Steve Hoffman: More famous?

Hey Dave,

I can't change history! That's what the thing looked like. I've been secretly working on a book of Steve's life (soon to be made into a feature film) called either "Tubey... or Not Tubey, That Is The Question!" or "Tales of Hoffman." Here's an excerpt.

Chapter 75

At breakfast, the gang is a little rowdier than normal. Steve is munching loudly on his outmeal. Everyone is staring, but it is Hal who pipes up first. "Say, Steve, what was it you ordered again?" Steve stares blankly at Hal, then he stops chewing and swallows. "Oatmeal, Hal, why do you ask?" Hal gives Steve a look, then he sweeps a glance around the table "it sounds like you're chomping on ball bearings there, Steve! Why's that?" Steve looks down at the bowl. "Hmmm, looks like they forgot to add boiling water. This is just a bowl of plain oats!" Steve sticks his spoon back into the bowl and then he flicks a spoon full of oats at Hal. The moment Hal is hit by the oats he is struck with an idea. "Hey, Steve, how come you never eat... Wheaties?" The gang all leans forward, hoping for a juicy story.

"Well, let's see..." Steve says as he looks heavenward. Harp music is heard as he places his hand on his chin. "I remember it was just before my second appearance on Saturday Night Live. I got a call from my agent Shelly Maldonadoberg, who told me that I had to go immediately for a photo session for the front of the Wheaties cereal box. Unfortunately, Shelly had screwed up and I had no time to change, so I wore my regular clothes to the shoot. Annie Liebowitz fired off about 10 pictures and I was outta there.

"Two weeks later, I wrap up an appearance on Larry King (I was on right after Jennifer Flowers) and I come home to find a box car in my front yard. I open up the box car and there are thousands of boxes of Wheaties. Now, I like my ruffage as much as the next man, but that's a lotta wheat. I'm thinking I better try to eat it though, so it doesn't go to waste-- so I'm eating it morning noon and night, I'm giving 4 or 5 boxes to each person who visits me, I'm doing my best to unload all these Wheaties!" Every one is glued to this story, including the waitress who was walking by and scooched in to hear the rest of the story.

Everyone is animated now. "So what happens next, Steve?" someone shouts, it turns out that the whole place is listening! "Yeah, what happens?" So Steve tells the most incredible part of all

----End of excerpt-----

 

That is because they have only solid state electronics at Abbey Road!

Bob

 

Gary,

Do you mean that they wanted to master the soundtrack at 24bits using noise shaping and no-noise and that they wanted to further compress the masters to make it sound loud!

Bob

 

What's wrong with 24 bits and noise shaping?

 

Lukpac,

I think that this subject has been chewed to death in this forum under many threads. Since this thread is about Steve we all know about his mastering preferences. Hence, the comments that were meant partially in jest and partially in truth. Do you like the sound on Beatles 1? I don't. Why did they have to use no-noise? Was it really esssential to producing a great sounding Beatles comp? I hardly think so. Why can't EMI master a great sounding Beatles CD? All questions that have been "kicked around" too much!

Peace!

Bob

 

Famous Amos..err Steve..

Hey Steve: I went to "ALL MUSIC GUIDE" to read up on that Buddy Holly record and the review was written by Cub Koda! Wasn't he a DJ and also in Brownsville Station ("Smokin' in the Boys Room")



Cheers!
Norm F
Still lookin' for a nice MoFi Beatles Box (VINYL! Not one of these bogus CD sets)

 

Bob,

Noise *shaping* is NOT the same thing as noise *reduction*. Two different animals. Noise shaping is a process for taking a high-bit master and getting it down to 16-bits.

We all know what noise reduction is.

Don't confuse the two terms...

 

Lukpac,

Thanks for the technical reminder and further education. I now understand the clear difference between the two processes! As a process, does "noise shaping" color the sound in any way what so ever? If I am following here, it would your contention that it does not and that there is more potential for coloring the sound from "noise reduction"? I am more familar with noise reduction because of exposure to DBX and Dolby processes. For instance, my reel deck has inboard DBX I that I do not use because, to my ears, it colors or changes the sound.

Thanks for your patience and the discussion!

