Recording Questions

Recording Questions was in attendance at West L.A. Music’s Annual Recording Expo this past Saturday and Sunday.  I had a chance to talk with representatives from a ton a companies including Steinberg, Apple, Roland, Blue Microphones, Presonus, Mackie, SE Electonics, Universal Audio, and many more.  To top it all off we also had the privalege of hearing a great, if not long-winded, keynote address by noneother than Rupert Neve himself. I gathered two very popular trends from all of this:  affordable ribbon microphones, and better integration between analog and digital hardware.

Every microphone manufacturer said they had at least one new ribbon microphone on the way, and most had several.  This seems to address a serious hole in the typical low-budget studio microphone space as most studios, up until now, have been unable to really afford an kind of ribbon microphone for theie cabinet.  I must say I really love ribbon mics, they have the ability to really stay pretty neutral across most of the frequency spectrum without all the high-end hype of most condenor microphones.  And with mony of these companies also releasing ribbons at price points of around $199, it’s quite possible to pick up a pair for some truly spectacular stereo results.

On the other side is the new level of integration manufactures are bringing to analog and digital hardware.  In particular I enjoyd talking with Woody from Mackie about the new Onyx firewire mixer range that allows you to buss each channel, aux send, and master output to and from any DAW including Pro Tools M-powered.  I see all kinds of possibilies for this, from having an external analog EQ available to your DAW to making it super-easy to integrate external hardware via the aux bus system.  It think it’s all pretty exciting.

Again, I’d like to say thanks to all the people over at West L.A. Music for putting on such a great event!

Congratulations to adubproductions for winning this weeks free t-shirt drawing.  Remember, you can get in this weeks drawing, just invite three of your friends!

I hope you have noticed the new Recent Answers box on the right side of the home page.  This simply shows the 5 most recent answers to questions on the site.  I’m hoping this will make it that much easier to simply stop by and see what been going one with a single glance.  Please let me know of you think this was a good idea.  We want to know what you like and what you don’t like.

I’ve also been doing a ton of work on the new gear section.  I know I keep mentioning this from time to time — but trust me it’s getting close, and I’m going to need your help testing it.  If think you would be interested in helping us out (and at the same time get a sneak-peak before anyone else), send me an email at: justin@recordingquestions.com saying that you would like to participate in the upcoming gear section beta!

Thanks again everyone…and see you online!

I just threw some code together to allow many of you to now add links to your comments.

All you need to do from now on is type your link in your comment text like this http://recordingquestions.com and it will automatically be converted from text to a link.  Here are the few rules you need to know:

• You must have at least 15 experience points to have your links converted. (This is the same rule that applies for asking and answering questions.)
• Be sure to include the http:// part of the link in the text.
  
• Not not add HTML code (for example: <a href=”http://…”) as this will be discarded altogether by the system.

I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more quality links in the comments themselves.

We Have Our First T-Shirt Winner!

We would like to say congratulations to Recording Questions member McSmooth for being the first weekly t-shirt winner.

Learn how you can enter the contest!

Help us with our new gear section

We’re currently working on a new gear section for the site that will allow you to review, discuss, and vote on different pieces of recording gear. You will also be able to add the gear that you own or that you want to your profile for other members to see.

Leave your suggestions, ideas, and thoughts on the new gear section.

Many of you have expressed an interest in using a different login with your current account. For instance, you may want to use Facebook to log in but you signed up with a Goggle account. Well, we have a solution for you!

How to add a new login:

• Login with your current account (the account you would like to add a new login to)
• Go to the ‘Settings’ tab in your profile section
• Scroll to the bottom and click on the Add a Different Login to Your Account link
• You will be taken to a page labeled Change Your OpenID Login that looks very similar to the normal login page. Simply select the new login service you would like to add to your account and complete the login process as usual.
• A message will let you know if the process was successful or not

You should now be able to login to your account using both your new and old login service. As always, if you experience any problems with this, please feel free let us know via email at: us@recordingquestions.com

There are a lot of smart, talented people here and we’re very glad to see all the great info many of you have shared so far.  We’re so impressed that we’d like to invite you to help us spread the word about Recording Questions to your recording friends to help grow the community even more.  You may even win a free t-shirt!

