The Cars – Heartbeat City

Definitely, the Mobile Fidelity Sound SACD reissue is better than this version. Unfortunately, the Audio Fidelity reissue has many problems, including fades between songs that are longer than the original LP or any other version of the album, it has HDCD encoding issues and the artwork is not of good enough quality for a reissue.
I don't think the company ever addressed the issues or offered replacement discs. During the late 00s and early 2010s Audio Fidelity had a very disappointing quality control. This is one of the weakest releases by Audio Fidelity and the sound is not that different or improved compared to the original Elektra CD.

Very special master of this classic album. I am not a fan of crossfades or minimal gaps between songs (in most cases), as it usually means we are getting a 2nd or 3rd generation of the master mixdown tape.
In this case, Hoffman did NOT use the typical dreaded analog "Production Master" (which is usually 2nd or 3rd generation), and opted to use the individual ORIGINAL stereo mixdown masters for each song, essentially re-assembling the album from 1st generation tapes.

Now if he could just remaster all the Stevie Wonder albums and give them the same treatment (get rid of those awful crossfades), I would be ecstatic!

Sure, Hoffman COULD have digitally re-created those short crossfades, but who needs them? I would much rather have the FULL mix than a truncated or faded version of it.

This album was remastered by Steve Hoffman, and, as usual, he gave it a "personal touch", something he really should not be doing. It is his job to recreate the original album with the best possible sound. Unfortunately he did not succeed there either.
For that you'll need the 20P2-2429.

Steve Hoffman remastered this CD from the original master tapes and the result is stunning if also stunningly frustrating for many fans; the album has better detail and a terrific, wide dynamic range BUT the original album had all the tracks with running into each other with minimal gaps. Hoffman's version of the album, however, doesn't. The songs fade out and have the gaps you would traditionally expect between the tracks.

Three additional problems have cropped up one with the HDCD encoding. Evidently the HDCD encoding is flawed--with the CD shifting out of HDCD mode unexpectedly as the volume goes down on a track. That won't be a problem IF you don't have an HDCD player.

The next issue is that if you rip this CD to your iPod (perhaps due to the encoding error)the tracks are missing small sections of the music. I haven't ripped my edition to my iPod yet but others have and have had problems.

The final problem is a simple one that Audio Fidelity immediately addressed; evidently the CDs were shipped without the lyrics (the original album had the lyrics on the sleeve that held the vinyl record). There have also been some complaints that the scan of the artwork is a bit shoddy but I that wasn't an issue on my copy. Audio Fidelity will be shipping out a lyric booklet to those who purchsed this CD just them at their website or call them.