gchiaren's forum posts 789

Kinda related, we've been taking the liberty to roll up Apple hardware. There's not really a code change behind this, but it's just silly to have 85 different iMac variants (most with completely out of date buy links). Like guitars, everyone was just adding new items with ultra-specific titles representing what they have (e.g. "Apple iMac 2012 model with 8gb ram").

These don't really need any variants, because they have pretty clear cut primary models. So the approach is to just make a "General" model, and explain what that is in the description. We're not done yet, still need to roll up iPads, and will probably have a different item representing MacBook (General), MacBook Air (General), and MacBook Pro (General).

Just to beat a dead horse, this is easier than the guitar roll-up because while an older Mac might be sought after, it's 99% because it's available refurbished or on the used market for cheaper. Also no matter how elite of a gear hunter you are it's practically impossible to identify what Mac a pro is using down to its hardware specs.

https://i.imgur.com/63GU8Xw.png

For example, John Scofield has used ProCo's Vintage Rat, RAT 2 and the Silver Anniversary Rat. J Mascis also has his enormous Big Muff collection; he has five brandings of the Ram's Head Big Muff alone! To that point, would items with significant OEM iterations have subgroups within the consolidated items?

I think this is the hardest part of this whole thing. We have to maintain this level of granularity. I personally bought a Matthews Whaler V2 only to return it because the V1 sounds much better to my ears.

However, when I recommend to someone a great starter MIDI keyboard like the AKAI MPK Mini, it's so frustrating to have mk1, mk2, mk3, and three different color variants for each all exist separately. The pros that uses any of those, in my humble opinion, should be rolled up into one.

So there's definitely some subjectivity here in the type of grouping, and we'll need to design for that.

You mean on your own equipboard/profile?

Per you and DJ_K9, I agree drum machines seem like an odd fit under DJ. All 3 categories should be under the same parent category.

Can you lay out the new category tree you're envisioning in a "explain like I'm 5" kinda way? A visual might be easier just so we can get buy-in from as many people as possible.

I think it should get a re-think. I hate that the Drum Machines category is under DJ gear, that makes zero sense.

I am up for merging and/or cleaning this up FOR SURE but let's discuss because if there are a lot of items to be moved over, it might be more efficient for us to whip up a little script to do it in bulk.

Now that Cakewalk SONAR is Cakewalk by BandLab, does it make sense that Cakewalk by BandLab is the main item on Equipboard, and all SONARs be considered older versions of it?

To me it depends on how much the "feel" of it has remained the same. Has anyone used Cakewalk by BandLab? Is it just a rebrand for now? I haven't played with it, but it seems to be Windows-only and free to download.

I can't seem to add Höfner to the brand list - Is it the ö that's the issue?

I'll look into it, just added it to our bugs list. Good catch!

I changed it, how's this now? Will have to wait a few days for the score & rank to recalc.

To be clear, it's all Sequential now, right? DSI is no longer the "official" name of these synths?

I'm happy to make the Reverb link be whatever that item deserves, I know it's a hell of a synth.

Yeah it’s strange, usually bots want to lay down a link or something. These are just DAW tips, interesting bot lol

• Given recent events, is there a way to prevent this consolidation/merging from further accidentally deleting submissions?

That won't happen ever again.

• What if successors span multiple brands?

Haven't planned for this, I'd need examples, but a different brand would probably mean a different item.

• What if a single artist has multiple iterations of a consolidated item? How would this be displayed on the main item page?

I wasn't gonna do this, but if it's something you all think is critical, we can accommodate the request.

• Would there be designated "experts" among the userbase? Maybe even consults from the items' companies?

Mods and high gearIQ folks for starters. Haven't thought about formalizing it though.

Okay, so this would make price aggregation more comprehensive. Got it. Still, is the color difference that significant? It might get overcrowded, especially for guitars.

If they have a different SKU/UPC/part number or whatever, they'd be tracked separately.

