Would you consider new mastering projects but from artists and producers who appreciate and continue to use old-school tube gear and analog tape, such as the Foo Fighters or Tony Visconti? As a result, your preference leans much more towards audio restorations of music recorded on classic analog tube equipment. John Seetoo: You have lamented that a lot of the recorded sound of contemporary bands is the result of over-compressing the dynamic range, what’s become known as the “loudness wars,” and that the sound is sometimes unduly harsh-sounding due to digital signal processing and a focus on mixing for streaming and headphone listening. He discussed some of his past work, his love of vintage tube equipment, his preference for analog tape editing, some of his theories on remastering, and some of the obstacles he had to overcome on the technical, psychological and political fronts.ĭuring this period of COVID-19 lockdown, Copper was fortunate that Steve had some downtime between projects, which allowed him to do this follow-up interview. Steve Hoffman’s decisions in the studio have preserved and improved much of the beloved recorded music we own today in our personal libraries, and I think I can speak for every music lover to say that we are all grateful to him for his work.Ĭopper last spoke with Steve a few years ago ( Issues 36 and 37). Yet Steve is well-known enough to host an extremely popular forum, ( with about 127,000 subscribers. Steve’s touch has wowed millions of listeners and has garnered a huge fan base – an anomaly when one considers that the average music listener has no idea what an audio mastering engineer even does. Steve Hoffman’s philosophy on remastering is predicated upon a quest to capture what he refers to as the “breath of life”, i.e., to make the artist sound as true to life as possible.
Steve has remastered and restored thousands of classic records from artists as diverse as Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, The Eagles, Chicago, Sonny Rollins, Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly, Bob Marley, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Steely Dan, Johnny Cash, Nat King Cole, Earth, Wind and Fire and countless others…the list is staggering in both volume and breadth of musical genres. If you have listened to any popular music from the last 75 years or so that was remastered for CD, DSD, SACD or limited-edition vinyl, there are very good odds that you have heard the work of mastering engineer and audio restoration expert Steve Hoffman.
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