Magazine?

John Chiara

John Chiara

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Jan 11, 2011
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Troy, NY
I am both a live mixer and recording studio owner and like most, get piles of free mags each month. I usually get them and plow through them all in a half hour as there is little that is of direct interest to me and because many are from the same publisher there is quite a bit of crossover. A buddy gave me a copy of Sound on Sound yesterday at dinner, I got home and literally spent hours reading articles and reviews. Is there a reason the American mags seem so dull in comparison?
 
Re: Magazine?

John Chiara said:
I am both a live mixer and recording studio owner and like most, get piles of free mags each month. I usually get them and plow through them all in a half hour as there is little that is of direct interest to me and because many are from the same publisher there is quite a bit of crossover. A buddy gave me a copy of Sound on Sound yesterday at dinner, I got home and literally spent hours reading articles and reviews. Is there a reason the American mags seem so dull in comparison?
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70% advertising, 28% articles driven by advertising, 2% actual content.
 
Re: Magazine?

Back when I was working in the industry with advertising budgets, I was sent more magazines than you can imagine. Ignoring the majority of them was necessary. I would scan important rags for a given industry or market segment for ads to see who was spending money.

Even back several decades ago the british Studio Sound was the more authoritative magazine for studio guys, and also the winner for most pages of advertising. :-)

I find some of the German magazines superior for technical content in reviews (I'd have to get parts of them translated for me by a german speaking salesgirl, but I could read the measurement plots.). There was also an Italian magazine that was pretty solid (Sono?). Of course my judgement was somewhat influenced by talking with their technical reviewers at trade Frankfurt trade shows.

The magazine business in the US has been in decline for as long as I can remember (multiple decades), I suspect even the Euro rags are not immune to these modern trends.

JR
 
Re: Magazine?

Even different countries versions of the same "name" magazine are very different.

For example the Polish versions of some are very different. They actually MEASURE the products-take them apart-post photos of the insides etc.

A much more through version than the American ones that live off of advertising and don't want to offend anybody.

REAL reviews for example-not a "glossed over" version-as far as I can tell--------------
 
Re: Magazine?

What really bothers me is (even if I don't fill out the stupid (very stupid) re-up or the x gets it) cards, they keep renewing my subscriptions.
And giving me more. I am so angry when I get multiple magazines to the same address. Not only the wasted resources, but as a potential advertiser, I know that they are lying on their circulation numbers, and double dipping every opportunity they get. The aggravation I have to go through to get removed, more than reinforces my point.
 
Re: Magazine?

I Have no idea what is different about the magazine publishing business in the UK that makes Sound On Sound so superior to all of the US based magazines targeted towards the Pro Sound business.

The best all around magazine dealing with audio in this country is TapeOp. It is the only one I read all the way through every issue, garnering much of interest and use even though it is solely concerned with recording.

A similar publication addressing the live concert sound business would be very welcome.
 
Re: Magazine?

Sound On Sound reviews tend to be unbiased. If something is bad, they'll say so, and they won't sugar-coat it.
They have a good editorial team who, as well as providing reviews, also contribute to their online forum.
Hugh Robjohns is a mine of technical information and he's willing to share it.

SoS did have a go at doing a concert sound magazine a few years ago, but it didn't do very well.
It started off as a supplement to the main magazine and then had a dozen or so solo issues before the plug was pulled.
Shame really.
 
Re: Magazine?

I used to buy Melody Maker and Downbeat decades ago, and my impression was that US publishing was a lot more "professional" while the UK stuff had the edge on "enthusiasm". I started getting Byte magazine when it first came out, and during the twenty years I was a reader, it surely fatted up in terms of advertising, but I guess that is inevitable if you want to keep up a standard and pay your employees. Compared to the UK offerings, again "professional" comes to mind.
Maybe "diplomatic" is part of being "professional". You can't run a business if you antagonize your advertisers, so I guess it is up to the reader to learn to read between the lines.
 
Re: Magazine?

Karl Barnes said:
Sound On Sound reviews tend to be unbiased. If something is bad, they'll say so, and they won't sugar-coat it.
They have a good editorial team who, as well as providing reviews, also contribute to their online forum.
Hugh Robjohns is a mine of technical information and he's willing to share it.
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I do think Sound on Sound are in a class of their own, the nearest UK rival Future Music is nowhere near as thorough or useful, especially in relation to technical matters.

Just today I posted a very minor query that occurred to me upon reading a thread, and within 2 hours Hugh Robjohns posted a remarkably thorough and well crafted reply - far more than was needed. I'm always impressed with his writing in the magazine and input on their forum, but this was another level of fast, unnecessarily-comprehensive responsiveness - my minor query was simply regarding cables that short balanced XLR signals to unbalanced TS; in hindsight I could have Googled to get the info making my post mostly pointless. His fast and long reply made me feel a bit guilty for taking up his time, though he gave me some spot on info I really appreciate and should be of use to other folk as well.

The only odd thing I find about SoS is that the small amount of live audio kit they manage to squeeze in for review very often seems to come from the same not-particularly-large or mainstream few companies, for example HK, LD Systems, Dynacord (yet not EV!?) plus a few others such as Behringer (good review of the ADA8200 this month) but no Peavey or Mackie ... as far as my potentially ropy recollection goes at least.

To be fair their shorter news items announcing new kit are much more comprehensive, so I suspect the selection of products is possibly due to different manufacturers/distributors being more proactive than others in submitting stuff for review - I'm curious if any of the well-informed industry insiders on here could shed light on this process, if only to satisfy my own curiosity?
 
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