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Post by amygrant on Oct 17, 2018 21:43:43 GMT
Alright, so what exactly does he do?
I know he has some tube device he runs up his ass etc. From hearing some of his shitty work I can tell that he boosts EQ and overloads things, but can anyone who is more versed than me in mastering give me a rundown of what he does to make things sound so fucking awful?
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Post by aggressivebeta on Oct 17, 2018 23:18:00 GMT
The record companies don’t trust him with actual master tapes. They give him safety copies, or a burned CD flat transfer from the master. In the old days it was a DAT, like Pet Sounds.
Sometimes if the tape is not in good condition he will start cutting it up with a razor blade without permission and insert safety copy replacements. Or he will transfer it as is, then go to Best Buy and buy a copy of the CD, and cut and paste the messed up part. EQing it to sound nearly indistinguishable.
So he would figure out what EQ moves he’d want to make on it. Sometimes if he had a three track master his ego would force him to remix the album completely and not tell anybody, like in the case of Peter Paul and Mary.
Then he intentionally adds harmonic distortion and noise to the signal with some tubes. Sometimes if the source is too dynamic he would add 2-5 layers of tube distortion in order to add some tube compression to the signal.
If his source is digital, that (sometimes, not always) involves D/A conversion and then A/D conversion again of the now distorted signal, further adding noise. During the A/D conversion a lot of times he introduces massive amounts of clipping in order to get more volume, like on DCC Eldorado or AF Soft Parade.
He then makes up his own track gaps with zero regard for the flow of the original album, like on Heartbeat City. Occasionally there are some mastering errors that introduce jitter clicking sounds because the burned CD he used as a source (or the burned CD he used as his final master for replication) was corrupted. Indicating that he might not always listen to the final product before submitting for glass master replication. Or he possibly doesn’t even listen to it before he masters it.
That’s STeVE’s pure analog unaltered breath of life style. But only when he is in charge of mastering. When AF relegated him to EQ consultant, we stopped seeing a lot of this stuff happening.
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Post by amygrant on Oct 17, 2018 23:22:47 GMT
The record companies don’t trust him with actual master tapes. They give him safety copies, or a burned CD flat transfer from the master. In the old days it was a DAT, like Pet Sounds. Sometimes if the tape is not in good condition he will start cutting it up with a razor blade without permission and insert safety copy replacements. Or he will transfer it as is, then go to Best Buy and buy a copy of the CD, and cut and paste the messed up part. EQing it to sound nearly indistinguishable. So he would figure out what EQ moves he’d want to make on it. Sometimes if he had a three track master his ego would force him to remix the album completely and not tell anybody, like in the case of Peter Paul and Mary. Then he intentionally adds harmonic distortion and noise to the signal with some tubes. Sometimes if the source is too dynamic he would add 2-5 layers of tube distortion in order to add some tube compression to the signal. If his source is digital, that involves D/A conversion and then A/D conversion again of the now distorted signal, further adding noise. During the A/D conversion a lot of times he introduces massive amounts of clipping in order to get more volume, like on DCC Eldorado or AF Soft Parade. He then makes up his own track gaps with zero regard for the flow of the original album, like on Heartbeat City. Occasionally there are some mastering errors that introduce clicking sounds because the burned CD he used as a source (or the burned CD he used as his final master for replication) was corrupted. Indicating that he might not always listen to the final product before submitting for glass master replication. Or he possibly doesn’t even listen to it before he masters it. That’s STeVE’s pure analog unaltered breath of life style. But only when he is in charge of mastering. When AF relegated him to EQ consultant, we stopped seeing a lot of this stuff happening. Great! I saw the video of him talking about Aqualung |
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Post by StevesPal on Oct 18, 2018 4:45:25 GMT
In the old days it was a DAT, like Pet Sounds. Is this true? Would love to read more info on this. |
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daved
Better than Steve
Posts: 10,549 
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Post by daved on Oct 18, 2018 10:58:05 GMT
In my early Shite days I bought his mastering of Tres Hombres on vinyl and first thing I noticed was bass goosed to ridiculous levels. The Shites scream about the 2009 Abbey Road being goosed but have no issues with fuckhead doing this. I think I played it 2 times.
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Flat Transfer
Terry Kath
Providing DR numbers for the EK 34188, DIDP 20006
Posts: 484
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Post by Flat Transfer on Oct 18, 2018 14:19:04 GMT
Sometimes if the tape is not in good condition he will start cutting it up with a razor blade without permission and insert safety copy replacements. Or he will transfer it as is, then go to Best Buy and buy a copy of the CD, and cut and paste the messed up part. EQing it to sound nearly indistinguishable.
That's his 'official' explanation for what happened while working on the DCC Aqualung. What I suspect really happened is even less pretty, so please indulge me...
