The Absolute Sound October 2022

A Moment of Grace Jonathan Valin’s piece on Lloyd Walker [Issue 327] is as fine a memorial tribute as I have read. I never knew Mr. Walker but, after reading Jonathan’s piece, I wish I had. While my political leanings seem to align better with the author’s, his affection for his subject reflects the rare quality of focusing on what’s most important. In this, his finely rendered portrait brought to me a message that went beyond the man whose life he chronicled: that it is possible to bridge most divides to form a connection of respect and caring by following your heart first. Thanks for this moment of grace. We sure need them. Ned Dodds Congratulations on Michael Fremer As a very long-time reader of The Absolute Sound, I’m writing to congratulate you on the…

“If MoFi is as convinced of the sonic superiority of digital mastering as it claims to be, why conceal the fact?” A fresh scandal has cropped up in the contentious little world of high-end audio—and it’s cropped up in a place you wouldn’t expect. Turns out that Mobile Fidelity, the world-famous company that has long claimed to source its celebrated LP reissues from verified “original masters,” has actually been using digital copies of those original mastertapes rather than the tapes themselves (or firstgen copies) to master its One-Step LPs. Where record lovers thought they were buying all-analog vinyl (“AAA,” to use the old SPARS code), they were actually being sold digitally duplicated and mastered recordings (“ADA”)—and at premium prices. To make matters worse, it appears the digital wool wasn’t just pulled…

The Proof of the Pudding I was as surprised as everyone else to learn that Mobile Fidelity’s LP mastering process includes a digital stage. Although MoFi has never expressly stated that it cuts its lacquers from analog tape, it was generally assumed that the company’s “Original Master Recordings” were all-analog. It turns out that MoFi’s current standard practice is to transfer the analog mastertape to DSD and cut the lacquer from the digital file. This digital mastering chain is also used to produce MoFi’s One-Step LPs, which have received nearly universal acclaim for their sound quality. Some One-Step purchasers are dismayed to learn of the digital conversion, with several commentators suggesting that One-Step LPs are nothing more than overpriced DSD files—and potentially inferior versions at that. Although MoFi should have been more transparent…

JV and RH: Why did you decide to master from DSD files rather than from analog mastertapes, as you used to do? What are the advantages of mastering from files vis-a-via mastering from tape, and what (if any) are the limitations? Jim Davis: Some record label tape vaults changed policy regarding shipment of mastertapes. At that point our only option for those recordings was to go to the mastertapes. Once we were able to access these masters, the dilemma was how can we best retrieve the information from the master? We experimented with making analog copies from the master. Various tape stocks (½”, 1”) and speeds (15ips, 30ips) were tried but rejected. There was no way to overcome the noise-floor disadvantages of copying from one analog tape to another. When we…

Those of you who have been reading me for the past 30 years already know that I am a huge fan of Magnepan loudspeakers. Indeed, as I’ve noted in these pages many times before, it was the Maggie 1U/D that set me on the road to the absolute sound. Before I heard that first Magneplanar, I relied on published specs and magazine test results to narrow down the speakers and electronics I was interested in. After listening to it (in 1973) and being momentarily fooled into thinking I was hearing someone playing a real concert grand (there happened to be a piano in the room, hidden behind what I thought were decorative screens, which turned out to be Magnepan 1Us), I realized there was a better way to judge high-fidelity…

What’s a four-letter word for musicality? Answer: K-a-y-a. Specifically, Kaya S12, Vivid Audio’s smallest loudspeaker in its four-model Kaya range. At a mere 15 inches tall, this two-way, ported standmount was supposed to know its limitations. Yet, throughout the lengthy review period the Kaya constantly upended my expectations. From its radical outward façade to the sophistication of its engineering the S12 was never short on surprises. The shape is pure Vivid—complex, organic, almost free-form, and just a little like something that fell to earth from a passing comet. The numerical designation of Kaya 12 correlates to its 12-liter internal volume. (The larger floorstanding models, the Kaya 25, 45, and 90, follow that same pattern.) The S12’s seemingly playful shape is not arbitrary, however; it’s designed to minimize diffraction. There are no…