Richard you are 100% right about the Hoffman forums, it's full of of complete nutters, the amount times I have to hold myself back from saying something like "GET A LIFE" is ridiculous also many of them are Yanks with too much money who believe they are never wrong, but if you read between the snobbery and use our British common sense it's possible to pick out a lot of great knowledge and discard the chaff.Rmoore wrote:I have to say that whilst I admire the work of Steve Hoffman I can't bear to visit his forum as there are far to many people opinionated people who think that every recording should be transfered flat from every tape and that any form of compression is evil and that any body but Mr Hoffman must be useless - which is not living in the real world.
I wish SACD had taken off - I don't think it's even made a minor mark in the UK. In the US there is a small following leading to things like some Nat King Cole albums being issued in 3.0 surround (Basically the 3 track tapes transfered to disc) These must be quite incredible - if only I had a SACD player and a surround system!
Richard
My ears originally told me something was way wrong with various modern remasters as with the Bowie remasters, so I tried to find out why & ended up discovering Hoffmans forum, I immediatly saw it was full of opinionated aggressive people who have the loudest voices, but if you persevere and look wisely you can find sensible info, for example I had a Sammy Davis Jnr collection on universal it's way too compressed, loud & noise reduced that I can't listen to it, I found out via Hoffmans forums about one on BMG that was supposedly better so I bought it and it was much more natural, so it's just a matter of ignoring the idiots & pick out the good bits.
Regarding Steve Hoffmans Nat King Cole SACD's, there's 7 of them and mine are all on Pre Order, I can't wait to hear the original 3 tracks along with the mono versions on my SACD player and surround set up, they'll be truly fabulous, Hoffman had to get special equipment built to transfer to the quality he desired for them, so they really will be that good.