Tuttle et al v Audiophile Music Direct

[firedog]

8 hours ago, Rexp said:

Thing is, digital files can have distortion baked into them and sometimes the process of mastering to vinyl filters out the distortion, hence better sound. 

How does it "filter out" the distortion in a way that mastering to digital can't?

What you really seem to be saying, without realizing it, is mastering to vinyl and LP production adds on more distortion, but a type you prefer to listen to.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Rexp said:

Actually I borrowed this theory from Tony Faulkner who recorded this album:

So far it's a claim, not a theory. And appeals to authority don't count for anything.

Again, how does the so called filtering take place, and what does it do?

[firedog]

They are offering refunds, so it's hard to see the point of the suit and what possible damages could be awarded. 

If they are worth more on the secondary market than the original price, it seems like a claim of damages/harm by the purchasers is not very strong. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Honest question, did MoFi explicitly say no digital was used in the process?

The graphics they were using to illustrate the process left out the digital step. Think that was a coincidence? It's showing the consumer an all analog process. Lying by omission is still a lie when what you are omitting is material to the subject at hand. The only conclusion you'd draw from what they were pitching is that it was all analog.

 

Apparently they also told individual people face to face and email to email that it was an all analog process.

 

People didn't catch on till they got greedy and starting pressing more LPs than the analog "master tape" process would reasonably allow. If they hadn't done that, they'd still be getting away with it.

 

[firedog]

11 hours ago, PeterG said:

Exactly.  Only a dope would enjoy whiskey for its origin rather than its taste--the proof of the pudding is in the eating. 

I freely admit that I like some blends better than many (not all) single malts. I'm not embarrassed by it and refuse to let whiskey snobs effect me.

[firedog]

36 minutes ago, Gonzbul said:

You can't get that sound from Digital

Yeah you can: the right VSP plugins and DSP and/or a tube pre. Or a digital tube emulator.

 

I can even add the various noises that turntables and record playback adds to music reproduction. Actual turntable sounds, digitized. Makes your clean digital file sound like it's being played from an LP:

Adds surface noise, tracking noise, etc. Or the distortion added by the analog desks from Abbey Road.

I can even pops and clicks if you want them. 

All the glories of LP inaccuracy.

Sounds just like the old days.

I'm not joking.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

I think, as I imagine the majority of people in this thread do, that digital has greater copy fidelity than analog. That gives rise to the feeling that the plaintiffs in this suit must be wrongheaded for claiming to prefer something less true to the original.

 

However, in the "let him who is without sin cast the first stone" department: As noted in an earlier comment, Mark Knopfler, whose recordings have often been used as audiophile demos, runs tracks through various analog decks to get particular sounds. He's far from the only one. And there are vanishingly few recordings that are faithful renderings of a band playing together in the studio.  Several people involved with recording have commented over the years in this forum and others that you really wouldn't like so-called "flat transfers" if you heard them.

 

Even recordings of classical ensembles and acoustic jazz involve mic-ing and mixing choices. (I remember a Linn recording of a piano concerto I refer to as "The Attack of the 70-Foot Piano" because the producer decided the soundstage of the piano on the recording should be precisely as wide as that of the symphony orchestra.)

 

So we are all coming at recordings from a standpoint of personal preference. I don't feel personal preference versus absolute fidelity can be the basis on which we say the plaintiffs in this suit are wrongheaded.

 

After saying all this, though, I don't think an attempted class action lawsuit is the best way to resolve the plaintiffs' objections.

 

People who are upset should just send in their LP and get their money back. Yeah, you got deceived. Get over it. You aren't suffering from PTSD because of it. Drop the suit.

 

As far as recordings, mixings, and masterings: 99% of us don't know shit. We pretend we do. If you ever read books by people who actually make records, most of them do massive amounts of alterations to the sound that originally is recorded on the tape or the file. And play with all sorts of stuff pre-recording to alter that sound that gets recorded.  Including classical recordings. And that's all the way back to the 1950's. Including many of your favorite records that you think sound "natural". Guess what? They don't. If they did, you'd hate them.

 

What we should want is an LP or disc or file that accurately reflects what the artist intended. And hope we have a system that accurately plays it back (or colors the sound how we like it colored). That's why the MOFI thing makes me chuckle. MOFI tested and figured out that the most accurate way to make a record from tape (as they couldn't take the tape home to manufacture LPs) was to use a DSD 256 master copy of the tape. Read what their CEO said about their LP production process. Pretty clear they know what they are doing and take it very seriously. 

