Why? Is RTFM a secret?

Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

Tim McCulloch said:
I figured out Yamaha manuals. Read the quick start. Plug stuff in, turn it on. When you run into something you can't do or reacts in an unexpected way, consult the index of the Really Yammy Manual, and put on your "think like a Yamaha engineer" hat. The answer is in there. You will find it. Trying to extract information or knowledge from the manual any other way is frustrating and sometimes so opaque you need a chainsaw. But you need that hat....
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Wrong hat, Tim. Put on your "think like a Yamahama advertising copywriter" hat. All I would like them to do is make the manual task-oriented rather than "button" oriented. Why should I have to read through what every control do-hickey does to find out how to do what I want? Why not at least cross-reference things with "common audio tasks"?

Pffffooey. The only thing I dislike more is probably Apple Corp BS.

Grrrrrrrmudgeon out.
 
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Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

John Roberts said:
Since I'm a college drop-out and mostly self taught I am not very sympathetic. I did get some mentoring in early jobs working for senior engineers, but before too long I became the answer man and the buck stopped with me to deliver problem solving solutions.
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Have you ever experienced the opposite? I'm thinking of the situation where management (and maybe sales or HR) decide that you are too "techy" and defer other functions to those of a different persuasion? These types of gut decisions can probably work well for the management types making them but for anyone pigeon holed like this, career advancement can be halted. No?
 
Dick Rees said:
While I'm a fan of manuals and recommending them for a source for answers, I will state that I make an exception for Yamahama "manuals". They're the most arcane, useless piles of advertising copy ever foisted on the purchaser/user. Sure, the info is there somewhere, but the only way to find it is to figure the problem out yourself, then go back to the manual and dig out the explanation of what you've done. There is no rhyme/reason to their organization of the information in a practical sense. Unadulterated crapola.

close rant
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+++1


Sent from my iPhone
 
Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

drew gandy said:
Have you ever experienced the opposite? I'm thinking of the situation where management (and maybe sales or HR) decide that you are too "techy" and defer other functions to those of a different persuasion? These types of gut decisions can probably work well for the management types making them but for anyone pigeon holed like this, career advancement can be halted. No?
Click to expand...

That is an interesting question and I'm not sure I want to re-live my "dances with corporate wolves" publically. Peavey was not very hobbled by stereotypes (they hired me after all), but a skilled bull-shitter could go pretty far too, even rising higher than me before flaming out. I was not very good at the internal politics (too honest). :-(

JR
 
Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

John Roberts said:
That is an interesting question and I'm not sure I want to re-live my "dances with corporate wolves" publically. Peavey was not very hobbled by stereotypes (they hired me after all), but a skilled bull-shitter could go pretty far too, even rising higher than me before flaming out. I was not very good at the internal politics (too honest). :-(

JR
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WOW that sounds exactly like my story that I have seen previously.
 
I think I truly stopped reading manuals when cell phones came out en masse. Cut and dry 'this is what this button does' manuals with no context to application or why that function is remotely useful (almost Yamahaesque).

I'm guilty of not reading a manual these days (specs are a different story), if a new piece of gear shows up (analogue or basic digital), after all of these years, I should know what those knobs/encoders do, or at least what they 'should' do, or how it should flow based on the labeling. Threshold, gain, range haven't changed that much ..... Eventually I'll investigate further and find out what that blinky indicator light is, a warning or actively disrupting my signal chain (making it non linear)?

With everything becoming more and more IT 'friendly', this is where I start with manuals, but it seems most manual writers don't know how networking/IT works with their products. My first of many headaches was with Ashly Protea control 'networks' a decade ago. Unfortunately I was never bright enough to write down the actual i/o cabling (or if I did, my 'secretary' (aka ex-wife) would collate and file anything out of existence for me .....)

Most of my head scratchers are of things not in a manual, such as recently (and possibly soon to be a question here since I haven't gotten an answer from US or CAN reps) about Sennheiser AC3 and cascading them with each other (more specifically can they handle the dc on the antenna outs, and why they drop the main output 2db from the unit?)

