SH Spotlight Recording and Mastering Questions---Answered here. Any more?

Two questions:

1. Do you take it to heart when someone dislikes your mastering (i.e. the individual has genuine criticisms and is not being antagonistic)?

2. Should a mastering engineer in the first instance always master to please him/herself or the masses?

 

With bass and high frequencies being things that many talk about and can relate to, how would you describe a good midrange so it really shows to the ordinary listener (without loosing focus the low end or high treble sounds)? I mean is it no more than a "clear, natural" voice simply put?

 

"Mastered by Steve Hoffman" is often used as a selling point, so you have a strong reputation with a certain segment of consumers as well as folks in the industry. What this means is your clients are hiring you because they trust your skill, judgement and sensibility, and know that what you deliver is what many consumers will buy without question, so they probably just let you "do your thing." Do you ever get push-back from clients on the mastering moves you've made?

A lesser-known mastering engineer probably doesn't have the same leverage, and so they are more likely to be pressed by their clients/bosses to deliver particular results. I doubt that the brickwalled masterings we all hate are done by engineers who personally think that it sounds good. At least, I hope that's the case.

 

When that happens, are you able to request that they remove your name from the credits? Or is it more often a "surprise" when the final (compromised) products lands in your mailbox? I can see that being a serious problem for you.

 

Steve. It seems that you do most of your work for a Audio Fidelity these days. Is there a reason that we don't see your name more often on mainstream releases instead of audiophile releases? Considering your fine reputation I would assume you are in high demand. Do you turn down a lot of jobs because of time?

 

What, Steve, is the difference between your working on an album that you are totally familiar with, say like Aqualung, compared with an album that you have never heard? I would imagine you get psyched to hear the masters for something you love...

 

I believe that depends on your individual hearing's prejudices.

For example, I had a coworker who had worked in the studio with Earth, Wind, and Fire and Toto and such. He had some cassette "safety copies" of stuff, no Dolby so quite hissy, and he said "I just listen past the noise, it doesn't bother me." Whereas to another extreme, I could not finish listening to Louis Armstrong's The Hot Fives and the Hot Sevens because the sound just had too much hiss and noise and crackle and such-which REALLY bother me.

I've heard some great vinyl rigs, but almost inevitably there is a bit of snap crackle and pop-maybe tiny, but there-and it distracts me. Also wow-and-flutter or something, not just the noise, because my first CD player ran via a cassette adaptor in my car but I still felt a vastly improved aspect to the sound. Now digital, and early CD in particular, has been wasted by bad early transfers and now continuing loudness wars.

I can enjoy vinyl but tend to prefer digital, as do others including some top pros like John Eargle, Mark Waldrep of AIX, and Alan Parsons. Other pros prefer analog, like "Professor" Keith O. Johnson of Reference Recordings, and Elliot Scheiner (who IIRC once commented in a panel I attended that he still liked to have a stage of analog tape in there somewhere).

I firmly believe that what is WAY more important than "analog versus digital" is the skill and care of the practitioners all along the recording chain.

 

Now my question for Steve: how can remixing improve (not merely change) the sound of a release, IF no noise reduction is used? The genesis of my question is Jimmy Page's Zeppelin remixes, where the noise floor was often drastically dropped...but many people didn't like that as they felt the NR killed "sparkle" or something.

 

Hi Steve. Thanks for the time taken to answer these questions, that's very kind of you.

I've been wondering for a while. I have a couple of old Muddy Waters CDs mastered by you and also Who's Next. These CDs have a sonic signature similar to what LPs used to sound, quite natural and they sound great at higher listening levels. More recently I was lucky enough to find a local used copy of Miles Davis' Relaxin' on the DCC label, also mastered by you, and this one has a much more clear presentation, with a lot more focus on the high frequencies. This is not necessarily bad, as the sonic signature is still balanced overall, but it is considerably different from the other titles I've mentioned.

Can you elaborate on why this is?

 

The worst job you ever had in your career?

(As in, the one where you walked away from happily - names can be changed to protect the guilty!)

 

That sucks! Can you identify which releases those are so that folks can know before buying?

 

Pretenders (Audio Fidelity Gold CD) is one of these bad sounding discs.

 

Hello Mr. Hoffman. I know you did the mastering of the soundtrack for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on CD. Can you tell us something about this recording? What digital format (it was tracked and mixed down to digital) did you get, maybe Sony 1630?
Were early digital recordings harder to master due to their higher dinamic range? Some other issues that may do these masterings harder?

 

You told me years ago you mastered this but I don't recall if it was for LP or CD. I do recall you said verbatim "if it sounds quiet as a mouse it's my mastering".

 

Hi Steve

I've just ordered the "The Mamas & the Papas, Mamas & P, 16 of their Greatest Hits" CD, as it was cheap and I noticed it was mastered by you.

Any thoughts on that CD? Were the tape sources good and was the final product to your satisfaction?