steve hoffman forums, C or D?

tbh I find that level of fussiness useful sometimes - idk if I could stand to have actual discussions on those boards (outside of a few decent artist-specific threads) but when they talk about a certain cartridge or cleaning product that they like, you damn well know it's a good one

sometimes i want to register just to reply "weird flex, but okay"

lol, very relatable post.

yeah it's super frustrating when those guys say they have 16 versions of every gentle giant album, but then there's one who says "i have 16 pressings of every gentle giant album, and here are the best ones." that's useful. i remember reading an r. metzer review of ornette coleman's "of human feelings," which went something like "i own 36 ornette coleman albums and this one sucks!"

As a fan of message board drama and especially record punisher punishment, I BEG those of you that follow the Hoffman Forums to please alert this thread whenever there is a fuss of note over there! If there's a fight about Steven Wilson Relayer vs the OG pressing on page 698 of the YES thread, I want to know about it!

tbh I find that level of fussiness useful sometimes

That's for sure. It's basically the only resource I have. Like if I'm digging into the back catalog of someone who's been reissued many, many times, the first question I have is, which ones should I buy? (i.e. I only want to buy this shit ONCE.) There is no sane person in my life who could answer that question, much less be remotely interested in finding out the answer - I'm certain the only response that would come to mind is "Why don't you look it up on Amazon? Don't they have that?"

kurt schwitterz otm, we need more drama reports itt, thank you to all posters for your previous efforts in this regard

second.

The hands-down best thing I ever saw on the Hoffman forums was a post that went into great detail about the mics and positioning thereof, tape machine, desk, and engineers for Live At Leeds (and Live At Hull)). For decades I assumed Glyn Johns was the engineer, since it’s the best Keith Moon’s kit had ever been miked. It wasn’t Johns, and I can’t remember the engineer’s name, but he used a total of four mics for the drums: one on each bass drum, and two overheads. That’s it. And while those forums aren’t exactly brimming with posts like that, it’s worth scanning through the endless “my Dave’s Picks hasn’t shipped yet!” posts to get to them.

In fairness a lot of guys over there do know their stuff.

Its just when I was looking for tips on which pressing of sticky fingers to buy I got lost in all the comparisons, and then my brain went numb as a discussion went from comparing 2015 vinyl to 2020 vinyl ams then comparisons of the same edition when it was part of a box set, and then some forensic tracing of which masters were being used when and where. In the end I decided not to bother and that I would just keep my old knackered copy.

Being generous the OP could do with a tl;dr (unless you actually read the title) but this thread about Goldie's Timeless with various non sequitur posts about acknowledged d&b dons Tom Petty, Donald Fagen and of course The Beatles made me laugh.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/timeless-aged-well-its-a-classic-album.966096/

also lolled

I thought maybe the Bruce Hornsby guy was in on the joke, but then I remembered what forum I was reading.

They’re into posting the cover art every time they mention an album, huh

I don't approve digging into the records that are broader and more complicated than life itself

dying

"I approve digging into the records that are broader and more complicated than life itself...some of the most unlistenable stuff ive ever heard, definitely needs its own thread"

new ILM description?

Did Stereocentral vanish for good?

This?

https://stereocentral.freeforums.net/

Oh! Thank you. It had shit down for maintenance, I had thought. Maybe the web address changed as well. I’m very grateful

I stumbled on the old forum several years ago and was surprised to find a gold mine of posts from Shawn Britton and Rob LoVerde from Mobile Fidelity. I guess something happened with the old forum, because all of those posts seem to be lost forever. A real shame, they had some amazing info.

The new MFSL interview zings Steve Hoffman at 34:30 without using his name

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shg0780YgAE

is this Youtuber for real with his "BREAKING NEWS" hysterics less than a week ago about Mobile Fidelity not being fully analog and now putting out a sit down interview with them about it?

I don't care about this stuff, don't own any of their expensive product, but it's pretty funny.

I mean, it has the H0ffmanites all up in a tizzy with many saying they will never buy from MoFi again so.... it's something, I guess.

haha ok i will enjoy on my next visit to the forums

I didn't see his previous video - I generally don't watch one-man rant videos, ever - but I tuned in for this one simply because it was more like a group interview with people who know what they're talking about firsthand, it did indeed have some good info.

small self-confidence boost: i don't know what any of those dudes are talking about.

I checked the forums; the thread about this is at 170 pages. This post on the first page is kind of perfect:

It’s impossible that they are digital because so many people on here can ‘sense the naturalness’ of analog over the ‘harsh superficial glare’ of digital. So they would have known already and told us.

