The SOS Forums will soon be changing to a new structure and layout. You'll still be able to access them in the same place, under the 'Forum' menu link and from the homepage, but they will be changed to a sleeker and more user-friendly layout very soon.

Because of the maintenance required to undertake the changes, the forums will have to be closed for a period of up to 48 hours (but hopefully much less) from early morning on Friday 15th July. You should still be able to log in to your account to access your personal details and subscription, as well as make purchases from our shop, but you will not be able to access the forums.

Normal service should resume on Saturday 16th July, at which point you'll be able to log in to the forums with your usual details and post as normal. The changes we are making should not affect anybody's account.

If you have any questions about the changeover, please feel free to respond to this topic before the forums close later this week.

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SOS Web Editor, Support & Social Media
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Edited by Jennifer Jones (13/07/11 01:37 PM)

is this the long-awaited forum software upgrade or just a re-org?

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hourglass | random thoughts | doubledotdash!? collective

It's a reorganisation - we're planning an upgrade for some time in the future.

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SOS Web Editor, Support & Social Media
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No sure I like the dropping of the "recent posts" front page.. I quite like that and have missed it on other forums when it has ben "designed" out



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MBP 17", PC 100(Nubus Protools) Motu 896, X-Station, Logic9, Reason6, Korg legacy, ACE, Alchemy, Emax II, E-Synth, Evolver MEK, Waldorf Pulse and Blofeld, AS Telemark, AS Leipzig-S

OK we have been warned - COLD TURKEY TIME - Thanks Jennifer Jones - But 48 whole hours! TWO entire days!! How many endless minutes is that? A lot i can tell you. ' better get into a good book or somthing!

It's not going to be easy folks. Chin up - See you all on the other side!

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.. is this thing on?

at least junkies can get methadone to help them through the pain...

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MBP 17", PC 100(Nubus Protools) Motu 896, X-Station, Logic9, Reason6, Korg legacy, ACE, Alchemy, Emax II, E-Synth, Evolver MEK, Waldorf Pulse and Blofeld, AS Telemark, AS Leipzig-S

The carpet no longer matches the curtains!

But congrats on getting your re-org done! Cheers!

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Robin
NorthWood MediaWorks - Visit the Forest

Like.

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www.jackruston.com

Has SOS ever considered merging PC and Mac Music?

I think it could be a positive move with users learning from each other. I'm seeing many messages on both forums that are equally applicable to both platforms.

i think Martin and I like and respect each other too much to contemplate having to mediate the fights that would result..... it was considered, for about 30 seconds.... then laughed out of court... sorry mate,....

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

Quote Aftertouch:

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Has SOS ever considered merging PC and Mac Music?

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Goodness I hope not. I left the PC world so I wouldn't have the deal with interrupts and bios settings and viruses and dll hell and odd motherboard quirks and so on - if I was forced to wade through those things in order to have some discussions I'm actually interested in - I just wouldn't come to that forum anymore.

Sorry!

It looks like we made the correct decision then Max


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Quote desmond:

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Quote Aftertouch:

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Has SOS ever considered merging PC and Mac Music?

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Goodness I hope not. I left the PC world so I wouldn't have the deal with interrupts and bios settings and viruses and dll hell and odd motherboard quirks and so on - if I was forced to wade through those things in order to have some discussions I'm actually interested in - I just wouldn't come to that forum anymore.

Sorry!

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So the 88,000+ posts in the mac forum must be about aesthetics then?

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Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

no, Macs aren't perfect, but they're not about all those things Des hates so much.... and i'm with him 110%

For me this demonstrates exactly why the two forums (foro?) SHOULD be merged. As a Mac AND a PC user, the ignorance on both sides is startling.

So we leave it as it is and the majority of visitors to the PC forum miss out on the wisdom of Max, Desmond and others and visitors to the Mac forum miss out on the valuable advice of Martin, Pete to name just a few. what a shame.

There's far more in common than there are differences.

Quote Aftertouch:

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For me this demonstrates exactly why the two forums (foro?) SHOULD be merged. As a Mac AND a PC user, the ignorance on both sides is startling.

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I'm not sure if that was a generalisation or a reply based on my response above. I personally dislike people pulling the "ignorance" card. I've actually clocked up way more hours on PC's than Macs over the years, and I'm sufficiently capable of making pretty informed opinions for myself on the matter, believe it or not...

Quote Aftertouch:

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So we leave it as it is and the majority of visitors to the PC forum miss out on the wisdom of Max, Desmond and others and visitors to the Mac forum miss out on the valuable advice of Martin, Pete to name just a few. what a shame.

