Post by Cornan March 19, 2010 (1 of 16)
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I sent a message at the Mobile Fidelity website a while back and heard back this week.
I had sent them feedback that it was hard to tell which albums were recorded in surround.
The disappointing reply came this week that they will not be issuing any more surround recordings at all.
They =are= issuing older material, some of which was already recorded in surround sound when the albums were originally issued.
It's a real pity that their SACDs will be stereo henceforth.
My personal "oldie" favorite is Doobie Brothers "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits", a simply wonderful quadraphonic album.
I would pay a premium to have that album on a modern optical surround format.
Still plenty of good news in classical, but I wish we could light a fire under more pop music rightsholders, both for older material and new music.
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I suppose Mobile Fidelity no longer cares what the public wants....and it's a pity. That they wouldn't even consider tapping the hundreds upon hundreds of existing 4.0 quad remasters of the seventies leads me to believe that they are out of touch with current market demands. Hell, the SACD comes with a stereo layer for purists but perhaps the additional mastering cost of creating 3 layers for SACD may be too prohibitive. With Steve Hoffman having abandoned SACD for gold RBCDs, that leaves Analogue Productions as the only possibility for ever mining that treasure trove of 70's Quadrophenia. Hoping someone there reads SA-CD.
net.
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rammiepie said:
With Steve Hoffman having abandoned SACD for gold RBCDs
a great loss for the format :( he was one of the mastering engineers who knew that DSD sounded exactly like a master tape and could master many more albums for stereo and multichannel Super Audio together with Gus Skinas.
Bummer
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Post by Jonty March 20, 2010 (4 of 16)
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rammiepie said:
With Steve Hoffman having abandoned SACD for gold RBCDs
Has he? What about the Nat King Cole SACDs that are about to be issued?
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Post by Claude March 20, 2010 (5 of 16)
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rammiepie said:
I suppose Mobile Fidelity no longer cares what the public wants....
It's a pity indeed that the quad tapes are not being used, but don't consider yourself "the public". MoFi has probably estimated what it costs to do a proper surround mix and how many additional sales a multichannel SACD would generate, and decided it wasn't worth it.
Judging from discussions on the Steve Hoffman forum (a big MoFi fan base), many of their customers are strictly stereo only, and a lot don't even have a SACD player, because so few classic rock SACDs are being released.
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Claude said:
Judging from discussions on the Steve Hoffman forum (a big MoFi fan base), many of their customers ... don't even have a SACD player, because so few classic rock SACDs are being released.
So we can't count on MoFi to help solve that chicken & egg situation.
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Post by Stanbury March 20, 2010 (7 of 16)
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MoFi hasn't released a surround disc in quite a while. Was the last MoFi mch disc Cowboy Junkies "Whites off Earth Now"?
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Post by hiredfox March 21, 2010 (8 of 16)
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Never yet managed to buy one even with Amazon's help so it will not be much of a loss to me personally.
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It's really too bad. I have all eight of their classical releases, and they did an excellent job. The quad recordings sound great, and it was nice to see those recordings back into the catalog.
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Post by hiredfox May 13, 2010 (10 of 16)
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In itself this is not a wholly bad thing provided that they still commit to Super Audio as a high fidelity sound vision.
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