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Topic: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums (Read 87548 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #26
I am an administrator over at Stereo Central. The service provider had a catastrophic failure, which they keep promising to fix—and then they don't. I am beginning to think that they lost the entire archive, although they claim they can fix things. We are still waiting. Failing that, we are trying to get them to let us start afresh. It has been a real mess, and quite frustrating. We cannot log in either.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #27
Thanks for the update and good luck! I thought maybe the site was hacked by rogue Gorts or something.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #28
In the case of game consoles I do my rips straight.  Unless adding fading out to pieces that loop forever counts as not being straight?  With some but not all consoles a simple modification can change the sound dramatically as well.  I'm not afraid of soldering iron to get results that I want if that's what it takes.

Every time I ripped from a medium like compact cassettes or vinyl I found myself trying to fix the audio with all kinds of software because the audio quality is just too objectionable for me.  I gave up on digitalizing those mediums because I can get the CD in 99% of cases and just save time not having to do anything.

The mastering engineering's job is an important one like or not.  I've played around with various kinds of compressors (single and multi-band), equalizers, limiters, expanders, and such.

One MIDI I used a soundfont for (which had the exact font specified in the comments section of the file interestingly) needed a lot of equalization and a bit of stereo widening because of how dull and muffled it sounded to me, when I decided to record it for personal, private use.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #29
I am an administrator over at Stereo Central. The service provider had a catastrophic failure, which they keep promising to fix—and then they don't. I am beginning to think that they lost the entire archive, although they claim they can fix things. We are still waiting. Failing that, we are trying to get them to let us start afresh. It has been a real mess, and quite frustrating. We cannot log in either.

I miss SC since Hoofman banned me. Perhaps a SC forums fundraiser is in order. Advertisers have been licking their lips for years andOHDEARGOD.

 

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #30
Damn.  Looks like the service provider for SC's site has totally lost the plot.  Now they don't even have a DNS entry.  

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #31
As is probably obvious by now, it's gone forever. I do have a backup that the shitty service provider sent me, but have no intention of putting it up anywhere. Honestly, I don't really care that much. It was fun while it lasted, but after a decade (plus the previous iterations plus the Rancid Snakepit), it was about time for it to be euthanized anyway.

Regardless, if someone else wants to start up a new board, I'll be happy to participate. I have no desire to own it again though. Being responsible for that place wasn't exactly hard work, but it was still a pain in the ass. I'd been trying to hand it off to someone else or just kill the damn thing for the last 7 or 8 years.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #32
As is probably obvious by now, it's gone forever. I do have a backup that the shitty service provider sent me, but have no intention of putting it up anywhere. Honestly, I don't really care that much. It was fun while it lasted, but after a decade (plus the previous iterations plus the Rancid Snakepit), it was about time for it to be euthanized anyway.

Regardless, if someone else wants to start up a new board, I'll be happy to participate. I have no desire to own it again though. Being responsible for that place wasn't exactly hard work, but it was still a pain in the ass. I'd been trying to hand it off to someone else or just kill the damn thing for the last 7 or 8 years.

Damn, the definitive final poat.

Alright, I don't blame ya.  Thanks for letting us know, and thanks so much for having provided such a valuable service over the years.  I'm gonna miss it.  It was great to have a place to vent, and the humor was razor sharp.  Huffy now unchecked and running amok is a sad situation.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #33
As is probably obvious by now, it's gone forever. I do have a backup that the shitty service provider sent me, but have no intention of putting it up anywhere. Honestly, I don't really care that much. It was fun while it lasted, but after a decade (plus the previous iterations plus the Rancid Snakepit), it was about time for it to be euthanized anyway.

Regardless, if someone else wants to start up a new board, I'll be happy to participate. I have no desire to own it again though. Being responsible for that place wasn't exactly hard work, but it was still a pain in the ass. I'd been trying to hand it off to someone else or just kill the damn thing for the last 7 or 8 years.

I also wanted to thank you for what was truly a great and necessary counter to the SH forums madness. I lurked at SC for a few years before I finally registered (under a different user name than this one) because it was the sharpest and funniest writing I've ever seen on a forum. It's rare for me to lol at written content, but that happened frequently there. I spent hours reading the old threads, wishing I had discovered the site sooner.

The thing that really sucks about the abruptness of the outage is that a lot of the long-time poaters like yourself, COLA, Dave D, Boozin' Susan, C.W.F., Hoffa Nagila, and many others, felt like familiar old friends. And suddenly they were scattered to the four winds. I googled for weeks afterward, trying to find any mention of where anyone had gone, which is what ultimately led me here. I just miss sc.tv and that little community an awful lot. It never got old to me - SH and some of the battier members on that site just keep on giving and giving.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #34
Damn, that stinks. I didn't check the site but a handful of times a year and "Tube Rolling In The Glory Hole" was guaranteed for some great laughs. This is the thread that came up when I searched for where did stereocentral.tv go

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #35
The thing that really sucks about the abruptness of the outage is that a lot of the long-time poaters like yourself, COLA, Dave D, Boozin' Susan, C.W.F., Hoffa Nagila, and many others, felt like familiar old friends. And suddenly they were scattered to the four winds. .....I just miss sc.tv and that little community an awful lot. It never got old to me - SH and some of the battier members on that site just keep on giving and giving.

