HE 2002: Mobile Fidelity and Patricia Barber SACD

HE 2002: Mobile Fidelity is planning on releasing two more titles this fall on both SACD and vinyl, (artists as yet unknown) in keeping with the spirit of the label as it was before their recent financial difficulties.

The re-formed company is still finding it’s feet and suffering from re-launch growing pains, but they’re busy working out contractual agreements with the major record companies to continue the Mobile Fidelity tradition, namely releasing albums in a much purer, audiophile form.

Their first batch of SACD discs has been greeted with much praise here at High Fidelity Review, and at HE 2002 we learnt a little more about their production.

For example, the reason Mobile Fidelity picked Patricia Barber as one of their first SACD artists is that she comes from their area and they used to go see her perform live at least once a week. Therefore they are standing behind her, not to mention they love her music.

One that note, I asked Josh Bizar from Music Direct and Mobile Fidelity who was loitering around their joint booth, about the fact that I noticed Barber seemed off-center in the soundstage when I reviewed her ‘Nightclub’ SACD. The reason for this, or so I was told, was that they [Mobile Fidelity] tried to keep her voice in the same location as the piano which itself is not dead center.

However, according to Jim Anderson, who mixed the first version of the album, she was originally dead center.