He did indeed receive the original tapes from Ian Anderson and they were in fine shape when he got them (after all, they had been untouched since 1971 as Hoofnutz stated). But during the transferring process, Guff made an crucial error with the tape machine, causing the tape to get stretched up. He demonstrated how this happened in one of those movies from his seminars and even played a bit of the stretched-up part (the movie was archived but sadly does not play on archive.org).
Anyway, in the movie he states that he was able to work around the problem by inserting a bit of audio from an old unremastered CD and he makes fun of the next party who got to work with the tape (MFSL) who apparently had great difficulty fixing this problem. He seems very pleased with himself and how unnoticeable his edit has turned out. And he wonders out aloud why MFSL did not contact him for help! Heh..
There is one big problem with that story though. The edit really is unnoticeable! And that seems illogical when considering that his audio patch must have sounded very different (being from an umpteenth generation production master) and also the fact that it was apparently edited in the analog domain. So more likely, Hoofman had already succeeded in making a digital copy of the whole tape, before the damage happened. I'm sure it was an accident, caused by inexperience and/or incompetence. Maybe Shawn Britton (who I think lurks here) can weigh in? |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2018 0:38:59 GMT
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Post by essayceedee on Oct 24, 2018 1:16:42 GMT
He just called Bob Irwin a big swish? Yikes heh.
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Post by Mediocrates on Oct 24, 2018 1:27:30 GMT
If you know how to set up a deck (like any intern tape op), folding to mono is not an issue.
But Steve wouldn't know anything about that.
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Post by Brick Wall on Oct 24, 2018 16:35:48 GMT
Daddy TOLD Bob Irwin. He did NOT ask. He TOLD him, bucko.
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Post by aggressivebeta on Oct 26, 2018 13:36:01 GMT
In my early Shite days I bought his mastering of Tres Hombres on vinyl and first thing I noticed was bass goosed to ridiculous levels. The Shites scream about the 2009 Abbey Road being goosed but have no issues with fuckhead doing this. I think I played it 2 times. That LP is unlistenable. Not sure how anybody could possibly think that much bass sounds good....maybe old Golden Ears blew out one of his woofers before mastering it and didn’t notice |
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Post by vinylaids on Oct 31, 2018 23:27:23 GMT
The record companies don’t trust him with actual master tapes. They give him safety copies, or a burned CD flat transfer from the master. In the old days it was a DAT, like Pet Sounds. Sometimes if the tape is not in good condition he will start cutting it up with a razor blade without permission and insert safety copy replacements. Or he will transfer it as is, then go to Best Buy and buy a copy of the CD, and cut and paste the messed up part. EQing it to sound nearly indistinguishable. So he would figure out what EQ moves he’d want to make on it. Sometimes if he had a three track master his ego would force him to remix the album completely and not tell anybody, like in the case of Peter Paul and Mary. Then he intentionally adds harmonic distortion and noise to the signal with some tubes. Sometimes if the source is too dynamic he would add 2-5 layers of tube distortion in order to add some tube compression to the signal. If his source is digital, that involves D/A conversion and then A/D conversion again of the now distorted signal, further adding noise. During the A/D conversion a lot of times he introduces massive amounts of clipping in order to get more volume, like on DCC Eldorado or AF Soft Parade. He then makes up his own track gaps with zero regard for the flow of the original album, like on Heartbeat City. Occasionally there are some mastering errors that introduce clicking sounds because the burned CD he used as a source (or the burned CD he used as his final master for replication) was corrupted. Indicating that he might not always listen to the final product before submitting for glass master replication. Or he possibly doesn’t even listen to it before he masters it. That’s STeVE’s pure analog unaltered breath of life style. But only when he is in charge of mastering. When AF relegated him to EQ consultant, we stopped seeing a lot of this stuff happening. Great! I saw the video of him talking about Aqualung
Possibly even worse than having to listen to Aqualung
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Post by snowman872 on Nov 1, 2018 2:21:48 GMT
Steve-O sounds like a real hack based on the stories here. IMHO, there's no room for that foolishness in the studio. I think from now on, I will AVOID any mastering projects by this boob.
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Post by hugofuguzev on Nov 1, 2018 5:16:53 GMT
Steve-O sounds like a real hack based on the stories here. IMHO, there's no room for that foolishness in the studio. I think from now on, I will AVOID any mastering projects by this boob. I've been a music fanatic for thirty years without ever having heard a Hoffman mastering and if I can go another thirty years it'll still be too goddamn soon for me... |
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Post by georgimarkov on Nov 2, 2018 17:33:29 GMT
I think from now on, I will AVOID any mastering projects by this boob. Not that difficult, these days. |
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