the controversy, but also to raise funds for to pay the settlement.

And people seem to be happy to fall for it.
To actually cost anywhere near $25 million, hordes of sedentary middle aged and elderly men would have to mail all their suspect 'vinyls' to Mofi for full refunds. I hardly see that happening.

The other two options, 5% or 10% refunds or credits...are a minor component.
 

SuicideSquid

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The mix of understandable anger and obsessive fervor over MoFi's fraudulent advertising seems only equalled by the tendency of many of these same people to defend fraudulent audiophile tweaks.

You can proclaim your outlet plug reduces EMI, your cables improve audio fidelity, your upscaler improves 'time resolution' yet never need to prove any of your claims.

So long as your lie for profit fits into the audiophile religion, your lies are accepted. Quite ironic, no?

There's a couple of issues to tease out here on why this is.

One is that there's a difference between what's called "advertising puffery" and a demonstrable claim. A claim that this fancy speaker wire will make your system "come alive' or your "sound sparkle"? Advertising puffery. That also extends to claims that can be categorized as purely subjective. "Tastes good" is a subjective claim and if someone advertises a meal as tasting good and you don't like it, tough, that's a claim that's totally in the eye of the beholder. In general a claim that something will "sound good" when using some tweak falls into a similar class of claims. This MoFi matter is distinguished because they made a specific claim ("all analog mastering and pressing") that was demostrably false, and the claim was made with the intention of inducing people to buy MoFi's product, so it's not just advertising puffery, it's fraud.

The other issue with advertising audiophile gadgets is that people in a niche obsessive community who all believe this bullshit don't sue over it. An audiophile who buys a $10,000 cable and a $20,000 power line conditioner in the belief it'll make his system sound better and who believes it does in fact make his system sound better isn't going to sue PS Audio or Audioquest or whoever over fraudulent claims. Generally speaking, in order to make these kinds of lawsuits worthwhile, you need a relatively large number of people who all believe they've been defrauded to band together and sue over it. You're just not going to find that in the audiophile community outside of an example like MoFi, because they all buy hook-line-and-sinker into the bullshit.
 
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