Or making a usable 5 band dynamic eq (and not the door stop fx unit version) on a M7 since the new FOH/PM didn't have good luck one day with the mic the lead singer uses on an unrelated gig.

But then again, how many times has a few manufacturers changed the way their flagship units operated on a daily/weekly basis?

Back in school, google would have been neat, but then, I wouldn't know how to do much of anything except for complain and not get answers.
 
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Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

John Roberts said:
Since I'm a college drop-out and mostly self taught I am not very sympathetic. I did get some mentoring in early jobs working for senior engineers, but before too long I became the answer man and the buck stopped with me to deliver problem solving solutions.
Click to expand...

Story of my life too, Glad to hear I'm not the only weird one on this planet :)



-Although I have recently discovered a "product" with the absolute worst manuals in the history of technology.... Linux!
 
Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

My least favorite were the manuals for digital FX. They all claimed a "intuitive" layout. And "natural" block diagram progression.
As long as they were all copying each others manuals, why not just lay them all out the same?
I mean, you could walk onto any board at the time, and figure out what was going on.
Ooh, they have a mid sweep, right next to the mid knob, lets add one too!
But no, it was the one device where everyone thought that they could differentiate themselves from the pack.
Net result, if you didn't know your FX units intimately, you were screwed.
And, find me a nice XXXX verb. You are the one who requested it. Dial it up yourself.
Really who needs more than two verbs per show.
I would think that they would want to differentiate themselves with the algorithms. But no, one had to slog through pages of crap to find anything useful. And them commit to memory the two things that were needed from that unit. And speaking of slogging. Think if any other units came with as much baggage as an FX unit.
More people spent time masturbating to the effects they were creating than all other pro sound gear combined.
And then bragging about it in the manuals.

(My units probably still have the 1964 presets in them, at #64. Haven't lit them up in years.)
 
Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

Having written a few owners manuals I'm tempted to apologize for the entire genre, but I won't. Most owners manuals are written by junior technical writers (if lucky), with more complex products written sometimes by actual product designers. Engineers are notorious for being poor communicators so some of these manuals can be classic examples of such failures to communicate. Others are guilty of flawed translation. Lucky for most of us reading here, we get the english original. Try to imagine a marginal OM after it gets translated into another language. The need to provide multi-language OM, rewards the manual writer for keeping the descriptions simple and free of jargon. Since the translators are typically more expert in the language than the technology. (Describe a pad simply, without using the word pad).

While I may be one of the few people who actually reads owners manuals before firing new gear up, i still think it mostly comes down to good product design (ergonomics). I still remember an old (Teac?) small mixer I borrowed to use at a trade show decades ago, and I had to take the back off of it and trace out the circuits to figure out how to get signal through it (because I didn't have a manual). :-(

JR
 
Re: Why? Is RTFM a secret?

Manuals written in ENGLISH, something no longer taught in schools. (sarc)

Indeed, many manuals are terrible, either translated poorly, poorly conceived, poorly proofed, or other problems. Having an engineer write it does not work well - seems the brighter and more innovative the engineer, the less well developed the in interpersonal language skills. Then there is the butchery that the "tech writer" and/or "editor" performs at the last minute before the manual goes out - spell checkers are wonderful, eh?

All that said, there is information to be gleaned - but requires effort. Rob's original post was that folks are not even trying to read the manual, and try to match it up to the equipment - NO EFFORT AT ALL, including reading previous posts here and elsewhere. NO EFFORT AT ALL

Plus the device manual is and should not be mistaken for, or a substitute for some basic level of understanding. The "last time" that happened, it resulted in the Yamaha "bible". Every manual cannot be expected to be the quality and content of that book. Say you don't own Yamaha? Read it anyway. It is not at all about Yamaha.

Not a single person on this (and some other)boards have any problem helping someone who is at least minimally prepared - on the contrary, the information from these folks compiled in a book would be priceless.

Yes, I'm guilty of asking more than one "d"oh!" questions, but the response has always been gracious.

At least read enough to discover that you have to use your real name before asking a question.

frank
 
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