[sdiy] Wakeman

[Richard Wentk]

At 16:42 02/07/2003 +0100, you wrote:

>Getting two reviewers to review the same product gives the editor a
>choice, rather than being stuck with whatever a single reviewer decides to
>write.

Yes, but it's just not done like that in the professional world. You're 
being far too kind to SOS anyway. It was also a beef of mine when I was 
writing to FM that a typical SOS review would be too positive and not have 
enough teeth to be useful to anyone.

>Yes, I can see from the writer's perspective that having a monopoly is
>attractive, but from the reader's perspective having competition for
>quality (assuming this is the case) is better.

I think once you have enough experience quality isn't really an issue. It 
has far more to do with bad communication and lack of respect for 
reviewers. If someone had said 'By the way, we're getting someone else to 
write a review as well and we'll print the one we like best' I wouldn't 
have minded so much. As it was I didn't hear about it till I called to 
check on progress (after weeks of silence from the editor) to be told 
they'd printed someone else's review.

Hey, I got some software for free, so it's not the end of the world. But it 
is, unquestionably, an unprofessional way to do these things. I don't think 
anyone on this list would be hugely pleased if someone asked them to do 
some design, and then they decided to go with a different design without 
even mentioning that some other designer was going to be involved. That's a 
much more accurate analogy than the peer review one, which in any case 
doesn't apply because no one is doing any peer reviewing of either reviews 
or how-to articles for SOS.

> > The *real* problem with all of these mags is that they sell you on the
> > idea that buying more gear will let you make better music. This, of
> > course, is bullshit.
>
>Indeed.  But if you consider them purely as gear reviews, then they
>satisfy that requirement: gear reviews and adverts, that's all.  If I want
>to learn anything I'll go and grab a book on the subject, not rely on a
>few pages in a magazine.

Well, that most definitely wasn't my approach while at FM. I took my 
responsibility to see gear from a reader's point of view very seriously, 
and for the most part I like to believe I succeeded at that.

> > Certain toys are nice to have and once you get to a certain basic level
> > you can forget about the gear and get on with being creative.
>
> From my perspective, its interesting to see what features are appearing in
>modern synths, if nothing more than to feed into the creative process for
>designing my own synths (or design cockups to avoid!).  Either that or to
>laugh at the more bizarre creations!!!

Actually very little of interest has been appearing modern synths. Analogue 
is in a rut, and has more or less reached the limits of what's possible. 
There's plenty of opportunity for true audiophile tweaking, but no one 
seems much into that except in the most superficial way.

Sampling killed further creative development for interesting synthesis 
techniques. There are some fun options in things like Max/MSP and Csound, 
but they're not exactly accessible to an untrained audience.

The *only* - and I mean that literally - interesting recent synth is the 
Neuron. Everything else is just a retread of the same old ideas, most of 
which are now decades old.

(And IMO Stephan Sprenger is one of the few designers who can be relied on 
to do something interesting and novel, and who also good ears that can hear 
the difference between music TECHNOLOGY and MUSIC technology.)

> > But the idea that you have to keep buying and upgrading is just plain
> > evil, IMO.
>
>Too true.  Such is the consumerist society today, with the idea that you
>can "buy" talent!  Then again.... (looks round at current pop charts)

You can't buy sex appeal either. Believe me, I should know. :-)

Richard