It still amazes me that I openly visited Hoofman's forum and sc.tv and I lasted for years on Hoofy's site with only a rare case or two of members calling me out about my "cronies" at sc.tv. I had just come back from a "time-out" after torturing forum members who tried to take advantage of an Amazon.ca screw-up offering an absurdly low incorrect price for the Sgt. Pepper super-deluxe box set. The Gorts were pissed because I was taunting them about it and I called some idiot a jerk who implied that I was a liar. This final post is what got me banned. Some poor guy from Beirut who did not know English too well started this thread: What CCR song you can not stand most? Steve-O just couldn't take it.





Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #36
Post like these make me regret that HA has no 'like' button.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #37
There's a like feature in this forum package, as well as a karma feature, but I wasn't sure we wanted either of those turned on.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #38
I also regret the quick way SC.tv just went <poof!>.  I miss the snarky nonsense that went on over there.

Don't much pay attention to whatever hijinx ol' Hoofy is up to anymore.  But, I'm sure glad Sparkdog saved his classic kiss-off.  Reading it again was nice.

Anyway, if a new Stereo Central arises from the ashes of the old one, please post...er...poat the info here.   Those old Guffy avatars of mine need a new home.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #39
Anyway, if a new Stereo Central arises from the ashes of the old one, please post...er...poat the info here.  Those old Guffy avatars of mine need a new home.



I have a sort of "Son of Stereo Central" phorum ready to go live. It is mainly based on the old SCtv structure. As a courtesy, I asked a couple of the old mods if they cared. I'll let you all know if it's a go but please share the URL if you would!!

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #40
I didn't poat a lot at SC, but I read it off and on for years.  I have no words to express my feelings about this loss, so I will resort to these lines from a forum-favorite poet:

And if I say I really knew you well
What would your answer be?
If you were here today
Ooh ooh ooh, here today

Well, knowing you
Youd probably laugh and say
That we were worlds apart
If you were here today
Ooh ooh ooh, here today

But as for me, I still
Remember how it was before
And I am holding back the tears no more
Ooh ooh ooh, I love you, ooh

What about the time we met?
Well, I suppose that you could say
That we were playing hard to get
Didn't understand a thing
But we could always sing

What about the night we cried?
Because there wasn't any reason
Left to keep it all inside
Never understood a word
But you were always there with a smile

And if I say I really loved you
And was glad you came along
When you were here today
Ooh ooh ooh, for you were in my song
Ooh ooh ooh, here today

Stereo Central, YOU were in my song!

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #41
I have a sort of "Son of Stereo Central" phorum ready to go live. It is mainly based on the old SCtv structure. As a courtesy, I asked a couple of the old mods if they cared. I'll let you all know if it's a go but please share the URL if you would!!

Please do this.   I miss SC.TV

Never posted, but loved the commentary... 

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #42
Also hoping for a SOSC to rise up from the ashes.  SC was sometimes over the top itself, but was a good balance to some of the goings on in that other forum.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #43
Well, we definitely need a platform, because this is what happens when we're down:

Quote
I got in an argument with one of their members at Steve Hoffman's forum and a few days later the same guy showed up at a forum I hosted with a profane pic and aggressive post, also an email and a link to stereocentral forum. I went there and found several threads directed at me, these people were some of the creepiest trolls i ever ran into and I've dealt with quite a few. They looked up stuff I did online years ago and sabotaged my Amazon site where I was selling my CD with a bogus review. What was interesting though was that even though they claimed to hate my music deeply, enough to make fun of it for years after this, they alone were responsible for a stretch where I got more listens than any other time in my musical career since mp3.com closed the doors on indies. I mean there was a massive spike in listens on my bandcamp page, which I was fine with. I joined their forum and they thought they were going to taunt and bully me but I've handled far more sophisticated trolls than them, I got in their faces about their Hoffman usurping, totally had the upper hand, me against a dozen of them. When they realized I was playing them, they banned me like cowards.

http://www.bootlegzone.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35601

http://indiemusicpeople.com/songs.aspx?SongID=94754&ArtistID=154549

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #44
The Hoffman forums are nothing more than a honey pot for the industry.  


Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #46
The Hoffman forums are nothing more than a honey pot for the industry.  

Maybe the hardware resellers, or a very limited series of audiophile labels with which Hoffman hasn't burnt bridges, but not the overall record industry.

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #47
Well, that was fast...

There *had* been a new SC set up (by Spakydog), but it looks like the plug was pulled after only a week or so. 

Too bad, but I can kind of see the point.  Just a few of the original SC.tv cast of characters turned up, so it was kind of hard to get any good snark going.

FWIW, I think the plug was pulled a bit too fast.  It might have been better to leave the site up, even if things were going rather slowly. 


Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #48
Well, no one informed me about the "new" SC. If I had known, I would have been more than happy to contribute. (Full disclosure: I used to post at Stereo Central under the name COLA).

Re: Alternatives to Steve Hoffman's Forums

Reply #49
Well, no one informed me about the "new" SC. If I had known, I would have been more than happy to contribute. (Full disclosure: I used to post at Stereo Central under the name COLA).

I also hope SC2 is reinstated.  It takes time to get a place like that going strong, considering the way the original SC was so quickly rendered FUBAR (preventing any sort of PMs to the folks who had been a part of it).

SC2's banner was also top notch.  A great parody of the outhouse SC was born to ridicule.