steve hoffman forums, C or D?

the guy has some serious ego issues

I found it useful for trivia. For example there's a thread about albums released on DAT - the only one I knew was Substance, the New Order compilation, but there are others. Such as Kylie Minogue's first album(!):
https://www.discogs.com/Kylie-Minogue-Kylie/release/8856256

DAT was a digital tape format from 1988 or so that recorded at 48khz. Never took off commercially but was popular in the broadcasting world in the years before burning a CDr was practical. Worthless now. Replaced in the studio by ADAT, which used VHS tapes, which was then replaced by hard disc recording and software instruments.

What else did I learn from Steve Hoffman's forums? Early Blue Note records have a deep groove in the label. Some records were made out of styrene, which was more easily damaged than vinyl. Early versions of the bezel had a dot over the ninety. The Japanese PlayStation had a slightly smaller controller. Columbia was slightly heavier than the later shuttles because it was originally designed to carry a liquid fuelled rocket in the cargo bay. Between Egypt and Sudan there's an 800-square-mild chunk of land called Bir Tawil that is unclaimed by either country because when the maps were drawn up the lines didn't match. I'm digressing here. Some of those things I learned elsewhere.

As with discogs.com my impression of the participants is that their musical taste is awful - it's always jazz/blues-rock, never Autechre - but ultimately it's not a music forum, it's a music technology forum, just as discogs is an eBay seller forum. After a while I felt like screaming "you're an old man; your hearing is shot; it's a physical inevitability; you've wasted a fortune on audio gear that you can't hear properly; no, you can't run faster than a young man; you're full of shit" but I doubt they would have heard me on account of the hearing loss.

Conversely IlXor *does* have a wealth of musical knowledge but as with the pre-Kinja AV Club the frustrating thing is that it's hard to write about music so discussions tend to drift off into space. I hate it when discussions move from the topic, which in this case is ejection seats, because some early jet fighters had downwards-firing ejection seats. One moment you're debating whether it's a good idea to put decorations on the *other* side of the Christmas tree - the one that faces the wall - and the next moment you're left wondering if the Austin Allegro could have been a better car with a hatchback and a subtle redesign. Battlecruisers, yay or nay?

To this day I have no idea who Steve Hoffman is, or was. I have a mental image of one of those anonymous studio people from Los Angeles who proudly lists his work with Mr Mister, Toto, and Heart; the kind of person whose website has a photo of him standing next to music legend Bill Bottrell. *The* Bill Bottrell! Oh yes, him. The musical world's equivalent of a professional grouter.

great post. the pedantic nerd in me kinda loves this stuff: hearing the small differences between this pressing and that one, getting into all the incidental technical details, etc etc

Hoffman himself seems pretty awful

they actually do have a small contingent of Autechre fans, by the way :)

Discogs has a large Autechre contingent as it started out as an electronic music database. Also as a participant there I can say that musical taste is as varied as can possibly be and it's still at least as much about nerdery and collecting as selling.

yeah, there's a lot of Autechre talk on that forum, for one thing

Hoffman (right):
http://www.stevehoffman.info/pic/cc_steve.jpg
TBF he created the best mastering that exists of Highway 61 Revisited and has done a great job on a bunch of other recordings.
but also
https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/3593451.jpg
(endorsing a bizarre piece of wood you stand in your room to make music sound better, I am not joking)

sorry, I forgot the wiggle stick image was already itt

had no idea discogs had a forum

In the second pic, which one is Hoffman?

I ignored it for years. It's mainly abkut the mechanics / politics of the database. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of specialist Group forums on Discogs although many are wastelands. Electronic Music has about 20,000 members, though.

MatthewK - the second photo needs a Hoffman (Left) caption. (haha xp)

lol

(You have insufficient privileges to reply here.)

jerks.

You are insufficiently privileged to reply here.

I found such behavior sad for a senior citizen.

Xpost that is usually because the thread is locked (for going off topic, political snark, etc)

"I was alive at the time. I was there. I remember his plane crash at the high school". I pointed out that yes it's a shame we lost 2 bright stars- Valens and Buddy Holly.

I get that The Big Bopper was a DJ with a novelty hit, but damn that's cold.

