Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

I never even heard of him until his site was mentioned here. That site is so popular when you open a thread to check it out, once you are done it's on page 3. What propelled him to fame?

Right place right time?

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

If you check out the non-forum area of his site, there's a list of his history and accomplishments as one of the most renown recording and remastering engineers in the business.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/dhinterviews/HoffBIO.htm

He's worked on a bunch of DCC and MFSL remasters.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Interesting stuff. It's just wild in that forum. There is alot of animosity for current popular music. I think because radio is not now what it was then. FM is just background corp noise. You cannot rely on radio for new music, it just gives the impression that all is crap now when really it's just the stations catering to the lowest common denominator.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

He also likes pictures of girls with guitars

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3751/9...72be622366.jpg

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

There are some interesting things on that site, but here are some total nut jobs who will run around with wave graphs and seem more interested in those or for some reason thinking every record should be mixed in the exact same way or it is crap ... and there are some people out these who say Hoffman has essentially been blackballed because he jacked up some original tapes and really fucked up some mastering .. forgot the details, but it is google-able.

But yeah, I enjoy the site ... beyond the morons there, there is some good info and people there

That forum is useless if you like anything from mid-80's on. Every other thread is Beatles, Floyd and the like.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

True it's heavier on "Classic Rock", but I've had plenty of disscussions there with people about music from the late 80's, 90's and 2000's. If you are really interested in a particular artiist, all you have to do is use the "search" feature to find it. I just posted in thread on "Favorite Ween Album" a few minutes ago.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

He came to fame for mastering most of the DCC gold CDs and LPs, which were almost always the best available sound quality for a particular album, far surpassing the versions being issued by the big labels. DCC went out of business through some questionable business decisions in the '90s. He was also one of the first mastering engineers to openly talk about his profession on the Internet and that led to a large following.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/dhinterviews/HoffFAQ1.htm

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

I have frequented the forum there for years and enjoy it but seriously WTF is the deal with the level of obsession with Paul McCartney and The Monkees over there?

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

IMO, if there is barely one topic in the first 10 pages of a forum I'm interested in, that's not a forum for me. Sure I could search for stuff, but to me that would be like walking into a room of 200 people and shouting I want to talk about something maybe one other person might want to talk about as well.

Maybe subforums for decades or genres would help, but I'm sure that place is quite set in its ways.

EDIT: OK I stand corrected today - I saw a thread there on page two for the new Front Line Assembly album. Almost posted about it here but I didn't think anyone would know FLA let alone care.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Well, everything great in music did happen before 1980. ;) Just sayin'.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

I'd laugh if I thought your were joking. I'll get off your lawn now.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

There's fantastic music after 1980, don't get me wrong. But rare is the group who provides anything that wasn't already done before 1980.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

LOL - even their password reset challenge question is dated:

"The standard speed of a small 7-inch "single" record is ____ RPM."

So basically, everyone under 40, fuck off. :lol:

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

You are SO obsessed with that.

Who cares if a style was done before? Did you ever consider someone might improve upon it?

Example: I don't care for the Beatles or Black Sabbath. I don't hate them but I don't own anything by them and on the few occasions I've tried their stuff, I didn't connect with it. They are both arguably the "first" to do some of the styles they played.

Now take a band like Type O Negative, who could not exist without the influence of the Beatles and Sabbath. They mixed it together and came up with a sound that was pretty unique to them. What is wrong with that?

I don't even see the point in engaging you further on this, because you are so incredibly rigid with your thinking on the topic as evidenced in the past.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

My favorite band is Wilco. Wilco is totally derivative but that doesn't mean they don't make incredible music with originality. I don't know why my comment upsets you. I pretty much listen to all new music but LOVE, absolutely LOVE music from the 60s and 70s. I also believe the 1970's was the greatest era for filmmaking as well. It doesn't mean I don't love new movies.

So when these guys put that music on a pedestal, it is rightly so. I don't agree with them excluding new music, if that's what they do.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Nice try on inferring I'm upset. It's more bemusement. You just basically come across like Homer Simpson in the episode "Homerpalooza":

The exclusion of new music may not be by design, but it happens by dwelling in the past. Ideally you'd have a mix of both.

I also know you think metal is largely useless, which just goes to show how close-minded you are. Sure a lot of it is crap like in many genres, but the best metal ever done happened after 1980, and in many cases, decades later. I'd invite you to take a listen to the artistry of Opeth's Blackwater Park, but you'd hear the first heavy riff, say "oh Metallica did that already" and turn it off.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Which is kind of ironic, as anytime someone posts a new thread here (or any forum, for that matter) about any band/album, they are essentially doing rather the same thing as your example. You're throwing something out there into a large group of people and hoping someone else responds to it. Not really all that different when you think about it.

In regards to your edit, it should never stop you from trying. After all, isn't the whole point of forums to try find and engage conversation with (hopefully) like minded individuals? If you don't put it out there, you'll never know for sure one way or the other.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Spoken like someone who has only listened to FM pop radio in the last 30 years.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

I think a large part of the difference between the music of the 60s and 70s and that of today is the political component. Rock and Roll was a front for the youths to show their beliefs. It is just not that at all today. I remember The Stones 72 tour. It was reported in papers all across the country everything that was happening on the tour. And this was not in the entertainment section, this was front page stuff. All the headlines "the times may change but the Stones keep rolling", the STP stuff and everybody trying to pose as a member.

There is no band today, including them, that would get that treatment. Music, like almost everything, has been diluted{?} or relegated to just one of many ways to get your rocks off.

Those were different times.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Quite right Sir Omni.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

What great radio should he be listening too?

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

This is a bit like asking what telegram system I would recommend. Commercial radio has been largely irrelevant to me since at least 1996 or 1997.

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

Music has not been diluted or relegated. Music, as an art, has been as healthy as ever. Media, however, has been fragmented. There are less communal media experiences (where you can talk with strangers). The chance of any one person having had the same pop culture / media experience as you the night before is much lower now than it was in the 70s.

And that's fine. That lets you pursue what you want, and I can pursue what I want, instead of having both of us be subject to something that is merely OK. I don't want to go back to the days of there being three channels of content and I have to make do with something mediocre just for the sake of being able to discuss it with a coworker the next day.

Same with music.

But once you go into the listener level of measuring "coverage", we're looking at individual measurements: You have 24 hours in a day now, same as you did (if you were alive) in the 70s.

In the 70s, the Stones coverage would have captured the majority of my attention, simply because it was on the front page of the newspaper and that would have been one of the few media outlets I would have had access to.

Cut to now. I get my news from a pretty wide variety of sources, and they rarely overlap. Sometimes, two or three places will talk about a story, but it doesn't go beyond that. Until recently, with the release of <i>Yeezus</i> when there was an article or viewpoint in every one of these sources.

And out of the six (or so), only one of them is even a pure music site.

So there are still stories and albums and events that can capture someone's attention or time. It just doesn't mean it will capture your neighbors.

(And for the sake of this argument, how many articles/reviews of that album were you exposed to?)

Re: Steve Hoffman-music engineer-why the big following?
 

So you are big into unsolicited insults. OK.

Seriously? In the past month, I will have seen Wilco, Foxygen, Yo La Tengo, and Belle and Sebastian. Big top 40 bands, huh? Stop talking out of your ass. You have no idea who I am.

Please, I was watching Black Flag and Social Distortion in a room with 40 people when you were buying Wham! 12".