Bob

 

Well, first I must address noise reduction. The noise reduction you speak of (Dolby, DBX, etc) is a dual-ended process - when recording the signal is encoded, and then it is decoded on playback. The most simple example of this would probably be the RIAA curve. When cutting a record, massive amounts of EQ are used to save space and reduce noise. Bass frequencies are slashed and high frequencies are raised. On playback the opposite happens - the bass is boosted and the highs are lowered. That's the RIAA curve (very simply). Without that you'd have a lot more surface noise and much shorter playing time.

Tape recording curves like CCIR and NAB are similar to this. Dolby and DBX take it even further, with more complex EQ and compression (compressed on input, decompressed on output).

The end result is the sound that comes out *should* be exactly what went in. The aim is not to change the sound put in, but just to reduce added noise as caused by the physical medium (tape, LP, etc).

The noise reduction generally discussed here (CEDAR, NoNoise, etc) is totally different. That is a single-ended system - nothing is encoded during recording. Whoever is playing back the tape may say "it sounds like there's too much hiss on this recording", so they apply this type of noise reduction. One common way of doing this is to sample part of the tape (ie, between songs) that contains no music (but will have hiss), and tell the software to remove that sound from the entire recording. The problem is it's impossible to only remove that component of the sound and not affect other parts. This DOES change or color the sound - of course it does.

Back to noise shaping. Really, I don't know the details on this one, but there are many different ways to take a 24-bit master and make it 16-bit. Any of these ways will change the sound somehow. Just as recording to digital in the first place will change the sound somehow. Noise shaping is simply a way of making the best (in theory) of things when you are faced with losing 8 bits...

Make sense? I'm sure Steve could chime in here as well.

 

More About Processing

lukpac,

Thanks the further information and discussion. I was well aware of the encoding/decoding process of DBX and Dolby but was not aware of the single-ended nature of Cedar and No-Noise. My next question is--why use Cedar or No-Noise if those processes color or change the sound of the recorded work? It has only been on extremely rare occasion that tape hiss was at an annoyingly high level on any LP or CD that I have listened to where these processes were not used and that was only under the headphones at higher volume through my reel recorder while I was recording a program compilation. It would seem to me that under most listening conditions/environments that these processes are of little value and are, furthermore, destructive to the original sound of the recorded work being so processed. Why do so many labels use them during remastering?

Perhaps, Steve will pipe in...

Thanks!

Bob

 

Re: More About Processing

Some people think hiss is worse than the artifacts NR leaves behind...

 

Re: Re: More About Processing

lukpac,

This is interesting because I have been trying to recall a recording where I found tape hiss to be of annoyance and I cannot, at this time, think of one. Do you have any clear examples? I have actually come to find that tape hiss to be reassuring.

Bob

 

Re: Re: Re: More About Processing

Not everyone does. Simple as that.

Some people detest hiss.

 

Re: Re: Re: More About Processing

I seem to recal the first cd issue of Aqualung to be so hissy it was annoying to me.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: More About Processing

Thanks, for an example! My first Aqualung on CD was the DCC!...spoiled for sure..

Bob

 

Luke's explanation of Dolby/NoNoise/noise shaping is music to my eyes. Well written.
Interestingly, HDCD is almost a single ended system because (I guess) very few of us have an HDCD player - anyone?
Velvet Underground's 1969 Live was unbelievably hissy on vinyl (considering the source, it's not surprising) The CD sounded like a noise reduction nightmare with hiss appearing and disappearing all through the performance, a lot like a snare drum would resonate with the music. Anyone know if this has been remastered since 1989?

 

Re: Re: Re: More About Processing

Not that I'd advocate noise reduction, but...

...have you never heard anything recorded by Tom Dowd?

 

Not just the 8-track. The Stax stuff (live to stereo and 4-track), the Criteria stuff (16-track), etc...

 

Yes, I've found that engineers that were trained in the United States always kept their meters in the black and treated 0 VU as the true "0". In England, engineers always recorded at +3 or higher, to use the "overload" as creative saturation and keeping hiss at bay.

Which way worked better depended on how much distortion you could stand on your master tape I guess.