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 | | | | Mar31Written by:Rip Rowan
Wednesday, March 31, 1999 6:00 PM  I recently came across a line of posts regarding ProRec in a popular discussion group.
The gist of the commentary was that ProRec is an interesting 'Zine, but it sure seemed like ProRec's authors were lackeys for certain pro audio companies. The author asked, could someone please recommend a trustworthy web site?
My blood boiled. TRUSTWORTHY?!!?
I wanted to flame the living shit out of the scumbag.
Then came our Roundtable on the future of the small studio business. That one stirred up a lot of misplaced emotion in various discussion forums. A lot of readers got the idea that ProRec was staffed by a bunch of "old timers" who desperately clung to their cushy big-studio jobs and who had a terrifying fear of competition from home recordists.
Yeah, right.
Later, as I calmed down, I started to realize that the people in these discussion groups just didn't understand much at all about ProRec. I wondered how many people that read this 'Zine think that we are in the grip of a corporate stranglehold. That ProRec's authors are merely puppets on the hands on the corporate giants that seem to control the audio world. That we ProReccers are but pawns in the Grand Scheme.
Early on, I wrote some editorials describing the kind of magazine that ProRec would become. That was last year. Since then, we've grown, moved forward, and added a lot of new readers. It's been a while since I communicated my vision to you.
It seems, Gentle Reader, that you might not know who the hell we are.
Manifesto
I've long subscribed to the popular pro-audio magazines. These mags make for great reading. Most of them offer the requisite "money shot" pics of the multi-million-dollar Control Room du Jour. Sometimes, there are good reviews, and sometimes there's even a good opinion column.
But, the popular mags often suffer a few fatal flaws that made them almost useless to me on a professional level.
For one thing, their cycle time can be horrible. Several times I have read a review of a "new" product that had already been replaced by an enhanced version - or made obsolete altogether and discontinued. Oops.
Secondly, some of these publications have a broad scope. With all of the advancements in home audio, pro audio, audio-for-film, live audio, etc., these publications are quickly becoming jacks-of-all-trades. No one magazine can be the definitive authority in all of these fields and stay current with new trends and technology.
Some of the mags seem to be written only for the guys at Skywalker Sound. What good is a review of a half-million dollar mixing board? The handful of people that buy this equipment sure the hell don't buy it based on a positive review in a trade rag.
On the other hand, some of the publications were obviously written by guys that have never cut a track for commercial release. You can read an opinion article where the writer compares the newest, most expensive Apogee 24/96 converters to their 16/44.1 Sony Discman and concludes that 24/96 does sound better - and you know that these people don't have a clue.
Many of the reviews are not based on much experience with the product. One mic review in particular focused on published specs and a little vocal tracking on an 8-track digital system in someone's bedroom. The reviewer talked about the importance of blowing into the mic to hear the bottom end. Huh? That's no way to really audition a mic.
And, finally, there was the strange coincidence that kept popping up where a particular issue of a mag would be filled with thousands of dollars of ads selling the new GeeWhiz 2000, and - LO! - there, in the middle of the mag is a 6-page, glowing, blowing, spooge-dripping review of - you guessed it - the GeeWhiz 2000. Coincidence? You decide.
So the state of the pro recording trade magazines left me a little dissatisfied.
Meanwhile, I was also a lurker in a few different pro audio / recording discussion forums, and had developed a few opinions about those forums and the people out there.
First off, there's a lot of knowledge floating around out there. Some of the people out there on the Web know a lot about recording and recording technology. And the knowledge tends to be fresh.
Secondly, there are some great writers out there. The Internet seems to attract the pro-chaos literati. Many of these people are powerful proponents of their (often radical) opinions.
But, there's a lot of hostility and rancor out there. I, for one, get a little tired of the smartassess out there who would rather flame out than help out. In some newsgroups it's a veritable smartass festival.
And even among the helpful few, most of their knowledge is quickly lost. Newsgroups are great places to have short-lived discussions, but they are horrible knowledgebases. So the same damn question keeps coming up over and over and over again, until the knowledgeable people quit responding, and the rumor mill picks up with misinformation and the assholes start shooting their flames.
Wouldn't it be cool if the informed people on the newsgroups could distill their knowledge into meaningful, insightful, timely articles?
So, one year ago, I stayed up all weekend hacking code together to fire up ProRec. I pulled a few guys that I respected off some newsgroups, cobbled together some articles from their old posts, and BEHOLD ProRec was born. Our mission: to provide REAL reviews and opinions on CURRENT pro recording topics WITHOUT bias or external influence. We decided that we would, first and foremost, be a trustworthy source of information; and our second goal would be to make money.
Our staff is composed of engineers and musicians. Guys that make a living based on their music or their work in the music industry. Not a bunch of second-rate journalism students with a passing interest in music, but people you can believe.Read their bios, and get a feel for their experience. There's over 200 years of music business experience floating around here.
Yes, ProRec IS sponsored by advertising. We earn barely enough from banner advertising to pay our Internet hosting fees. And we make it patently clear to our advertising sponsors that ProRec in no way biases reviews, or decisions about what to review, based on advertising. Whatsoever.
