Where's Synth Secrets?

by **Dan LB** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 3:59 pm

I can't for the life of me find the Synth Secrets articles by Gordon Reid. Am I not searching properly or are they not up yet on the new forum?

PS: congrats on the new site! I appreciate all the hard graft that has gone into getting it up and running :thumbup:

Dan

Post edited 08 March 2018 by Forum Admin:

Click for all 63 Parts from May 1999 to July 2004.

by **desmond** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 4:21 pm

You can access it here (for now) from an archive of the old site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160403115 ... ecrets.htm

Articles back to 2005 have been done for the new site, older ones are coming (Synth Secrets was 2001-2003 ish) - so they will be back, it will just take a bit of time.

So don't panic!

by **Hugh Robjohns** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 4:52 pm

Yep -- What Desmond said.

The archive articles have to be reformatted and the metadata updated to work in the new site, which takes a lot of time. So far the team have worked back to around 2005/6 and they will continue right back to the oldest digital articles we have from 1994... but it will take some time to finish and they are all pretty busy polishing the new site at the moment.

So no, it's not a searching problem, it's a content MIA problem!

It will be back.

H

by **Dan LB** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 5:11 pm

Thanks Desmond and Hugh. Much appreciated!! :thumbup:

by **Martin Walker** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 7:20 pm

Three thumbs up Smilies?

Well that's a first for the new SOS Forums! 8-)

And here's another - bye for now! :wave:

Isn't this fun?

Martin

by **Dan LB** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 8:24 pm

Yeah I'm liking the thumbs up smilie :thumbup:

And this one :geek:

I miss the bouncy grin and angel ones though :evil:

by **zenguitar** » Fri Jun 17, 2016 12:15 am

Some wonderful new smilies when you try the 'view more smilies' link when you post

Andy

by **Forum Admin** » Fri Jun 17, 2016 1:05 am

Dan LB wrote:
I miss the bouncy grin and angel ones though

They were there during beta-testing... when I get a spare life, I'll hunt them down and slay them with my... I mean, I'll try to upload them to the gremlins/smilies directory (that's a 'folder' in Mac-speak). :SOS:

by **nathanscribe** » Fri Nov 11, 2016 2:57 pm

I notice a couple of these articles are back up again - but I'm confused by the search engine. Is there a way to look for all the Synth Secrets articles that only brings up that particular series?

by **Hugh Robjohns** » Fri Nov 11, 2016 3:13 pm

nathanscribe wrote:I notice a couple of these articles are back up again - but I'm confused by the search engine. Is there a way to look for all the Synth Secrets articles that only brings up that particular series?

The archive work is progressing steadily, but so far it's only got back as far as March 2004. Synth Secrets started in May 1999 and ran through to July 2004, so there are only five articles from the series on the new website at the moment. A search for Synth Secrets, filtered by article does find all those currently on the site.

March 2004
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ ... gan-part-3

April 2004
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ ... al-effects

May 2004
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ ... sis-delays

June 2004
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ ... sis-delays

July 2004
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ ... red-button

If you want the rest, you'll need to go to the web-archive for the time being:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160403115 ... ecrets.htm

H

by **nathanscribe** » Fri Nov 11, 2016 3:19 pm

Thanks Hugh. So, searching under Articles using the phrase "synth secrets" (in quotes) and then filtering by Technique in the tickbox list is currently how to find these? I can't find a way to find only the articles in a specific series.

by **Forum Admin** » Fri Nov 11, 2016 3:54 pm

nathanscribe wrote:Thanks Hugh. So, searching under Articles using the phrase "synth secrets" (in quotes) and then filtering by Technique in the tickbox list is currently how to find these? I can't find a way to find only the articles in a specific series.

There is no way to find only a specific series at present.

Search query link for "Synth Secrets" articles

This search query URL will always list Synth Secrets articles, BUT it also lists anything that references synth secrets in its title, subtitle or body text. Bookmark it.

We have to add past issues one issue at a time and simply cannot add the 63 parts of Synth Secrets alone.