I have discovered the stereocentral forum which is a good laugh though it's really a Hoffman boards slambook.

lol really? audiophile mastering beef

Didn't think I'd see a thread dedicated to that forum. Honestly, the feuding that's gone on over there has been the saddest spectacle I've ever witnessed on the internet. It's even spilled out into Wikipedia, and I imagine whoever runs it is shaking their heads, wondering "why the hell are all these people waging this ongoing edit war on a page over a mastering engineer?" It's really sad yet fascinating how it's snowballed over the years, eventually ensnaring renowned engineers like Ken Scott (the Beatles, David Bowie's glam rock albums). The low point was when it came out that Hoffman had a reputation for stealing and/or neglecting to return masters, which is how he got fired from his previous job with MCA.

Anyway, it's heavily populated by complete nuts, and I don't mean obsessive collectors, just socially dysfunctional malcontents. But there are a few highly knowledgeable people who have come and gone through there, and it's worth searching the site once in a while if you need vital record info, especially if it's related to mastering, masters/sources used, etc. Just be sure you get the right info from the right people posting. It's especially edifying if it's coming from people who work in the business. (The great Motown engineer Bob Olhsson actually posts there once in a while, and thankfully he comes off as a very sane and likable person.)

One can go on forever about all the negatives - I mean, sweet Jesus, it actually spawned another forum that exists solely to mock it - but on the positive side, I guess it took highly esoteric but really good information about how masters, records, CD's, SACD's, etc. sound the way they do and made people more knowledgeable about it. In some cases to an unhealthy degree, but it can be nice when you realize it can save you a good deal of $$$ when you get in the habit of skipping remasters of music you already own because they actually sound worse than what you already have.

god i had such a good laugh reading your post, it’s all so painfully true. thank you

sadly, I would definitely read a juicy Hoffman expose lol

https://vintagerock.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/steve_hoffman_interview.jpg

https://vintagerock.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/steve_hoffman_interview.jpg

here's that slam forum: https://stereocentral.freeforums.net. Like I said, some of it is good reading, particularly the stuff they snag before it's deleted where some SHF posters go off into really awful right-wing political shit.

anybody wanna explain what the hell is going with that forum?

i'm out of the loop and seriously confused by all of this.

discovering that forum makes me wonder where the anti-ilx forum is

it's called ilx

ha.

Austin, i wish i could help but i don't think i know anything you don't know. birdistheword's post sort of sums it up pretty well i think.

yup. I visit about once a month and the threads on bands I'm really interested in have been pretty helpful.

Good god, the current thread over there about RZA's new ice cream truck jingle is.... something.

lol I racked my brain trying to think why RZA would write an ice cream jingle and how it would become a clusterfuck on the steve hoffman forums and I'm sad to say I pretty much guessed right

discovering that forum makes me wonder where the anti-ilx forum is

hipinion?

xli?

so wait, it's literally a parody thread full of fake posts in the SHF style? That seems like a...very odd use of time

Its not really full of parodies, more filled with threads mocking Hoffman and specific posters.

There can't be many places that banned so many users they decided to start their own forum just to make fun of the one where they originally posted.

That actually happens a lot, 2 that I could think of in recent years.

Looks like the Hoffman Forums got taken out by hackers, at least that's what is implied by some posts on that slam forum.

Looks like it's been DOS attacked

Xpost blimey!

dammit they are my source for Jethro Tull news

According to that other forum, someone may have hacked H0ffman's own account and posted a few things under his name.

Now we will never know which pressing of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs best foregrounds God’s coked-up despair.

lol

I got a message on there thsi morning saying they'd been hacked, claimed to come from Steve Hoffman himself. NOt sure how true that is, also seemed to be an individual message to me so is that a BCC type thing.

Got told i might need a 2fa which i know nothing about

Tried to chjeckj back on there about 20 minutes ago and I can't get near the site apparently.

According to that slam forum, every user got that message from Steve himself.

what are the odds that SH posted something horrible and then decided to blow up the board

Fuck I wanted to figure out what the hot-stamper for Breakfast in America was!

sounds like the whole joint got hot-stamped

You think the hackers used MyDoom or Slowloris in the attack, or do you think they went the classic route with Stacheldraht?

Those first two will definitely keep your victims guessing for a few hours but the pitch on Stacheldraht leaves you with no doubt that you've been fucked.

Six of one, half a dozen perhaps....