Doesn't matter what audiophiles think they know about record making and what sounds best. They don't actually know. 

And neither do lots of writers and critics. 

 

[firedog]

22 minutes ago, GregWormald said:

IMO it's all really simple:

People paid a premium price for something that wasn't what was advertised.

 

If I ordered a Beef Wellington at a restaurant and was charged a Beef Wellington price I'd be p*ssed if I got a sausage roll, no matter how good it tasted.

 

If they were so sure they made the best sounding recordings why not just say that, instead of lying?

 

It's up to the individual what they want to do with their records, but isn't false advertising a crime? (Unless you're a politician, of course.)

Everything you say is true. But they are offering people their money back. That should be all that's necessary.

[firedog]

13 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Not sure I live in the same world as you. 

 

I don't think anyone, other than the engineers working on Beyonce's new album, know how it was made. The world is not watching. The album wasn't produced to any spec. If on the other hand, the world demanded she release an album that was AAA, or they wouldn't purchase it, she would've produced an AAA album even if it sounded worse. 

 

Companies have to sell their goods. If the misguided public likes AAA solely because it says AAA, AAA is what they'll sell. 

She isn't one of my favorites, but I generally listen to her new albums as I consider her to be a touchstone and influencer of modern popular music.  Her recordings are also good tests of your system's ability to reproduce low bass and it's ability to reveal the layers of very dense recordings.

 

I'm sure the recordings go thru an amazingly complex process of multiple alterations, treatments, etc., and that lots of different people work on each track and different setups and studios are involved.

Nonetheless, she gets a uniform "sound" out of each album. 

I'd bet a lot of money it's exactly the sound she wanted.

That's all the consumer really needs to know. The details might interest some, but aren't going to actually tell you anything about the SQ.

 

I understand that for some classical, audiophile, and small band specialist recordings it's very important to some.  But again, we are pretty much fooling ourselves if we think that info really tells us much about what we hear in the final release product. We hear what the people involved want us to hear. 

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Jud said:

I think the difficulty with saying it was OK to leave out information in this instance is that the impression it created was deceptive. MoFi's diagram of its process and the name "One Step" simply weren't true.

 

Legally speaking, I think that's enough to meet a particular element of a deceptive marketing case, but (to repeat something I've said earlier in the thread) I don't see what MoFi owes the consumers besides a refund.

 

Deciding to leave information out of your marketing because you don't want consumers getting into technical details they don't understand is a legitimate decision that consumers can choose to react to as they wish. Picking and choosing marketing information so as to leave consumers with a false impression of your product is not the same thing and is of course wrong.

Reminds me of DAC manufacturers who refuse to disclose what chips they are using or even alter circuit boards so the names are erased. They've  been burned by armchair engineers who are sure a certain component is "meaningful" in how the entire device sounds. They don't disclose that information so that an entire device isn't rejected on the mistaken beliefs of audiophiles who are (mistakenly) certain that a certain part means an entire device will sound a certain way.

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Iving said:

 

Scary

Americans generally aren't taught geography; and b/c they live in a giant country with oceans on 2 sides and one major language, they don't feel they need to know much about the world. Most Americans don't have a passport and never leave the US. Travel for them is in the US. 

 

Beyond that, I've always had a problem with the "Jay-walking" bit: yes, some of the people are ignoramuses; but others I think are so intimidated by the presence of Jay Lenno that their brains just don't function.

[firedog]

19 minutes ago, Mike Rubin said:

The education gap between their respective memberships is now the defining difference between our two political parties. 

There are plenty of "educated" people who are ignorant. Education - as defined by a degree - doesn't mean you actually know much or have insight.

At least up till Corona, the anti-Vax movement was dominated by "highly educated" people, for one example. 

Lots of Americans with Bachelor and advanced degrees know zip about geography, general history, mathematics, and science.

They simply aren't taught it and the culture doesn't value that knowledge outside of areas where it has a direct economic value. 