LMAO

oh wait i might've paid an extra dollar for the fully analog Loveless. I'm a hypocrite

not going to deny it, i love the charity shop thread that i hang out on ..

lol Tarfumes, amazing find

those quotes might be a hint.

It’s impossible that they are digital because so many people on here can ‘sense the naturalness’ of analog over the ‘harsh superficial glare’ of digital. So they would have known already and told us.

i laughed too but geez those mofi guys are sampling at 4xDSD which is roughly 11,000,000 samples per second. that's got to be more or less transparent to anybody's ears.

never, the digital glare is caused by the shininess of 0s and 1s, you can never get rid of it, unless you use this power cable studded with crystals

Sounds like a secret society with a guru figure, with rituals done at home where they all connect together through their magic machinery, preserving a lost art known only to a few chosen (male) ones
Begging for an anthropological study.

he had this Mofi version of Bringing It All Back Home, a record I am quite familiar with
https://www.discogs.com/release/9486656-Bob-Dylan-Bringing-It-All-Back-Home
and I swear I was hearing things I had never heard before when he put it on

JFC, the median price for that on Discogs is $110 with one purchase going as high as $225.

For years, a brand-new copy of Mofi's SACD was typically sold direct from Mofi or Music Direct for $15-20 - it may still be available for $15-20 at any retailers who still have stock. And both the SACD and the vinyl were likely mastered from the same DSD transfers of the original mono master tape. (FWIW, the stereo version they put out is a digital remix, not worth it.)

I've got one myself, it's a definitely an upgrade, but no one in their right mind should dump an extra $100+ into the toilet just to have it carved into two slabs of vinyl.

*it's definitely

Man, they better not have lied about using the original master on this:

https://i.discogs.com/xorbQhHZeVxhlAMH1BLMfBzzglPLW8uaWIqo2qhB-pQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:40/h:300/w:300/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE5OTAz/MjItMTQ5MjAzODU5/OC04MzUzLmpwZWc.jpeg

those quotes might be a hint.

Seems quite clearly to be sarcasm, to be fair to that poster.

Yeah, that one was pretty clearly sarcasm or trolling, but it's telling of that site in general that there was even a question. That said, I know a lot of those stereocental folks that set up an entire H0ffman burn forum like to troll the H0ffman forums with those kind of posts too.

i just stopped parsing sarcasm like ages and ages ago. i recommend it - it's done me a world of good. whatever someone says, i just treat it like they meant it seriously and unironically.

in fairness to sh.tv, this listening project some of them are doing where they listen to and review every single recorded version of dark star is pretty great. aside from _dots and loops_ basically the only music i've been listening to for the last year+ is dead boots, and the project was just _essential_ for me when i was compiling my greyfolded-style tc-era dark star mix.

https://everydarkstar.blogspot.com/

Man, they better not have lied about using the original master on this

That's actually a good one to have. I only hope the master didn't get damaged or destroyed in that fire some asshat caused on the Universal lot.

But yes, it's the original (and correct!) master.

i just stopped parsing sarcasm like ages and ages ago. i recommend it - it's done me a world of good. whatever someone says, i just treat it like they meant it seriously and unironically.

I am hard-wired to not detect sarcasm unless it's completely transparent and this tendency feels like a perk to me

I was not the world's biggest Kids in the Hall fan but this sketch has lived in my head for 30+ years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9vunDdxWLA

Oh no, what a personal disaster!

It's best to detect the sarcasm but respond like it's sincere, everybody wins.

there should be bb code for [ sarcasm ]that messes with capitalization or something

I remember reading about this thread back in June:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/will-sanctions-be-the-end-of-the-tube-resurgence.1134832/

A lot of vacuum tubes come from Russia, apparently. It's fascinating both for a glimpse into a peculiar worldview and also because it's 51 pages long.

On the other hand Russia was for a long time the only source of old-fashioned mercury camera batteries, so I can see where they're coming from. The frustrating thing is that in the early 2000s a lot of people assumed that camera film would never die because China and Russia would continue to pump it out forever, because it would be decades before digital cameras became a thing in the former second world. But of course digital cameras and eventually smartphones crashed in price, and in large parts of the world a smartphone is an indispensable daily tool, so camera film died a dead. It's still being made, or at least slowly repackaged from existing stocks, but it will never be cheaper than it was in the early 2000s. I'm digressing here.

I think many poaters on Stereo Central are a lot farther gone than on SH.tv itself