Would they remain searchable as separate items? Would they remain separate on brand pages? Furthermore, would users retain the ability to save specific iterations to their user pages?

Searchable as separate items, yes. Separate on brand pages, probably not. You might see something like "Scarlett Focusrite 2i2" and a tag right under it [3 variations]. Eventually users will have the ability to save a specific iteration to their user page, yes. Maybe not for v1 but eventually.

Thanks everyone for the input, and great questions eyesee. I'll address them one by one:

• Some configurations have major differences, while others do not. If this were to go through, how would consolidation be decided?

I think that might be decided on a case by case basis, if something is very ambiguous. I anticipate the merge duplicates process is going to be where this takes place, and those have comment threads to discuss edge cases and ambiguities. So I anticipate having some back and forth discussions. And that's actually perfectly fine, bc for instance clifford_bao_777 knows a ton about bass gear and can really help with merges that require subject matter expertise.

• Would the reviews for items of different generations and configurations remain separate?

That's a good question. My thought is they would be combined under the "main" item but definitely be filterable. Amazon I believe actually works exactly like that.

• Aren’t colors already merged?

Yes and no. We've kind of "unofficially" started treating them as the same item, but this new system would allow us to keep a different color as a "sub-item." So for instance white and black Yamaha HS5 studio monitors would each maintain a separate SKU/UPC for pricing and availability but be rolled up to the same item.

• How would this effect Reverb and Sweetwater links for pertinent items? Those vendors keep generations and configurations separate. Would merging them cause a price confusion or rating confusion?

Great question! For an item -> sub-item relationship, the sub-items would maintain their own purchase identifiers. So like in my example screenshot with the KRKs, if you were to click on one of the older versions ,the buy links and prices would change to reflect that variant.

Hey everyone, while the software consolidation effort, is far from done, it's had pretty positive results so far!

Next comes a slightly more challenging undertaking: consolidating hardware music gear variations.

As a reminder, software was a little simpler to merge based on the premise that 1) old version software is hard to buy, and 2) separating what artist used Ableton 7 vs. Ableton 10 holds little value.

We had a team meeting and came up with what could work for hardware, but of course want to run it by you all before implementing.

First let me say that the guitar problem might be more challenging to solve due to so many variables (color/year/materials/details/limited editions/spotty record keeping/obscure & unknown configurations). So for now I'll speak to non-guitar hardware.

The main 3 buckets we were able to come up with to differentiate item "groupings" are as follows:

1. GENERATIONS:

This applies to hardware that gets regular generational or "MK" updates, like audio interfaces, MIDI keyboards, studio monitors (think KRK Rokit 5 G1/G2/G3/G4 or Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Gen1/Gen2/Gen3). There are hardware tweaks in every generation, but the "spirit" of the gear remains the same. If you were to describe a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 as...

A simple audio interface to record a guitar & mic or stereo instrument. It's hard to beat the design and quality for the price of the 2i2. Perfect for podcasters and budding & experienced music producers alike.

... that description wouldn't really change across Gen1, Gen2, Gen3 etc.

2. EDITIONS/COLORS/FINISHES:

This applies to hardware that is functionally identical, with the difference being solely cosmetic. Think headphones or Pioneer CDJs that come in white black and gray, or a limited edition guitar pedal "blackout edition" or with fancy artwork.

3. CONFIGURATION:

This applies to hardware where the basic functionality/circuitry is the same, but there is some configuration you can choose that alters a component. An example would be if you get to pick your speaker in a combo amp, or the Yamaha THR series of amps.

The idea would be that there would be a consolidated item page with variants that you could select of the above relationship types, kinda like this:

https://i.imgur.com/D151Xf4.png

So just like Ableton 11 is the main item page now for Ableton, the reviews and pro artists for hardware would roll up into the "latest version" one (with filtering of course so you could only look for what has been written about a certain edition/configuration). And when writing a review or subbing an item to an artist that has variants you get to pick if you're referring to a specific variant.

What do you all think of this? Aside from the mess that will be consolidating guitars, are we missing anything glaring?