[firedog]

Just now, PeterG said:

I often buy CDs just on seeing they have been reviewed.  This was the case a month or so ago when I saw Mark Smotroff's July 6 (pre-MoFi news) Audiophile Review coverage of Ella Fitzgerald at the Hollywood Bowl.  I was disappointed with the sonics (maybe I should read the reviews? haha), so returned to the review just now.  HA!  It includes a pragmatic discussion of all the issues here--how tech and media issues interact with sonics, how these things are described to listeners, and how to put that into a buying decision context.  Hat's off to Mr Smotroff, he anticipated the whole thing:

 

Sonics wise, Ella At The Hollywood Bowl sounds very good all things considered — it is after all a 60-plus year old analog tape captured from the soundboard, recorded live without a net. I enjoyed listening to it on vinyl a bit more than I did the high resolution 96 kHz, 24-bit stream on Qobuz (click here) which sounded a bit bright. So the vinyl presentation helps to warm things up — a little bit. Curiously, the album was not completely available yet on Tidal but the couple of songs that are there (click here) sounded a bit less bright (if you will), streaming at 48 kHz, 24-bit resolution.  It is also streaming on Apple Music (click here for Hi Res Lossless).

I do suspect this original tape source was digitally remastered for this release. In the album liner notes, a company called Izotope — which manufactures digital audio workstation type software — is credited. I don’t view this as necessarily bad but the result is a more modern sounding release than one might expect from a 1958 live concert captured on analog reel-to-reel tape. This production style is probably a 21st century necessity if this recording was to have any chance at a life on the Internet as well as modern day radio and TV applications. So, analog purists do set your expectations accordingly.

In the world of Grateful Dead tape traders, this is what people used to call “a crisp soundboard.” 

Don't think there's much reason to prefer a high res version of such an old album from tape. The tape recorders in the 50's and even into the 60's (not to mention the microphones) didn't record anything above 15k. 

You want a good remaster, but in such a case there's unlikely any reason a hi-res version would snecessarily sound better than a Redbook one. 

[firedog]

6 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

Some art restoration experts started their projects with the same confidence...

 

Lots of digital media will be essentially unreadable in the future. Think about how hard it is to find a way to read a floppy disk today. Close to impossible. In the not too distant future it will be impossible.

Same will happen with CD. And it's not just hard media. Formats that fall out of favor will also become impossible to read, as the programs that do it won't run on PCs of the future. Could well happen to DSD, as it's a format for a tiny percentage of the market and and afterthought in the big scheme of things.

Periodically coping all backups to more up to date media/formats is a must if we want to preserve the data for the future. 

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

American’s feel the same way, except for those that liken it to visiting a zoo.  

Really? Don't think so. 

How many millions visit there every year?

NYC is great - as long as you have money.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Mike Rubin said:

In general, I think securities class actions should be judged by different standards than other consumer ones.  The predicate for the action is the company being managed into the toilet. By the time lawyers get involved, the choice is between recovering zero and scraping the seeds and stems. Without the litigation, you absolutely get zero. With it, you get a pro rata share of something, anything, more than zero.

 

As most of us have pointed out, the much more challenging issue here than the misleading nature of the advertising is the measure of the damages.  While the days of dubious coupon and “discount in your next order” settlements really are gone, cash payments rarely equal the purchase price of a product that retains actual utility. The remedies tend to be based on the economic impact of the scam, but they also take into account the economic impact on the defendant company.  The award here, if there is one, will probably not equal the purchase price or put MoFi out of business.  Thus, if I were a purchaser, was really pissed off enough to demand a remedy, and were offered a full refund, I would pounce on that.

 

 I don’t see an outcome where MoFi ends up not doing any longer what it has been doing. The settlement or even a judgment won’t bankrupt it, given the limited sales volume for these products.  What it WON’T do again is f**k around and find out. I guarantee you that it won’t make the same mistake twice and no one else in the industry will, either, whether or not Jane and John Doe should be expected to know that LP’s may or may not actually be analog products. 

 

I think I'm an audiophile and more knowledgeable than the average consumer. I knew about the problem of tape degradation. 

Never occurred to me MOFI wasn't telling the precise truth about their process. Didn't occur to me they were lying by omission. True, I wasn't planning on buying LPs and didn't think a lot about it, but when a leading and reputable company in the field pretty much says "it's all analog" - I believe them. 

 

Now, at  least in this instance I'll know better: assume everything is digital, unless explicitly and specifically told otherwise.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, PYP said:

I don't want to be part of the culture wars, but just want to say that Almond/Soy/Oat Milk is NOT milk.  OK?  When one calls the product, for example, Almond Milk it makes the consumer imagine that a friendly made-for-TV farmer is milking a seed.   This is so misleading!

