Which is not what they were saying they were doing, It makes absolute sense that they use the DSD, because re-using possibly not very resilient original master tapes is not possible in reality.
They said they were making the acetate/stamper from the master tape, they are only now admitting to the DSD step, so it’s not one step, it’s a two step process initially at least.
No it is one step the deception is the source material being a digital file copy of the master tape. The one step manufacturing process is entirely legit. Whether it produces a better sounding pressing than the traditional method is another question though.
Fair enough, I think we’re actually on the same page mate, I think what they’ve done is entirely fine, apart from the lying bit.
Like you said earlier the only way to do it is with a source robust enough to be used repeatedly. They say a dxd4 transfer is a better sounding source than a 30ips tape transfer I wouldn’t know whether that is true or not. But you are right that they should have said what and why they were doing what they do.
They painted themselves into a corner a long time (decades) ago with the “ Only ever AAA” schtick and when it became apparent that it wasn’t possible any longer they just couldn’t bring themselves to admit it, because it was their USP, and it was gone. If they’d just been up front and said “Best possible source“ they brought themselves down to the level of MOV, or Sony Legacy who sell stuff at a quarter of the price, so….
How could that be determined if there are 9000 released from the same stamper, all identical. You could identify a particular stamper, but even then knowing that one stamper came from its master earlier than another when there might be a couple of hundred thousand pressed that week etc.
I guess with certain records this isn’t an issue if they only pressed a few thousand.
On massive runs like Beatles I couldn’t. But there are lunatics that think they can tell from the sharpness of the grooves and dynamics in sound.
Well, you can’t, obviously. That’s why factories like EMI Hayes had massive QC departments, remember all those pics of ladies listening to 301s through headphones? Once the rejection rate exceeded 10% or so it was time for a new set of stampers.
Ah yes, the old golden eye and touch approach. 
Yes I know, was in response to Loo’s point though. More a rhetorical.
There is always an Identifier on the matrix for lacquer cuts and stamper changes though. Usually a single number on an otherwise unchanged matrix code or sometimes a / then //
I have enough problems getting some first press records when, in some cases, all the sellers think any version with the release date on the cover makes it a first press, I shit ye not.
Oh, I’ve had that. It’s sobering to realise though that some first pressings only actually represent the first week or even couple of days of manufacturing on some big releases.
True, but then you have to understand the numbering system used. On well known records, Beatles etc, enough research was done by hundreds of collectors to identify this. For 80s and 90s bands it can be a nightmare.
yep sellers will tell you anything thats not a reissue is a first pressing when it should be called an original release.
Yep, took me 8 years to track OK Comp down despite there always being twenty plus on discogs
Time for bed, at this rate a Mod will be along to split the thread.
At this rate the thread will be as long as the one on Hoffman!
The whole thing is embedded with two things which allow for all the opinion, preference, butthurt and room for marketing to take advantage - variation and subjectivity.
There’s so many opportunities in the recording, mixing and mastering chain to introduce variation that its no wonder that there are no absolutes in terms of this way or that way being definitively the best. For example - something like tape azimuth and speed which varies between machines, and has to be carefully monitored & controlled, not just from tape to tape but in some cases within the same recorded track on a tape.
And as pointed out above, you can get variation between lacquers from the cutting process, and then production wear on stampers etc etc.
This is why companies used to create their own arbitrary quality standard and then seek to apply it all the way from mastering and stamper engineering, to the playback sampling of finished records - again who knows if Doris and Betty applied this the same to the records they were accepting/ rejecting??? 
The bit that is biting re the Mofi debacle is subjectivity. Because there is no definitive method or technique which produces the best results all the time to all ears, so people take different arbitrary postions like ‘its gotta be AAA all the way man, that’s the only way I’ll listen’ etc, and the likes of Fremer repeating this idea that he can hear digital in the chain and its ‘always bad’, when clearly as this Mofi shitstorm shows - he clearly can’t.
There’s a great video online somewhere when Fremer goes to Sterling Sound for a tour and one of the mastering engineers shows him the customised set up and lathe etc. He explains that although he has a tape machine in the mastering studio he never uses it and the whole thing has been optimised for digital. Fremer starts to opine about analogue being the best source for cutting lacquers and the engineer sniggers at him and says something like ‘if I can’t tell the difference then you definitely can’t’, at which point Fremer shuts his yap and doesn’t take him on 
Marketing guys love to sell features and perceived benefits without really having to prove the efficacy of any of them. So Mofi bang on about their ‘Gain 2 System’, ‘Ultra-analog’, 1 step etc. The problem is there’s no real evidence apart from a basic narrative logic why 1 step should sound better than traditional 3 step. Same for something like DMM. Yes the ideas is sound, more accurate cutting, less groove wall bleed through etc. But then listeners hear it and say ‘but the top end sounds edgy, I don’t like it…’
People will think and believe what they want to believe, even if that’s fed to them and they choose to repeat that without source evidence etc. In this case, where its been the forthcoming release of Thriller which has seen the marketing spiel unravel and the resulting butthurt - did people really think that Mofi could 1-step this off the master tapes and produce 40,000 copies? So Bernie Grundman is really going to take the tapes and set up the recorder and the cutting lathe 40 times and run 40 lacquers off the master tape?! Is he fuck.
I suspect that the Mofi engineers who were interviewed full well know, just like the Sterling Sound engineer knows, that at the end of the chain with the finished product in people’s hands, that no fucker can actually tell the difference that the master tapes have been digitally transferred and used to cut the lacquers upstream. The issue is what people are willing to pay a premium for, based on their beliefs rather than the actual quality of the product.
The purists who insist upon AAA might have to accept that the original tapes are not going to last forever and labels like Sony are beginning to refuse to let their tapes out of the vault and be shipped all over the world anymore. The days of things like Beatles tapes being packed up and sent to the US for 48hrs and then returned are probably long gone.
tl; dr = suck it up and pay over the odds or just fuck it and invest in a really good DAC.
This is THE most important thing.
Or even a cheap old DAC that makes music sound the way you want it to 
Digital’s great, m8.