pofm's forum posts 25

I definitely think different colours should be merged, e.g. https://equipboard.com/items/roland-boutique-sh-01a-red and https://equipboard.com/items/roland-boutique-sh-01a are functionally identical.

Even for TD-3 and TD-3-BU and TD-3-RD and TD-3-AM where they are marketed with different model numbers for each colour, it's still really the same item (they all say "TD-3" on the case). Having multiple entries on the site just makes it harder to add useful "alternatives". Should every one of them be listed as an alternative to the Roland TB-303? No, that's pointless ... they should just be merged.

I'm less sure about merging mk1 and mk2 versions though. Sometimes the differences are not just superficial, e.g. Elektron Analog Four mkii has better connectivity, different sounding overdrive, is a different shape and size, and has extra buttons (for less menu diving), compared to the original, Elektron Analog Four. But for some gear it makes less difference, e.g. Elektron Analog Heat mkii is much more similar to the original model (slightly different layout on the front panel, and will duplicate a mono signal to stereo, but otherwise the same).

For another example, the Korg Kaoss Pad KP3+ is very similar to the original KP3 (9V PSU not 12V, and different presets), but significantly different from the KP2.

https://equipboard.com/pros/aidenjude

He adds all the gear submissions himself, and they don't even have proper sources: https://equipboard.com/pros/aidenjude/apple-airpods This is a cringey IG post that doesn't show the air pods or mention them. The notes for the source are "Aiden Jude is seen using them on his Instagram story from time to time." ... dude it's your IG feed, how about you manage to find an example where you are actually seen using them?

(I complained about this in What's the policy on self-promotional spam? before finding this thread.)

and want people having the same pleasure than me to use plugins without latency .

Please start a new thread then, stop talking about it here.

But your tips are completely irrelevant to the topic of this thread, which is about how to track information on this website. Tips for using DAWs don't belong here.

Shouldn't there be a link of some kind between Richie Hawtin and Plastikman? Or just merge them? It's the same person, and there are duplicate submissions like Richie Hawtin's Behringer BCF2000 and Plastikman's Behringer BCF2000 where the same piece of gear is listed under each artist, using the exact same source.

Another suggestion to help submitting gear to artists:

After typing the name of the gear in the Gear - What gear does the artist use? box, I'd like to get a link to that piece of gear (or at least a larger preview of its main image) so I can double check I picked the right one. Currently let's say I type in "Korg wavestation A" and get two options appear, I can't check which one is correct without going to a new browser tab and searching for that gear and comparing the two.

After selecting the gear the name that appears under the box as Currently selected: Korg Wavestation A/D could be a link, so I can open it in a new browser tab, check it, and then return to the submission tab.

Yeah I think this is pretty clearly not well intentioned. I've done some fairly critical reviewing of his gear now. I didn't go through the plug-ins and VSTs, most of which have no source provided at all.

The Amazon affiliate link for https://equipboard.com/items/sequential-circuits-prophet-vs-rack goes to a charger for power tools.

The link for https://equipboard.com/items/prophet-vs-rack (which I've already submitted as a duplicate of the one above) goes to a hitch thing to attach to the back of a car/truck.

The Amazon link for https://equipboard.com/items/oberheim-matrix-6r-fb416f07-50c8-40ae-a502-967c11184c8d (what's going on with that URL? Who created that gear, when Matrix 6R already exists?) goes to an amazon search for the keywords "top 5ft 1 5mac in power cord outlet socket cable plug lead for oberheim matrix 6 6r rack vintage analog synthesizer" ... wtf?

The Amazon link for https://equipboard.com/items/dave-smith-instruments-evolver goes to a search for "mogami gold key s 15r unbalanced stereo keyboard instrument cable 1 4 ts male plugs gold contacts dual right angle to dual straight connectors 15 foot".

I don't think you're going to earn much from affiliate links like that. What's going on?

This guy just submits dozens (edit: actually 417!) of items linked to his own artist page (which I'm guessing he created himself) with completely bogus sources: https://equipboard.com/pros/aidenjude/apple-airpods

He claims the gear "can be seen from time to time in his socials" but doesn't actually provide a source that includes the gear. Seems like he's just reposting his cringey IG feed here.

I get that artists want to promote themselves, and maybe he does actually use all this gear. But if he doesn't provide sources or evidence of using them, it's just spam isn't it?

Searching within an artist's EB would be helpful for the minority of us who contribute to the database, for sure, but for the casual-browsing majority of site traffic, the fact that there are no Stratocasters visible on Jimi Hendrix's EB (without clicking "show more") seems like a more pressing concern, personally.

Yeah, good point. The experience should be optimized for browsing and viewing, not for doing occasional submissions.

The "Drum Machines" category is under "DJ Gear" (along with "Audio samplers") but that does show up as "Studio Equipment" on artist profile pages.