 If it's labelled Almond/Soy/Oat etc. it's clear what it is. Unless you are either really dumb or intentionally ignorant.

 

I don't think "sugar substitute" is telling people it's sugar.

 

Same thing with plant sourced meat. Label it clearly and correctly, and no reason meat can't be used in the name. Obviously the meat producers don't want that. That doesn't impress me. 

 

[firedog]

21 minutes ago, Mike Rubin said:

It isn't clear to me whether the filing of the class action drove MoFi's largesse or whether the class action only was filed afterwards. 

Could have encountered the information in the wrong order, but AFAIR, MOFI offered the refund first.

 

I don't know how much real largesse there is here. It's the right thing to do, but MOFI probably knows that few people will go to the trouble of shipping back the LP:

A) it's a hassle;

B) Most of the customers like the records anyway. Only the all analog ideologues or those who are extremely pissed off on principle will go to the trouble and give up what is, after all, a nice LP.

[firedog]

50 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is like spending millions of dollars of one's own money on a political campaign to win a job that pays a hundred thousand. There is more at play than meets the eye. 

Quite possibly. Or someone feels aggrieved and has money they don't know what to do with.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

This is a thicket I don't think the plaintiffs' lawyers needed to wade into. Below is the cover of a MoFi SACD with the legend across the top, "Original Master Recording." That wording is used *by MoFi* as a kind of trademark (wonder if it's been registered?). The trouble with including this in the complaint is that it's then very easy to say this legend is very obviously no assurance of an all-analog process if it is used on MoFi's digital products as well.

 

The other thing I noticed is that the complaint says consumers may have bought the records anyway but wouldn't have paid as much. To me it takes a bit of the edge off any outrage the court is supposed to feel if it's all just a matter of wanting to pay less.

 

 

Original Master Recording is trademarked and has been used for both digital and analog releases.

So it doesn't necessarily mean AAA and no one could reasonably think or claim that it does.

The way they presented "one step" is something else, however. That was clearly intended to lead people to the conclusion of AAA. 

[firedog]

35 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

However, now that I look at it, is there a digital step? 25,000 copies? I don't know how this works.

AFAIR, when the big hi-res releases of KOB came out a number of years ago, they already said the original tapes had been transferred to digital and wouldn't be touched again - as they were degraded to the point where they couldn't be played anymore. 

Note that your ad doesn't say it's an all analog process. Only that the source is the original analog- which a digital source made from the original master tapes is.

I also seem to remember that the original mono mix tape didn't exist anymore - so either a safety copy or a remix had to be used (or something like that). 

edit: found this: https://www.analogplanet.com/content/miles-davis-kind-blue-monophonic-reissue-sonylegacy-analog-planet-exclusive#GgvHFW0KVw0v0f8q.97

[firedog]

7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Sounds similar to how we got into this whole mess 🙂

Yep, but no graphic that omits the digitization and makes it seem all analog.

See the above link: It's also possible they are using a 5Oth anniversary mixdown tape, which also is derived from the original analog (as was the original stereo release), but isn't the stereo master tape from 1957.

[firedog]

6 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Not being familiar with this stuff, can those press 25,000 copies?

Depends what you are referring to by "plates". AFAIK, They can make lots of stampers and produce lots of copies. They can also make new master lacquers from the tapes. Or make a copy of the master tape and produce more copies that way.  My understanding is that this was done back in the day when some albums sold millions. That's why the serious collectors look at the run out groove on the record to see what master/laquer was used. 

MOFI got exposed b/c they started selling numbers that didn't match the "one step" claims.

[firedog]

24 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

 

Did anyone happen to notice Fremer and the summary of the Kassem interview appear to be in conflict? (Bernie Grundman cutting direct to two channel with no mix down, vs. Kevin Gray mix.)

Not sure I understand the conflict. Bernie was allowed to work in 1994 with the original 3 track tapes. He mixed them down on the fly to create the master.

Wilder (not Gray)was working 20 years later with highly degraded tapes. So he copied them digitally to DSD and high res to preserve them.

He also made tape mono and stereo mixdowns and both LPs and digital releases were made from his analog and digital copies.

The tapes haven't been used since. So either the plates from 1995 have to be used, or Wilder's digital/analog copies. 

[firedog]

Just now, Jud said:

 

"...mix done in 1995 by Kevin Gray for Classic Records...."

 

?

I'm pretty sure he corrected that somewhere.