Starting today, you will find the Recording Questions ‘Refer-A-Friend’ program in your user profile:

Using this page makes it easy to tell your friends about RecordingQuestions.com.  Your display name and an email message are already inserted on the page (although you can customize each if you want), AND you can keep track of how many of your friends become site members as a result of your referral.

This is how the program works.  There are two possible ways you can get a free Recording Questions t-shirt:

• Win one in our weekly t-shirt drawings
• Earn one by getting five or more of your friends to join the community

Weekly T-Shirt Drawings

Each week, one drawing winner will be selected to win a free shirt.  In order to qualify to be entered in a drawing for a particular week, you need to have accumulated at least three points.  The way you accumulate points is by sending referrals.  Each referral you send is worth one point and each weekly drawing costs three points.

You become automatically eligible for the next scheduled weekly drawing as soon as you have at least three points saved up (unused points carry over from week-to-week).  For example, if you were to send one referral in Week 1 and then send two more referrals in Week 2 (for a total of three points), you would be automatically entered into the drawing at the end of Week 2.  You can keep track of the number of points you have by checking your Referral Stats in your user profile.

If you have several points accumulated, you will continue to be automatically entered in the weekly drawings until either: a) all your points are used up; or b) you are selected as a drawing winner – whichever comes first.

You can choose to send as many or as few referrals as you want, but please do not spam your friends.

Recruit Five or More New Community Members

Once you successfully recruit five new members to the site, we will go ahead and just give you a shirt for free (if you haven’t already won a shirt in the weekly drawings).  The way this works is that each of your email referrals automatically includes a link to the Recording Questions homepage, and that link ties back to your account, so as long your friend signs up using the link in your referral, you will get credit for recruiting them.  Remember, you can keep an eye on your progress by checking your Referral Stats located in your user profile.

Referral Stats

As mentioned earlier, your Referral Stats help you keep track of your progress in the Refer-A-Friend program.  You can see how many of your friends have joined the community as a result of your referrals as well as check on your t-shirt drawing eligibility status.  When you first begin, your Referral Stats will look like the column on the left side below (no active referral points).  Then, once you send a few referrals, your status will update to show how many points you have and also how many future drawings you are eligible for, similar to the column on the right side.

If you have questions about your points or eligibility, please feel free to email me: erin[at]recordingquestions.com

A few fine print items:

• Emails you provide are kept confidential and will not be used for any purpose other than the Refer-A-Friend program.
• Even though there are two possible ways to get a free t-shirt, we can only award one free shirt per site member.  If you would like to purchase additional shirts, feel free to contact us.
• Depending on your geographic location, we may require that you pay for shipping should you win a t-shirt.  This would be worked out on a case-by-case basis.
• We reserve the right to change the rules or cancel this program at any time.

Thanks again for your help in spreading the word!!

-Bearin

This should make some people happy. Pinnacle College in L.A. announced last Thursday that they will now be offering an accredited degree in video game audio – the first of its kind in the nation. The Audio for Games and Interactive Media (GAIM) program takes 16 months to complete and is supposed to give students the knowledge and skills needed for getting entry level positions in audio departments for video game developers or work for freelance composers and sound designers as an assistant.  Curriculum includes…

“…study in specialized areas such as music composition, sound design, dialog recording and project asset management. Students completing this program will have a comprehensive knowledge of all the disciplines involved in the creation of sound for modern video games.” (source: Pinnacle College GAIM Program)

There is an open house on Saturday, September 26th at the L.A. campus and classes begin on October 12th.  They are even offering a discount on tuition for folks that sign up for the classes beginning in October.  I couldn’t find any info on how much of a discount though.

This got me wondering though… when they say this degree is the first-of-its-kind in the nation, does that really mean that it’s the only degree in the entire nation that specializes in video game audio?  That was surprising to read actually considering that industry is so huge.  If that IS the case, then I wonder what this will mean for schools nationwide.

By now, you probably have seen or heard something about the voting system on RecordingQuestions.com.  We emphasize its importance in the FAQ section of the site, as well as in the press release posted in the Briefing Rooms at Mix Magazine Online and Electronic Musician, and published by Harmony Central (thanks guys!!!!).  As you can probably tell, we are really excited to spread the word.  Why are we so excited?