Quick question: Do music videos fall under "Promotional" or "Studio"?

Actually gave some thought to including that as one of the options but didn’t think enough subs would apply to it.

Perhaps a bit unsatisfying but I’d leave usage off for a music video, none of the current options really make sense 🤷🏻‍♂️

Not a dumb question at all. Part of what keeps the lights on is ranking in Google for products, so Equipboard wants to come up when someone searches "FL Studio 20" for example. The search volume tends to be for the latest current version. So there's the rub.

The consolidation has had the weird consequence of RX no longer scoring for any category, though. RX should be near the top of Noise Removal Plugins (I think most people would agree it's the industry standard for that purpose).

It will. The ranking/classification runs as a batch process weekly.

Just to complicate things, iZotope RX 8 isn't actually the "latest" version. They're getting out of one-time licenses & moving to Subscription, and the subscription version with updates is called RX Pro For Music. Though you can only get that by subscribing to iZotope Music Production Suite Pro.

Eek. Okay thanks for the rundown on that. Maybe we just make the item "iZotope RX" and leave it at that!

Consolidation or iZotope RX is mostly done, but as you can see when you search there are lots of results for specific RX plugins. Should all those be merged into the master iZotope RX item as well?

Gone

I use it both as

1. an organizational tool, to remember everything that was ever on my radar and
2. as a true wishlist, as in I actually would like to buy most of this stuff in the future.

With so many things competing for my attention all the time, I'd like to get email alerts like, "hey remember this synth you wanted? Well a new low price was just seen..." Even if I'm not ready to pull the trigger right that instant, it's a nice reminder. I would at the very least open the email for sure. I don't think I'd be annoyed, since I kind of opted into that by putting the item on my wishlist. And anyways I would imagine there would be an option to turn off email price alerts.

That's my vision on how the wishlist gets more useful, but I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.

Hi! Gear gets "slotted" into pre-determined categories on an artist page, based on what the gear itself is categorized as. So if the amp was mis-categorizied (which unfortunately happens), it Plinkos into the wrong artist section.

Jim was able to fix that by fixing the item's category :)

warpcanada, glad you are here :)

OK it looks like we're far from done consolidating software. If you're got more egregious examples like that, please list them in this thread. I 100% agree w your points, on the software and the Squier!

I'll second the fantastic news. I woke up and caught up on this thread. Took me on a roller coaster ride but man, so happy for you.

Perfect, thanks. That's what I figured but needed some confirmation!

Quick question regarding Pro Tools. We're almost done consolidating the major DAWs, but I have 2 versions of Pro Tools still left floating around. One is just named Pro Tools, the other is named Pro Tools 12.

If you look on the official site there's not much mention of version number. Did Avid change it to just refer to the latest one as simply Pro Tools, with no version number?

Which of the two names do you all think should be the one on Equipboard?

EDIT: Same question for Avid Sibelius, and it looks like SONAR did away with version numbers as well?

namesuppressed you have great points here.

I think we mostly all agree that identifying what specific version (much less edition) a pro artist uses - especially from grainy screenshots on social media - is not just super hard but also not really that crucial.

And I've been "that guy" who marked someone's Tube Screamer sighting as "Needs Improvement" because it wasn't the exact specific Tube Screamer model and I thought guitarists and Equipboard were especially picky about that stuff. I'm glad Equipboard has taught me how to be that specific, but I agree that detail might not be helpful to everyone (or better added in comments to an artist gear sighting).

I also think we mostly all agree that for hardware it IS important, so we can't just consolidate every pedal version into one, or every guitar version into one. I think that would be losing a lot of valuable info.

There's some software where I have two versions installed because old versions had different features removed from later ones (in my case Ozone 4 & Ozone 7, also PSP VintageWarmer v1 and v2), but I'm happy to write about the differences and how I use them in a consolidated review / gear comment.

That's exactly what I would encourage, expand on your old reviews or comment on them as follow-ups.

