Recording - December 2014 - 4

PUBLISHER: Thomas Hawley
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Brent Heintz

EDITORIAL

EDITOR: Mike Metlay
SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR: Lorenz Rychner
TECHNICAL CONSULTANT: Paul Vnuk Jr.
EDITOR AT LARGE: Beto Hale
MÚSICO PRO EDITOR: Fernando Curiel

Enlightenment for the holidays
Every year since we instituted our annual Buyer's Guide, I can always count on
the December issue to be a lot of hard and rewarding work. Because we do actual
reviews of every piece we get, there's real time investment for every product that
appears in these pages-perhaps less writing, but not always less research. For
every product like Gig Gloves, which took one evening's work to evaluate, there's
a product like UVI SparkVerb, which Paul worked with for weeks before writing his
conclusions.
The end result is worth it, though. It's great to be able to say that when you read
about a product in our December issue, you know it'll do what it says it does,
because we made sure of that before you saw the writeup. All that's left now is to
deal with the many products that didn't make it into this issue; this year we separated out the iOS-specific gift ideas into their own collection, which will run in our
January issue for you iPad and iPhone users out there. Subscribers will see it in early
December, still with plenty of time before the holidays. (And if you're not a subscriber yet... speaking of affordable gifts that pay back many times over...!)
As usual, we supplement the Buyer's Guide with a variety of in-depth product
reviews as well. Affordable new mics from Samson, some pretty killer monitors from
Focal, a new mixer/interface from Yamaha, and a whole mess of interesting soundware, all ready to whet your appetite for holiday gift-giving (and hopefully receiving, too).
Once you're done learning about new products to inspire and assist your musicmaking process, how about some articles on the process itself? We bring you cool
ideas for improving your guitar tracks, more about battling the dreaded Phase
Monster, tips on building DAW templates for faster workflow, and a thoughtprovoking article about designing a studio session so a well-rehearsed band can
walk in empty-handed and walk out with a 3-song EP all ready to sell to fans.
Even with all that other enlightenment, this issue features one article that strikes a
deep chord with me: Ethan Winer's "Audio Minutiae." Ethan is a well-established
educator in the audio world; as one of the founders of RealTraps, he's made a
career of making rooms sound better, and over his many years in this industry he's
seen a lot of amazing innovations, a lot of great new ideas... and a lot of fakery
and garbage.
Ethan speaks frankly about how audio testing must be done in order to have any
validity at all, and points out common misconceptions and mistakes that lead people to believe that certain changes in their setups make a difference when they really don't. "Common knowledge" can get you in a lot of trouble if it turns out to be
wrong! We live in an imperfect world and there's no such thing as objectively
absolute sound, not as long as we hear with our fallible human ears... but we can
remove a lot of the variables and understand where others come from if we're careful and diligent.
As a former research scientist, I'm a big believer in clear and careful thinking
that's unclouded by emotion. While there's a vital place for the human spirit and the
human heart in the making of music-for inspiration and joy and anguish and hope
and everything else that goes into our art-the simple fact is that there's no room for
sentiment in evaluating how audio gear works. Gear designers can't force a product to work a certain way simply because they believe or hope it should... even
when they know that if it doesn't, their only option is to make stuff up about it and
sell it to the gullible. All the fancy language and misquoted terminology in the world
can't budge reality, and we at Recording will continue to teach you how to tell fact
from fiction and get to the heart of what your audio gear will really do for you.
Here's to a happy, healthy and safe holiday season, and a New Year filled with
great music and real enlightenment. Enjoy the issue!

CONTRIBUTORS
Darwin Grosse, Paul Vnuk Jr.,
Sean Shannon, Ethan Winer,
Frank Marra, Paul J. Stamler, Ben Long,
Devon Brent, Greg Ogan, Marty Peters
SOCIAL MEDIA
Brent Heintz, Paul Vnuk Jr.
ART & PRODUCTION

ART DIRECTOR: Scott Simmonds
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Colin Courtney
WEB GOALIE: Colin Courtney

PLAYBACK PLATINUM SERIES
Lorenz Rychner

EDITOR/PRODUCER:

CIRCULATION
Tiffany Sepe

CIRCULATION MANAGER:

ADVERTISING SALES AND MARKETING
DIRECTOR: Brent Heintz
CLASSIFIEDS MANAGER: Colin Courtney
ADMINISTRATION
Thomas Hawley

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE:

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

PRESIDENT: Thomas Hawley
VICE PRESIDENT: Brent Heintz

SUBSCRIPTIONS/ADDRESS CHANGES:
1-954-653-3927
ADVERTISING/CLASSIFIEDS/MAIN OFFICE:
(303) 516-9118
RECORDING MAGAZINE
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Recording - December 2014

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