Steve Hoffman

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For the businessman, see Steve Hoffman (businessman).

Steve Hoffman is an audio engineer from Los Angeles, California, who specializes in remastering sound recordings on compact disc and vinyl record. In the 1980s, he worked at MCA for nine years. He has since done remastering work for companies such as DCC and Audio Fidelity, Analogue Productions, Rural Rhythm and, presently, S&P.

1 Biography
2 Controversy
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

In his early years Steve Hoffman worked in radio and earned a degree in mass communications from California State University, Northridge.^{[citation needed]}

The first CD Steve Hoffman remastered was "For The First Time Anywhere" by Buddy Holly, which consists of ten early undubbed recordings.^{[citation needed]}

While at MCA, Hoffman championed the idea that reissues of an artist's back catalog could be worthwhile and profitable for engineers and record companies. His approach to remastering is minimalist, and attained by avoiding compression, limiting and equalization. He does not use any digital-based noise reduction^{[citation needed]}. The ideology promoted by Steve Hoffman is held in high esteem by audiophiles.

Many audiophiles have expressed a wish for Mr Hoffman to remaster the Beatles back catalogue, and there was some discussion of this in the early part of this century.^{[citation needed]} Nothing concrete has yet appeared, although there has been some recent talk of the possibility of Hoffman remastering work by the 1910 Fruitgum Company^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Controversy

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Steve Hoffman has been accused of misplacing tapes during his career as an audio engineer.^{[citation needed]} These accusations include tapes from the archives of Buddy Holly, supposedly misplaced back in 1984.^[1] In addition, supposed industry insiders have alleged that Hoffman is not allowed to use Sony master tapes^{[citation needed]}, although no one from Sony is available to comment on this at the present time.

He has also been accused by famed recording engineers of not using master tapes, as he implies in his box covers. Specifically, a Sony employee denounced Hoffman's use of dubs for his Roy Orbison compilation.