There's far more in common than there are differences.

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Sure, but general, non-platform specific stuff still tends to get posted in the Music Tech forum. It's only *specifically* Mac or PC issues, usually tech troubleshooting stuff, or platform-specific software issues that tend to get posted in those forums (minus the few exceptions of course), which makes perfect sense to me.

If someone wants to discuss the best workflow practices for using a DAW to make music - post it in the general section. If someone is finding that their FW interface doesn't work on their new PC motherboard, then why dangle the thread in front of Mac people who in general aren't going to be able to help? It just decreases the signal-to-noise ratio and imo makes the forums *less* useful.

I'm personally not interested in being part of the PC community, or helping with PC related problems (I get enough people asking me to fix their messed up PC's as it is, believe me!). I'll leave that to folks like Martin etc who are helpful, have specialist knowledge in that area and have a vested interest in being part of that community.

I can't see it being that helpful for, for example, non-Logic users without that specific info trying to help with a Logic issue.

The forums have to be based around some kind of organisation that makes sense (otherwise there would just be one big free-for-all forum) and given the traffic levels, the way the computer forums are organised now makes perfect sense to me.

I mostly come here to help others where and if I can - if this gets harder and harder to do, especially if I have to wade through huge amounts of "noise" (relatively speaking), I'm just going to have less energy and incentive to try and help the few I can.


Edited by desmond (16/07/11 02:07 PM)

To see that it doesn't work, all you need to do is take a look at the GS forums. Someone asks a question specific to Macs, but after a couple of replies, a poster butts in with "advice" pertaining to PCs only. Utter waste of time.

Quote desmond:

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Quote Aftertouch:

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For me this demonstrates exactly why the two forums (foro?) SHOULD be merged. As a Mac AND a PC user, the ignorance on both sides is startling.

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I'm not sure if that was a generalisation or a reply based on my response above. I personally dislike people pulling the "ignorance" card. I've actually clocked up way more hours on PC's than Macs over the years, and I'm sufficiently capable of making pretty informed opinions for myself on the matter, believe it or not...

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Please don't flatter yourself dear boy, I paid you a compliment in my post, but you chose to ignore it.

If you don't agree with ones idea, then don't agree.

My comments referred to the general attitude demonstrated when users seem to almost take sides - we're talking about making music with computers here, not the middle east conflict!

yeah, that's the mature answer, however, for some reason, the majority of users seem to revert to 15 year old hormonal teenagers in the presence of the other team....

and that phenomenon, annoys the hell out of some of the more secure in their computing identity members....

and then it all gets ugly...


i've spent far too much time in days gone by cleaning up the mess that results, and so has Martin.

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

Gotcha Max, you guys have enough work!

Quote Off duty BBQ lighter AKA Idris:

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no, Macs aren't perfect, but they're not about all those things Des hates so much.... and i'm with him 110%

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I use both. Love both. Hate both. I was just being playful, I'm far too mature to display a partisan attitude towards either.

But I'll defend the Spectrum 48 against the C64 to the death...

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Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

Quote desmond:

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Quote Aftertouch:

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Has SOS ever considered merging PC and Mac Music?

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Goodness I hope not. I left the PC world so I wouldn't have the deal with interrupts and bios settings and viruses and dll hell and odd motherboard quirks and so on - if I was forced to wade through those things in order to have some discussions I'm actually interested in - I just wouldn't come to that forum anymore.

Sorry!

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Well now you know how some of the members feel with the reorganisation. The majority of the fora I visited have been merged into larger topics of which I have less interest in.

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Original artwork and unique devices inspired by vintage technology http://www.thisisobsolete.com

no , vintage geeks and DIY geeks, and mic geeks tend not to get in a fight when the others are present.... unlike the platform geeks....


otherwise yes, we'd quite possibly have merged them.


and so far, only 2-3 people are seriously bitching about it, and that without giving it time....

everyone else seems willing to give it a go....



and change of ANY sort, always gets bitched about....


I personally have some alternative ideas, but AFAICT the site lacks the technology to implement them, so we have what we have.....

best get used to it and carry on with life....

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

ok.. make it 4 people bitching.. I've been quiet, but I'm also missing the vintage forums..

how about creating a poll to actually see how many people miss it?.. then we can all see the stats.. if there really is only a few of us, then fair enough but at least we will have the figures there showing some kind of democratic relationship and involvement from the community

can't hurt, can it?..