So I'm generally on board, but I think in that case, you shouldn't include the version number in the product name. I don't have Guitar Rig 6, but it's fine to say I have Guitar Rig. I don't have Izotope Neutron 3, but it's fine to say I have Neutron.

I think in order for the product page to serve more of a "shopping" purpose we need to have the latest version number... but I also agree w you that it should not force you to say you own the latest version. If you're like, what the hell, I don't own VintageWarmer 2, I love version 1 and that's mine... ok totally fair, so be it. So in the near future I think we can let you select a specific old version as you're saving gear, that way your Equipboard page remains more personalized.

what about adding manufacturing dates to items? basicly just introduction year, and production status (e.g. "Boss DS-1, 1978-Present").

I think Reverb does this for some items. We use their API to update prices and such, so we could look into grabbing that data if they have it and displaying it on Equipboard.

Hosting gear manuals might be useful (I don't like the way the sites that specialize in that want your contact details, or add their own watermarks to the files), but is there a copyright issue with hosting them?

Not opposed to this. Just as with a certain gearIQ users can submit a video to an item, we could do a similar thing with uploading the PDF manual. Will have to look into if there's a copyright issue.

My main request for improvement would be to do something about the crazy number of duplicates.

We hear you and this effort is underway, starting with software.

The form for reporting duplicates isn't great either.

What if it worked more like the normal site search, as opposed to asking for URLs? Would that be an improvement?

I think a better "are you sure this isn't a duplicate? Stop entering duplicates, you clowns" check when submitting new gear would help too. Try to prevent dupes in the first place, so there aren't so many to report and merge later.

Agreed. This one is tough, and I think it comes down to the fact that anyone can add anything on Equipboard. Some combination of a text string and a photo makes for a "product" page, and Equipboard has gotten to the size where unfortunately that level of openness is no longer viable. We need to clamp down a bit on what it takes to submit a valid item. We do our best to match gear up to unique identifiers like SKUs and UPCs, but there is lots of interesting older music gear (and software) which doesn't have those. So that led us to also consider a match with a used product on Reverb a unique identifier. Possibly revising the add item process to HAVE to include a link to Guitar Center/Sweetwater/Reverb/etc is an option. That way it becomes easier to prevent duplicates, as opposed to having to detect the difference between "Walrus Julianna Pedal" and "Walrus Audio Julianna Pedal."

What do you think?

The consolidation has begun!!

Starting with smaller software just to test out the data integrity. We took all your advice and reviews are 'tagged' with an older version, if the review happened to come from an older version.

(We are storing the old version tag for artist subs as well, but only showing it on reviews for now)

iZotope Nectar and iZotope Neutron have been completed. You can see the little "latest version" tag below the item name, that tells you the software has been rolled up into a master version.

https://i.imgur.com/w4Nta3r.jpg

If you all are so inclined, we'd love help identifying families of software versions that need to be unified. I'm aware of the big DAWs, but other things like iZotope RX I'm less familiar with... do all those need to be one!? 😯

I'm so stoked you all are on board with this. Working on the code as we speak, then it'll probably take a few days to get the major softwares consolidated.

Great ideas all around. You all convinced us to save the "old version association" along with the review/sub, just so we have that info until we decide the best way to use it on the font-end for filtering or whatever.

ps. Yes indeed the one and only eyesee lives 🙌

Lately a lot of effort is going into making product/item pages better and more useful. To that end, I want to ask you all specifically about music software.

It's no secret some level of consolidation needs to happen. Try searching for "fender telecaster" on the site and you'll know what I mean 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

We want to bite off software first, bc it might be the most clear-cut case. Here's the premise to discuss:

There's not much value in old/unavailable/previous version software.

Think about something like iZotope Nectar or FL Studio. We're thinking of consolidating the reviews and pro artist usage of ALL the different versions and editions into one master page per each software. Why are we doing that? Because

1. old software is typically hard to get (outside of torrents maybe), and
2. software generally improves pretty drastically with every revision.