Well, most everyone in the world would agree that the Internet has been an incredibly valuable tool for uniting people, facilitating dialogue, and disseminating ideas, techniques, and innovations.  The Internet makes it possible to learn nearly anything you could possibly want to learn… if you look hard enough.   And therein lies the problem.

Not sure about you, but to be quite honest, I cringe at thinking about how many hours (or days) of my life I’ve spent pouring through forums, articles, and blogs to find valuable information to help me out with ‘this’ or with ‘that’.  I mean, I obviously realize that learning takes time and you don’t typically become an expert at something over night, but I’m talking about those situations where you know the answer should literally be right at your fingertips, yet you find yourself still researching hours later because of conflicting or outdated information.

RecordingQuestions.com and its unique voting system was developed as a solution to this problem.

We’re not bullshitting you when we ask you to vote.  Your votes actually do impact the quality and organization of the information on the site.  Voting is also how site members earn experience points and gain trust within the community.  And you can see the impact in real-time.

So what are you supposed to vote on? 

You are encouraged to place an upvote on any question and/or answer you think is good.  By “good”, we mean that you think the question and/or answer you are reading qualifies as one or more of any of the following adjectives: relevant, useful, informative, interesting, intelligent, well-thought out, factually accurate, enlightening, [insert positive adjective, etc.].  Even if you don’t know the answer to a particular question, you are still encouraged to vote it up if you find it interesting/relevant/useful/etc.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t want you to just upvote on everything for the sake of voting, but since information is ranked and organized based on upvotes, it is important that quality information be given up-votes so that its placement on the page will be closer to the top and remain easier to find.

Down-voting should only be used in situations where you strongly feel that the question and/or answer is factually inaccurate, offensive, or totally unrelated to recording.  In cases where you simply disagree or generally don’t like a post, we recommend that you just ignore it.

Minimum Voting Requirements

In order to start placing up-votes, you need to earn at least 15 experience points.  This isn’t too difficult to achieve since each up-vote is worth ten experience points.  I would say it’s safe to assume that you will earn your minimum up-voting experience points requirement by simply asking and/or answering your first few questions (as long as your posts are perceived by others as being one of those positive adjectives we talked about earlier and worthy of receiving up-votes)!

While you only need 15 experience points to start placing up-votes,  you need to earn at least 50 experience points if you want to down-vote a question and/or answer.  The reason being that we believe down-voting should be reserved for those folks that have already made several positive contributions within the community and have earned a decent amount of credibility and respect.

Remember, it is the up-votes that control the quality and placement of information on the site, so only down-vote when it’s necessary.

How to Cast Votes

So now that you have enough experience points to vote, you need to know how!  After you click on the title of a question from the main page, you will be brought to that question’s dedicated page (pictured below).  For both questions and answers, click on the “+” to place an up-vote or “-” to place a down-vote.  You can also ‘undo’ your vote by clicking on the same symbol again.

Organizing Questions by Up-Votes

Once you’re back on the Main page, you can click on the ‘Popular’ tab to display all questions by the number of up-votes given:

Organizing Answers by Up-Votes

By default, answers to questions are displayed according to up-votes. This means that when you click on a particular question’s dedicated page, the answers with the most votes will appear at the top of the list, closer to the question, making it easy and quick to find the information you need.

You can also choose to view answers by when they were given – newest to oldest and vice versa.

An Exception to the Default Answer Display: “Favorite Answer”

The person posting the question can opt to designate a “Favorite Answer” to their question, and regardless of up-vote counts, the answer that he/she selects will always be at the top of the list.  I can follow up with more details on that feature in a separate post.

That’s About It!  So Go Vote and Help Build a Better Recording Community!

Questions?  Email me at: erin[at]recordingquestions[dot]com

-Bearin

We’re happy to announce that RecordingQuestions.com has officially gone live in beta mode.

What does that mean?  Well, it mean that anyone is free to start using the site (posting questions, and giving great answers) but that things may still be in a state of flux.  Features and functionality may change in the early going as work through all the little kinks in the system.

All we ask is that you let us know how we’re doing…

Did you find something on the site that doesn’t look right or that doesn’t work like you think it should?

Do you have any ideas, suggestions, or just have something to ask us?

We can’t wait to hear from you!