Details (mystery) surrounding Steve Hoffman's mastering of Steely Dan's Aja and Katy

I am currently trying to figure out the complete mystery of the Steely Dan CD Debacle. There is an article that states that subsequent pressings were created from poor analog tapes instead of the digital tapes created by Roger Nicholis. After reading many articles, I think there is a possibility that the Steve Hoffman versions are the ones mastered from the wrong tapes (management's view). I still need more info to get closer to the facts. What were the circumstances that had Steve master just Aja and Katy Lied in a series of masterings that should have all been done by Roger.

Were the Hoffman masters from the digital source?

 

Steve mentioned once that the metal log article was a "crock". What is not true in the article?

 

No, they were from analouge tape.

 

The section in Brian Sweet's biography which mentions this has puzzled me ever since I've joined this forum. The biography mentions that Roger Nichols transfered the original analogue masters to digital in 1981, 3 years before the first Steely Dan CDs appeared. The biography claims that original CD pressings were from these transfers. Yet the generally available unremastered CDs of Aja are all from the same analog to digital transfer as the disc claimed by Steve to be from his master. There are very minor differences in the low frequencies but they're always perfectly in phase, which means they must be from the exact same transfer. I believe Steve has mentioned here he transfered the tape to digital himself, which would suggest the biography (and that Metal Leg article which is where I think Brian Sweet got his info from) is inaccurate.

 

http://www.granatino.com/sdresource/18crime.htm

Here is the link for that article. What is inaccurate in it?

 

from the article:

Nichols' own account, earlier in the article, conflicts this quoted paragraph.
He says that the first pressings are inferior and not done correctly
(of at least 2 titles, 'Aja' and 'Gaucho') as they used eq'ued safety copies.
Only his transfers from '81 (which went unused) originated from the
1st-gen masters by his account.
So that article has two stories, neither one acknowledging SH's work
on the catalog shortly before he left the label. Nor does this article dispute
SH's account that he used 1st Gen masters on 'Aja', it sidesteps the question
entirely by presenting these other stories, neither of which can be the truth
(as they disagree).

That Nichols' name appears on a series of subsequently brighter and louder cds
does not help his reputation in this matter. If he did not master the later discs
(as story #2, quoted above, suggests) then why is his name on them?
If he actually did go back and fix everything for the latest issues,
why are they brighter and louder than the versions that were issued earlier?

- - -

Me, I just went to the used cd store and listened to 3 'Aja' cd pressings back to back
for comparison. I settled on one that sounded full and un-screechy,
then later I discovered it was an early pressing, DIDX-55, that I had chosen.
I do not know for certain that it is SH's work, but it certainly has that kind of
character - unforced and natural sounding . . . UNLIKE the Citizen Steely Dan discs!!!

 

As we stated earlier in the news, MCA has admitted to using faulty masters for the recent pressings of the entire Steely Dan catalog.

It appears that the original 1985 mastering is much easier to find than later (pre-Citizen) masterings. So far we've only been able to locate these for Can't buy a thrill and Gaucho. I can't understand what the fuzz is all about.