Steven Howard Hoffman (born December 1951) is an American

mastering engineer A mastering engineer is a person skilled in the practice of taking audio (typically musical content) that has been previously mixed in either the analog or digital domain as mono, stereo, or multichannel formats and preparing it for use in distr ...

Biography

In the early 1970s, Hoffman worked in radio and earned a degree in mass communications from

California State University, Northridge California State University, Northridge (CSUN or Cal State Northridge) is a public university in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. With a total enrollment of 38,551 students (as of Fall 2021), it has the second largest un ...

. During the late 1970s, Hoffman joined

MCA Records MCA Records was an American record label owned by MCA Inc., which later became part of Universal Music Group. Pre-history MCA Inc., a powerful talent agency and a television production company, entered the recorded music business in 1962 wit ...

as catalog research and development coordinator. For the next decade, he was responsible for compiling hundreds of budget cassette releases for MCA's Special Products division. His primary focus was on jazz and big band recordings. In 1985 he worked on a series of releases aimed at the CD market which bore the title "From the Original Master Tapes." This series included works of artists such as

Buddy Holly Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...

Bill Haley William John Clifton Haley (; July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was an American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and million-sel ...

and

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...

. He was later fired from MCA, and has plied his trade with the Dunhill Compact Classics and Audio Fidelity labels, owned by Marshall Blonstein, former vice president of

Ode Records Ode Records (also known as Ode Sounds and Visuals) was an American record label, started by Lou Adler in 1967 after he sold Dunhill Records to ABC Records. It was distributed by CBS's Epic Records except between 1970 and 1976, when the label was ...

. Steve Hoffman co-wrote and recorded as a musician (drums and guitar) the

surf rock Surf music (or surf rock, surf pop, or surf guitar) is a Music genre, genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is in ...

instrumental "Cecilia Ann" with childhood friend Charles "Frosty" Horton, under the moniker of The Surftones. The track was recorded to provide an opener for a sixties surf rock anthology assembled by Hoffman in 1989, and gained popularity when it was covered by the

Pixies A pixie (also pisky, pixy, pixi, pizkie, and piskie in Cornwall and Devon, and pigsie or puggsy in the New Forest) is a mythical creature of British folklore. Pixies are considered to be particularly concentrated in the high moorland areas arou ...

, also as an opener on their 1990 album ''

Bossanova Bossa nova () is a style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a "different beat" that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovativ ...

''.

Approach

The adjustments Hoffman makes depend on the quality of the tape source and the equalization choices of the mixing engineer. While he avoids

noise reduction Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal. Noise reduction techniques exist for audio and images. Noise reduction algorithms may distort the signal to some degree. Noise rejection is the ability of a circuit to isolate an und ...

, he does add subjective "colorations" through subtractive equalization and up to five layers of

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. The type kn ...

distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...

The Picks' overdubs

In February 1984, Hoffman sent what are known as safety copies of several Buddy Holly master recordings to

John Pickering John Pickering may refer to: * John Pickering (dramatist), author of the play ''Horestes'' first published in 1567 * John Pickering (MP) (1585–1628), MP for Northamptonshire (UK Parliament constituency), Northamptonshire, 1626 * John Pickering (s ...

The Picks The Picks was an American vocal quartet that backed Buddy Holly and the Crickets' band on nine of the first twelve Crickets releases on Brunswick in 1957, as well as backing Buddy Holly solos for group sounds. The original members were John P ...

who took them to Sound Masters studios in Houston, Texas. There, the reunited group overdubbed new vocal parts onto at least 60 recordings, and sent them back to Hoffman at MCA. The belief was that, under Hoffman's influence, MCA would have issued these "new" recordings as an album, perhaps to commemorate the 25th year since Holly's death. This did not occur, and Hoffman was subsequently fired from MCA. In 1992, Pickering approached Viceroy Records to arrange a deal for nationwide distribution of these overdubbed recordings, but MCA made it clear that Pickering did not have legal clearance to release such recordings.

References

External links

Steve Hoffman WebsiteIn Search of the Holy Hi-Fi Grail
JazzTimes, March 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffman, Steve 1951 births Living people American audio engineers 20th-century American Jews Mastering engineers 21st-century American Jews