Interview
conducted by Michael Hart in November of 2003 for Beatlology Magazine from Vol. 6, No. 2 November/December 2003
Introduction
To passionate fans of the classic music of the Fifties,
Sixties and Seventies, finding the line of text ‘Mastered by Steve Hoffman’ on
the back of a reissue CD is like finding the Holy Grail. What that simple line
means to these folks is that when the CD starts spinning, what will come out of
the player will be the magic sounds as we remember them.
Think that’s easy? Think again. Since the dawn of CDs
in 1982, oldies fans have seen the quality of reissue material vary from good,
to fair, to downright horrible. In the rush to issue their best selling LP
titles in the early days of CD, many reissue coordinators grabbed the first
master tape they could find, had a quick digital transfer made, and rushed the
product onto the marketplace. The resulting product, in many cases caused a
consumer revolt. CDs were supposed to sound better than their LP counterparts,
and were supposed to be the ultimate in recorded sound. Unfortunately, for many
of those early CDs, 3rd and 4th generation tapes were used, tapes EQ’d
especially for vinyl were mistakenly used for digital transfer, and in the worst
cases, the wrong versions of songs ended up on greatest hits CDs. Oldies fans
(including this one) were up in arms and petitioned the major record companies
to do a better job.
Enter one Steve Hoffman.
[Note: to read the rest,
you'll have to go to Beatlology Magazine
and purchase a copy of the magazine. Thank you to publisher Andrew Croft for
allowing the introduction to be reproduced here. Maybe some day down the road we
can have the whole thing, but he is after all running a for profit
business.]
Copyright ©2003 Beatlology,
Inc.
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