Mofi, also known as Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, is a record company that strives to achieve the most enjoyable listening experience for audiophiles everywhere. In 2016, after years of highly successful record producing, Mofi decided that the next step would be to develop their own turntables and other electronics, to allow people to enjoy their records to the best possible level.
Since 1977, Mobile Fidelity have been releasing “Original Master Recording” LPs. They always worked to find the original master tapes of a recording, and use that to make a new version of the album which would sound the absolute best. Their process of remastering paints the most vivid image of the sound the artist and original producers worked hard to create.
The first recordings under the Mobile Fidelity label were released in March 1958 by Brad Miller, who was a recording engineer. Miller established the label in order to release LPs that mainly featured vintage steam engines, trains and thunderstorms, and while these recordings sounded brilliant on tapes, they didn’t sound as good on vinyl as most cartridges couldn’t track the levels of the recordings. Miller collaborated with Gary Georgi, a HiFi enthusiast, to try and find a way to make his recordings sound as good on vinyl as they did on tapes. Through their research they found out about the half-speed mastering process, where sound is transferred from magnetic tape to disc while the cutting lathe moves at half speed. This led them to meet up with Stan Ricker, who taught them about how in Japan, JVC were pressing records onto virgin vinyl. Eventually, Miller and Georgi worked out that the best recordings came by using original first-generation tape, half-speed mastering and pressing on superior vinyl. This process would be able to take popular LP titles to a whole new level of playback, and this new quality of remastered recordings fuelled the movement of audiophiles across the world.
Mofi released their first line of electronics in 2016, after partnering with the legendary Allen Perkins, who himself designs the astonishing Spiral Groove turntables, to oversee design and production of the Mofi StudioDeck and UltraDeck models. In fact, many aspects and design choices of the £18,000+ Spiral Groove turntables are shared with the MoFi turntables, such as aluminium dampening and tonearm stiffness, giving peace of mind that this was not just a PR stunt, but a focussed and determined effort to produce the finest quality turntables at achievable prices. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that turntables developed by the world’s leading vinyl experts and turntable designers are going to be superb. And they are.
We cannot wait to be able to share these superb turntables, cartridges and phono stages with you in our new Lincolnshire showroom, so stay tuned on social media to see when we open!