The majority of the pro artists on EB spotted using an older software version are not bc someone spotted that exact version, it just happened to be the latest version at the time.

I know there is maybe a little archival/historical reasoning to keep old versions intact, but if these item pages are to get better, we posit that it's better to see a lot of artists and reviewers that have used any version of the software, as opposed to keeping track of the spaghetti mess of granular versions and editions.

I also know this breaks down a little at the review level - perhaps someone was reviewing features in iZotope Nectar 2 that have been changed in version 3. To combat that, we are thinking to add a little note to the bottom of each review referencing the version, before we consolidate them. So as you are reading through reviews, at the bottom you will see a little note like "This review was written about [specific version]"

So, basically this means we will maintain one "master" page that mostly represents the latest version - e.g. FL Studio 20 - and to a lesser extent it also represents older versions, though again we believe those are less important in the big scheme of making Equipboard be a useful resource. We will ask that if anyone is submitting the "master" software item to a pro artist, or writing a review of it, that they just mention in the review/sub if it's a specific older version or edition.

Does anyone have any huge issues with this? Or can you live with it?

I'd say usage more than ownership, Clifford. I think the spirit/intent here to help musicians and producers make informed decisions based what gear pros use and how they use it... whether it was borrowed, stolen, or gifted from the manufacturer seems kind of immaterial, IMHO. Maybe others feel differently?

I mean, does it really matter if the guitar(s) James used on Ride the Lightning were ones he paid for himself? The important thing, for me at least, is which guitar am I hearing, what pickups were in there, what the signal chain was, etc. Once you are flush with success, you stop paying for most of your gear anyway, companies just throw it at you... The very concept of ownership kinda loses its teeth/meaning when you can call up a marketing rep and get 2 of whatever you want expressed to you no questions asked.

Spot on here.

Wow. That's some crazy productivity if you got the whole thing built, tested and deployed in a day. Impressed.

Question: if a user submits an entry that is otherwise correct and complete, but the evidence provided doesn't fully support the context tag they choose... do we still rate that entry as correct?

e.g. user submits a photo of a performer in a live context, and provides notes only for that live context, but then tags it both "live" and "studio"... should we mark that as "needs more info"... or just deem it correct and move on?

Haha thank you! We've made lots of under the hood changes in the last year that allow us to build/test/deploy a bit quicker, so it's exciting!

You bring up a good point, and maybe my answer is overly simple but don't overthink it :) Meaning, check the box that correlates best with the proof/source.

IF you happen to know that some gear usage is both live AND studio, and have proof, simply say so in the notes. For instance, the proof might be a photo of an artist playing a guitar live, but there happens to be a Sound On Sound article which mentions studio usage as well. Well, in the notes say something like:

Also according to this SOS article, Artist used the guitar on the recording of such and such album as well...

Ok, it's live! From your user profile page you can click on X Submissions to go back and see your past subs so you can add more context to them :)

wasaraff & jim you both make good points. We're trying to make the options things that will have the most impact across Equipboard. Another way to look at it is, can you flip the context and then be able to say, "this gear is used X% of the time live, and Y% of the time in the studio." That would be cool info to show on gear pages.

So right now we are leaning towards

1. Live
2. Studio/Recording
3. Demo/Promo

Unless a strong case can me made against those :)

Dumb question: when/how would an entry here be purely a "recording" gear spot? Wouldn't anything that ended up on a recording be either the product of a live and/or studio context?

That's a really good point. Recording would be done in a studio the majority of the time. Hmm, ok so maybe Studio/Recording gets combined into one?

And to introduce a 3rd option, what if we had Demo/Promo? That would cover anything promotional like obvious advertisements/sponsorships, YouTube demos, Rhett Shulls/Pedal Show/Josh Scott/Chapmans of the world...

Thoughts?

