Gene C

The birth of a record.

In 5 minutes.

A little MFSL History... In November 1999 MFSL was forced to close its doors after it was unable to collect a large sum of money and product upon the bankruptcy of M.S. Distributing, one of its biggest distributors. At this time many unsold items were liquidated as cut-out items through discounters. At the same time other dealers also charged premium prices on the collectors market for the most rare and highly acclaimed titles. In 2001 the company's assets were acquired by the audiophile products company Music Direct, of Chicago, operated by Jim Davis. Music Direct now owns rights to the technology used in the proprietary mastering chain and all intellectual property owned by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. Herbert A. Belkin died in 2001 of a heart-attack at age 62. Mobile Fidelity has continued to produce Super Audio CDs, GAIN 2 Ultra Analog Limited Edition vinyl, Ultradisc II Gold CDs and Ultradisc CD-Rs since the company was re-established. After listening tests and technical evaluations, Mobile Fidelity engineers decided to adopt the Super Audio CD over the DVD-Audio disc as a high resolution digital format. As with some other audiophile labels (such as Analogue Productions), Mobile Fidelity is of the opinion that Direct Stream Digital is sonically superior to Pulse-Code Modulation audio. On the label's Hybrid SACD releases, the SACD layer is a direct DSD recording of the analog master tape, while the CD layer is a digital down conversion of the DSD, with Super Bit Mapping applied. Post 2001 CD-only are sourced from DSD, but omit the SACD layer. Since 1998, Mobile Fidelity has been using Studer A-80  ¼ inch tape machine, which was custom modified by audio designer Tim de Paravicini. The deck features custom high bandwidth playback heads and custom playback electronics. This machine exhibits frequency response, which is essentially flat from 10 Hz-44 kHz. Using this tape machine and a record cutting system (also designed by Pravicini), Mobile Fidelity engineers accidentally cut a 122 kHz tape bias tone onto a record lacquer. Mobile Fidelity has revisited several albums with their new mastering chain that were previously released on the old UltraDisc 2 system. Some listeners have noted that the new mastering chain exhibits a 'tighter' sound, particularly in the bass frequencies. Original Wikipedia link

Those are actually not bad specs for those speakers.

Never heard of them before but that doesn't mean anything. How do they look and sound? There are different versions of the 770's, post a photo so we can see what your working with. Grill cloth is real easy to replace, will make the speakers look brand new depending on what shape the cabinets are in. See a pair of 770's on eBay with a BIN of $149.00, not sure if those are in better or worse shape than yours.

Just got done watching Quantum Of Solace.

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." - Frank Zappa

Because he bought it when it came out.

Thanks Dennis. The ADS1102 is a good digital scope for my novice needs. Did not get a chance to pick my dad's brain when he was out here last summer so its been slow learning with this scope. But for what little I know it works great. Here's the display during a full signal sweep, was around 1 or 2 kHz when the photo was taken. Think my ears cut out at 18khz. In all I'm impressed with this test record. It told me what I knew but just wanted to make sure, ya know.

The test record showed up an hour ago so just got around to checking the 1khz test tone with the scope to see how everything lined up. Looks good but the other tests on the record will have to wait, some butthole at the office fucked up so now I have to go back in for an hour and fix a mistake. How'd I do? sorry for the blurry picts, didn't want flash on.

Well... paid 1k for mine. You could always send me your records for cleaning, depending on which ones they are, may not send them back for a while.

True, My Sota takes about the same time. Not sure how much more the glue would pull compared to the cleaning machine?

You might want to let that cure for 18 to 20 hours.

Sorry, I like Smashing Pumpkins but they don't belong in the top 10 for double albums, maybe top 40. The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out, The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland, The Who - Tommy and Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti deserve to be in the mix before Smashing Pumpkins, even though SP came up where I grew up.

There shouldn't be any remnants from the glue left, comes off in one piece with the grease, lint and whatever else has been trapped in those grooves for years. Always a good idea to hit it with a vacuum or some cleaner when done too.

Thanks Dennis. Here's the link Cardas Frequency Sweep and Burn-In Record, couldn't see myself spending more than that. Saw one on there for $100.00 with no reviews. BTW Dennis, do I have to come off the Sunfire to test? There's a pre-stage in between the Sunfire. So wouldn't it be better to come off the pre-stage or just the TT itself?

Just picked up a test record from Needle Doctor for $28.00 with intent on testing the TT with an O-Scope. Want to make sure both channels are square even though everything sounds perfect, just wont know for sure unless I see it. So, anyone here do that before? Going to do some research but was hoping I could pick a few brains here while I do that. Thanks.

Nice Dano, thanks for sharing!

Na, it's a 180gm reissue. Already have the Half Speed Mastered WYWH album. Always wanted to hear how the reissue sounded, had passed it over a few times already.

Took a trip to Zia Records today. Had a shit ton of Zappa over there but am going to hold off for most of the new pressings.

In 1930, RCA Victor launched the first commercially-available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as "Program Transcription" discs. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33⅓ rpm and pressed on a 12" diameter flexible plastic disc. In Roland Gelatt's book The Fabulous Phonograph, the author notes that RCA Victor's early introduction of a long-play disc was a commercial failure for several reasons including the lack of affordable, reliable consumer playback equipment and consumer wariness during the Great Depression. A good outline of this unsuccessful product launch can be found at the following site.

I hear ya, but $200.00 is a little out there even for me.

Birth of the gramophone In 1877, over a century before the dawn of digital music recording, Thomas Edison discovered that by attaching a needle to the diaphragm of a telephone receiver, a visual representation of the sound could be drawn when the needle vibrated along a cylinder covered in tinfoil. By attaching a horn and rotating the cylinder by hand, the sound could then be reproduced. Edison put his work on the phonograph on hiatus while he focused on electricity. In the meantime, Emile Berliner stepped in to create a more practical machine that used flat black discs, but could only play and not record. This was the gramophone and its records could be mass-produced via Berliner’s Gramophone Company. The basic format for sound recording remained the same up until the Eighties, when cassette tapes became standard.