There's lots of nice-to-have functions we have still to build for this new site, but other things keep taking priority unfortunately. They'll come in time.

Meanwhile, all of the parts are archived on the Wayback Machine site here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160403115 ... ecrets.htm

by **nathanscribe** » Fri Nov 11, 2016 4:28 pm

Forum Admin wrote:There's lots of nice-to-have functions we have still to build for this new site, but other things keep taking priority unfortunately. They'll come in time.

Meanwhile, all of the parts are archived on the Wayback Machine site here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160403115 ... ecrets.htm

I understand it's a massive job – I'm just glad any of this stuff is here at all! Thanks for keeping all this material on the go. :clap:

by **Forum Admin** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 2:16 pm

nathanscribe wrote:I notice a couple of these articles are back up again - but I'm confused by the search engine. Is there a way to look for all the Synth Secrets articles that only brings up that particular series?

You'll be glad to learn that a few days ago we finished adding all 63 Parts of Synth Secrets to this SOS site. We've also added a new search category called 'Synth Secrets' which you can see in the righthand filter sidebar on the Search page.

But this link will list all 63 Parts from May 1999 to July 2004. Enjoy!

by **desmond** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 2:48 pm

It's funny, I just noticed these were up not an hour before this post, as I went back through the archive and saw that many of the early issues just had the Synth Secrets articles done.

Well done Ian - I can't imagine how much work it takes to go through these issues and format the content to get them online.

Oh wait... actually I can..!

Great to get these extremely popular articles back in an accessible form! :thumbup:

by **Forum Admin** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:11 pm

Yes, it required a change of workflow -- abandoning the conversion of a full issue's content and cherry-picking single articles and building them by hand, reimporting all images, captions, tagging, editing the article to remove all references to "see Figure 5 on page 180" etc and inserting links...

A labour of love, and I didn't mind doing it because it's our most-linked-to material. Looking at Google Analytics, seems every music tech college and uni course out there uses it as part of their course notes.

The main past issue conversion has reached back to April 2002, but I may elect to cherry-pick other 'classic' series and reviews that still have real value today and focus on those first, then fill in the gaps.

One of the annoying problems is that as we go back in time, we only have digital archives of the small images used in articles, not the larger more useful view. That's because -- silly I know with today's technology -- the optical cartridges we used to archive on cost a fortune at the time, so to save space we only stored the text and smaller images -- well, why would we ever need the graphics layouts and high-res images in the future? Doh... :headbang:

And even older articles were archived on DAT data tapes, and most of those got lost when we moved offices in the mid '90s, so the really old stuff between Jan 1994 and Dec 1998 mostly has no images -- and we have no digital archives at all of the 1985-1993 articles, which is why we gave you permission to scan them and put on your wonderful Mu:zines site.

by **desmond** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 5:41 pm

There is a static link on the Synthesizers subReddit which is:

http://www.soundonsound.com/SOS/allsynthsecrets.htm

...which on the site redirects to:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/synth-secrets

...which doesn't show the Synth Secrets.

If something could be done on the back end to keep that/those old links working, that's be good. I've asked to change the Reddit link, but I don't know if that will happen...

by **Forum Admin** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 7:36 pm

desmond wrote:There is a static link on the Synthesizers subReddit which is:
http://www.soundonsound.com/SOS/allsynthsecrets.htm

If something could be done on the back end to keep that/those old links working, that's be good. I've asked to change the Reddit link, but I don't know if that will happen...

Thanks for alerting me. It's now fixed and redirects the Reddit URL (which came off the old site) and points now to:

https://www.soundonsound.com/search/articles/%22Synth%20Secrets%22?solrsort=ds_created%20asc

by **desmond** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 7:46 pm

by **ConcertinaChap** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 8:24 pm

Forum Admin wrote:The main past issue conversion has reached back to April 2002, but I may elect to cherry-pick other 'classic' series and reviews that still have real value today and focus on those first, then fill in the gaps.

A difficult one to call, but I think that would be the way to go. After all, there's people here just gagging to read all those old C1000 reviews

CC

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Where's Synth Secrets?