Hey everyone,

Hope the start of summer is treating you well. We're starting to bake here in Austin... ☀️🔥

This has been on our todo list for a while, but we want to add the ability to give a little more context to an item <> artist submission. Namely, context on usage - was the gear used live? In the studio? On a recording? It would be optional, and retroactively editable on all past subs. Here's what it would look like, nice and simple:

https://i.imgur.com/lDqFj0x.png

What I want to ask you is - do these 3 options suffice?

If we wanted to, I know we could add tons of options: Used in a music video, used in a commercial, used in a YouTube video or demo, etc.

But the goal here is to not over-complicate what is already a somewhat involved process for an Equipboard newbie. So think about the 80/20 Rule here. What set of these usage tags would apply to the vast majority of gear submissions on Equipboard?

That is music to our ears my friend. Admittedly you pointed out probably the toughest problem to solve, but the very next thing we'll be working on is consolidation of duplicates on a more mass scale. It drives me crazy that there are 25 FL Studio versions/editions on the site, or 14 entries for a 72 Tele Custom, or 8 Eric Clapton signature Strats.

It's gonna be a win-win because a lot of these duplicates have interesting pro usage, or good reviews. It's just all super fragmented at the moment.

We may also have to clamp down on the notion that anyone can add any item. It's our fault really, but users still keep adding items very specific to what they themselves own, and it exacerbates the problem.

maybe we can start moving stuff like clapton's blackie

Yup exactly! And it looks like it is that way now, from what I can see.

Also, for this first version of this, items move in and out of stub status on their own based on community reviews and accurate purchase links. It's not an on/off flag that we set.

Today we're rolling out a structural change to some music gear product pages (aka item pages) on Equipboard. We're calling them "stubs," which is terminology we borrowed from Wikipedia:

A stub is an article deemed too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject.

Conceptually, our goal is to differentiate a music gear product that is purchasable - people can buy it, people can write reviews for it - from a product that is more specialty, one of a kind, or simply just there to showcase what pro artist(s) use it without many other details.

In practice, a product on Equipboard is considered a stub with no verifiable purchase links, and no original reviews from community members. You can read our official definition here.

Some items will move out of stub status as they are filled out by the community, and some won't. John Mayer's JHS Kirkland boost pedal is a perfect example of a product that is completely unavailable to anyone outside of John Mayer, and thus cannot be purchased, demoed, etc.

A stub is also not eligible for a score or ranking within its category.

As always, curious to hear what you think!

Congrats on the successful execution of what looks to have been a ton of work!

Thanks man that means a lot to us :)

Ok, so this is a somewhat complex question to answer! Firstly I will say, we don't want to divulge the exact equation, at least not yet. Reason being, this release literally went live yesterday, and we are very much in "observation mode" to see what shakes out of it. We toiled over the gear score formula quite a bit, and there was a delicate balance of making it meaningful while at the same time not over-engineering it in round 1.

But as a user/community member, I (right or wrong) instinctually expect some kind of small stake in influencing these scores, as pretty much every other # on the site is something a user can participate in to some degree.

You're exactly right about this, and actually you CAN influence the score. However, since it correlates to a ranking within the category, your participation in rating/reviewing/submitting artist usage to an item does not change the score right away in real-time (otherwise we'd constantly be recalculating rank). Recalculations are done weekly, just so you know.

Right now, members can directly influence roughly between 30 and 60 points depending on the item. Also, we have some omissions which we're actively discussing. For instance, the number of people adding an item to a wishlist currently does not count towards the score, but I'm starting to think maybe it should?? After all, the "desirability" of an item can be a proxy for how badass it is (or isn't)... no?

I can tell you this much about the current calculation. As we crunch numbers from multiple well-known third party sources to make up a portion of the score, I can see that the Sequential OB-6 is hampered by its low activity and number of ratings/reviews on a well known site that shares its name with a type of effect...

I hope this helps! A lot more to come on this, I promise you that :)

Happy to discuss! We're excited about this development as well, and you may have noticed product pages got a little redesign :)

Firstly, have you read the About the Equipboard Gear Score page?