And, Gentle Reader, that turns a lot of potential advertisers off.
Burned Bridges on the Road to Ethics
We seriously burned a bridge with one of the largest music equipment companies in the world. We'll call it the Company. I got a borderline slanderous email from one of their representatives back in September. This asshole had the nerve to admonish us that ProRec had failed to report on the Company's new products in one of our NAMM reports, so, no, there would be no review products or advertising money for ProRec.
Of course, none of the other major mags reported on the Company's products at NAMM. Why? Because they sucked, my friend. There was nothing nice to say.
So I told him so. And, I haven't heard back from that Company. And, I don't expect to.
Frankly, it's no big loss. The Company is huge, and generates a lot of sales, but there are very, very few products this Company sells that would merit a serious review on ProRec.
Let me assure you, Gentle Reader, that ProRec is much more concerned with honest, unbiased opinions than we are with being a kiss-ass to the industry. If we piss off a few manufacturers along the way, so be it.
ProRec has a single, simple business philosophy: supply the working engineer and musician with real, honest information. Earn the trust of the working musician and engineer. Generate Web traffic based on experience, honesty, and trust. When the traffic arrives, the advertising will follow.
Many of our competitors follow the reverse philosophy: sell ads, sell mags, and the honesty will follow.
That's not our style.
If You Can't Say Something Nice...
One thing we learned early on is: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
It's really unproductive to slam a particular product, company or person. For example, the aforementioned Company sells a lot of products. But very few products that they sell are in any way important to the industry. They're cheesy, and amateurish. You won't find them filling the racks of major studios.
From my point of view, I'd rather not waste my time, or any of my writers' time, using and reviewing a piece of shit, only to write a flame and piss off the manufacturer. I'd rather spend my time working with products that are interesting to begin with. Ones which will inspire me to write a positive review.
Look at it this way. The pro audio market is a minefield. Would you rather have a list of the known safe places to step, or a list of the places where people got blown to hell?
I thought so.
On the other hand, many products are good in their tarket market.
By that I mean to say that it's unfair to write a comparison article pitting a Behringer Composer against a Manley optocompressor. It's unfair to compare a Neumann M147 against a Rode NT1. Duh. The last thing you need to read is, "I liked product X better than product Y, but product X was a lot more expensive. It's up to you to decide if it's worth the extra $3000 bucks."
So we discuss useful products - from the point of view of the person to which the product is marketed. That's the only fair way, and, Gentle Reader, it's the only way that's useful to you.
Many Firsts
It's been a year since we popped up on the Internet's radar screen.
And, we've kicked some serious ass.
ProRec has established itself as THE authority on cutting edge recording technology. Want proof?
Our June 1998 review of the Event Layla was the industry's first hands-on review of this eagerly anticipated audio product. Our July 1998 review of the Manley Voxbox was (and is) the most thorough review of that unit available. In October 1998 we were first in the world with a discussion on the Creamware Pulsar. And, our November 1998 review of the Aardvark 20/20 was the first review of that sound system anywhere.
We were the definititive source on the Web for information on the Yamaha DSP Factory, with more information available than Yamaha itself, in three articles covering the card's design, use, and software support.
We were first in the world with a hands-on review of the Frontier Tango, and the Dakota / Montana/ Sierra system; Cakewalk Pro Audio 7.0, FX2, and FX3; SEK'D Samplitude 2496 and Prodif 96; Sonic Timeworks 4080L; Antares Auto-Tune DirectX; and many, many others.
Our articles on compression, EQ, home recording, mixing and mastering have helped thousands of people improve their home projects. We brought you fasscinating interviews with big names like Walter Murch and underground characters like Maz. Our advice for people who wanted to build their own overclocked Celeron DAWs brought state-of-the art DAW technology down well under $1500. And our columns on hard disk optimization and DSP theory by Catena were a great education to us all.
Over the year we increased our subscription list into the thousands, and generated about a million site hits. When traffic grew, we upgraded our bandwidth to a dual-redundant T3 (at great expense) that's instantly available anywhere in the world. We added a Classified Auction, Barnes and Noble Bookstore, Industry Links Section, Software Downloads, and Discussions.
In the meantime, we bubbled up as Lycos' #1 music recording site. Actually, we're the top 5 sites on Lycos. Nobody else comes close.
Ain't Nobody Getting Rich Here
You want to know how much money we're earning right now?
In alphabetical order, that would be: Dick. Diddley. Nada. Squat. Zilch. Zip.
There are some people out there on the net who think that anyone that turns a buck is part of the Great White Filthy Rich Monopolistic Corporate Monolith. These people automatically distrust anybody that does anything for profit.
(Wonder who bought their computers?)
Me, I'm not ashamed to turn a little profit. Frankly, ProRec won't last forever unless we are able to make enough money to justify our time. Right now, we're not running in the black. Yours Truly continues to foot the bills.
Gentle Reader, surely you can respect that.
Thanks for your enduring support of ProRec.
Best Regards,
Rip Rowan
ProRec Editor
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