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MBP 17", PC 100(Nubus Protools) Motu 896, X-Station, Logic9, Reason6, Korg legacy, ACE, Alchemy, Emax II, E-Synth, Evolver MEK, Waldorf Pulse and Blofeld, AS Telemark, AS Leipzig-S

good luck getting the other 80,000+ members to bother voting

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

Quote Chevytraveller:

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I'm also missing the vintage forums..

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Clearly a lot of people are missing a lot of the subject-specific forums we previously offered, and I'm certain that if we polled everyone they'd all say they miss them, predominantly because, clearly, they aren't there anymore.

However, that's not the same thing as missing the content -- and we hope that people will continue to post on topics concerning vintage gear. The 'Recording and Production' forum specifically invites posts about "gear old and new" and we still have a 'Keyboards and Synthesis' forum if that covers the subject area more appropriately.

The crucial point is that the absence of a specific sub-forum doesn't preclude the discussion of the topic, and in fact we hope that by encouraging posting on a wider range of subjects within the more generalised forums, people will come across and contribute to a broader range of topics generally.

Okay.. so maybe users will have to look a little harder to find the topics in a general forum than when they were segregated, but hopefully they'll find lots of other interesting things along the way that maybe they wouldn't have seen before. Swings and roundabouts...

Come the great forum software revolution maybe we'll finally enjoy a search engine that works properly and people will be able to find specific posts that way too... although at the moement such things are still no more than a twinkle in our webmaster's eye!

Hugh


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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Sad thing is, though, that traffic through the site seems to have slowed down and - also - I have been getting private enquiries from people about other forums to look at for Microphone enquiries now that the mic. forum has gone.

Yes, I know that it's now in the general forum, but no-one seems to be posting much in the way of mic. questions like they used to do and are now looking for alternative forums - very sad as the SOS forum used to be the best there was.

Maybe bring the mic. forum back with a new title such as "Microphones and Live Recording" ???


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John - Sound-Link ProAudio
President - Federation Internationale des Chasseurs de Sons

Quote John Willett:

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...traffic through the site seems to have slowed down...

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It would be foolish to jump to the conclusion that this is purely because of the restructuring. The changes were introduced at the start of the first week of school holidays in the UK and the start of the major holiday season. Our annual traffic logs always dip dramatically at this time of year anyway. Some may be because of the reaction of some posters after the change, but hopefully things will pick up again as it settles down and the long winter nights draw back in.

Quote:

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I have been getting private enquiries from people about other forums to look at for Microphone enquiries now that the mic. forum has gone.

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The mic forum hasn't 'gone' -- it's simply been enrolled into the recording and production forum -- which is where it previously was. The key is whether people's questions about mics and related matters can be answered effectively, and that's about the people who answer them not which virtual pidgeon-hole that the question is posted in.

However, I can say that we are currently discussing a possible change to the structure that might go some way to meeting the mic forum die-hards mid way... watch this space.

Quote:

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no-one seems to be posting much in the way of mic. questions like they used to

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I think it's way too early to making that kind of statement, especially given the time of year and the natural ebb and flow of forum post rates. There have been two or three mic-specific queries in the last 24 hours, which is much the norm for the old mic sub-forum.

Quote:

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the SOS forum used to be the best there was.

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This is purely a state of mind. From where I'm sitting it's still the best of its kind, and I'm quite sure that while we have valued participants like yourself posting here it will continue to be held in high regard irrespective of where individual posts are archived.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

I mentioned in another thread that the forum doesn't play well with IE7. I tend to use the forum at work and I'm restricted to using IE7 (unfortunately). The forums now show up as one white screen with no separation between topics and no highlighting. Also when in a thread, again there is no separation between posts. It may be the way the browser is configured at work, or just the fact that IE7 is ancient, but it does make it hard to see new posts and isn't very nice to look at.

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Richie - I can confirm that the forums look wrong in IE7 too. I use it occasionally when a website insists on me using IE.

James.

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JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net

Cheers James. It makes for a very bland visual experience.

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Damn! It's hard trying to maintain proper compatibility with so many different and increasingly obsolete browsers.

I've flagged this post up for JJ to look into.

Thanks for the feedback -- all helpful stuff -- but if you wouldn't mind posting similar 'bug reports' in the dedicated SOS support forum it would really help us.

cheers

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Sorry, Richie Royale, I must have missed your earlier post.

I'll get in touch with our web technician about this but, unfortunately, he is on holiday from Monday for two weeks, so it may take a bit of time for him to investigate further for you.

I can only apologise for the inconvenience - a shame you can't use an alternative browser or upgrade from IE7!

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SOS Web Editor, Support & Social Media
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Ha! Classic!

IT guru spends weekend doing chages to deadline and then goes on holliday for two weeks.