The distinction between a "drum machine" and an "audio sampler" is often blurry, e.g. the Elektron Machinedrum UW and Rytm are drum machines that can sample, and the Elektron Digitakt and Korg ESX-1 are samplers that make good drum machines. But either way, calling them "DJ Gear" seems a bit inaccurate. Countless hit records were made using drum machines like the TR-808 with no DJ anywhere near.

What I meant about drum machines being mis-categorized as "electronic drum kits" is that I've had to correct quite a few drum machines which were categorized as "Drums & Percussion | Electronic Drums | Drum Sets" which is the category for things like Roland VAD506 and Yamaha DTX400K. I just found these ones under "Drum Sets" too:

• https://equipboard.com/items/jomox-airbase-99
• https://equipboard.com/items/yamaha-rx21-drum-machine
• https://equipboard.com/items/simmons-sds-8
• https://equipboard.com/items/mam-adx1
• https://equipboard.com/items/roland-ddr-30
• https://equipboard.com/items/korg-beat-boy
• https://equipboard.com/items/simmons-sds-7
• https://equipboard.com/items/singular-sound-beat-buddy-drum-machine-pedal
• https://equipboard.com/items/tiptop-audio-tr-909-clone
• https://equipboard.com/items/tama-techstar-306

One more idea: I'd like to be able to search within a single artist's gear. Let's say I want to submit his Midas mixing desk to Neil Landstrumm's profile. To check if it's already there I have to check each section; is it "Studio Equipment" or "Mixers" or "Studio Recording Gear" or "Other Gear"? Do I need to click "show more" to see them all?

If there was a quick search box somewhere on the artist profile (separate from the main search at the top of the page) then I could just enter "midas" and see all his gear that matches that.

(On the subject of the different sections, sometimes the distinction between "synthesizer" and "drum machine" is very arbitrary, so displaying them separately isn't always helpful ... I get why the distinction's good, it's just ... not always good ;-) And that's before you consider that lots of drum machines on the site seem to be categorized as "electronic drum kit" so appear in the wrong section.)

at the top it should say "submit another item to [artist] using the same source" - and this would pre-populate the artist, source, and perhaps even your notes from the previous submission so you could go in and edit them accordingly.

Yeeeeeess! This would be great.

It would also be nice to be able to see a preview of what you're entering into the details box, to check there are no typos in your markdown. Either have a "live preview" below the textbox that shows the rendered version as you type, or have a toggle to switch between text entry and rendered preview (as on GitHub comments and pull requests, if you've used that).

I'm a heartless monster, I know 😆

I think this consolidation is a great idea. On several occasions I have not entered software "gear" for an artist, because when an interview says "I use cubase because I like the workflow" I have no idea which version they are referring to. I'm not interested in tracking down the current version at the time of the interview, and even if I did, maybe they weren't talking about the latest, maybe they didn't upgrade to the latest, for reasons. I'd rather not make a bad guess that might be wrong, so I just don't submit it.

Also, as mentioned already, while I might be interested in getting exactly the pedal or synth an artist used on some album, if I learn that DJ Wotsit used some old version of Logic in 2001, I'm not going to track down the ancient version to try and replicate "that sound". Personally, I don't care if somebody used bitwig 3.1 rather than 3.2, it's probably not significant.

tl;dr this is great

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

Yes, I think that would be helpful. Maybe also display the URLs of the two selected items, so you can double check which is which. In theory, there could be two items with the same name and same photo, so you need to be able to tell them apart. Entering the URLs solves that problem because the URLs are unique identifiers, but it's awkward.

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

Nice. I'd not seen that thread, thanks for the link.

This one is tough, and I think it comes down to the fact that anyone can add anything on Equipboard.

Yeah, I totally get that it's tough, and don't have any great ideas. Requiring proof of existence in the form of a Reverb or Sweetwater listing might work, of it doesn't dissuade people from submitting.

Discogs has a "confirm this isn't a duplicate" checkbox when submitting a new release with a catalogue number already in the database. Maybe something like that. If the product name is a close match for any existing items, show them to the user and make them confirm that they're not duplicating one of them. The difficulty here is shining "close match". "Korg mini kp2" and "Korg mini kp2s" are not the same item, but "Korg mini kaoss pad 2" is the same as the former. Show too many matches and it will annoy people, too few and they will still submit duplicates.

This isn't a real piece of gear, it's somebody's fantasy synth drawn up on modulargrid.net from actual Erica Synths modules

https://equipboard.com/items/waxcide-dream-erica-synths-black-custom-techno-box

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?

My main request for improvement would be to do something about the crazy number of duplicates. Every time I start looking at the gear for a manufacturer I'm interested in, there are loads of duplicates. The form for reporting duplicates isn't great either. It would be helpful if it showed a preview of the item after you enter the URL, so you can see you've got the right URLs, and not entered them the wrong way around (i.e. requested to keep the bad one and delete the good one). Using multiple browser tabs to check the URLs is awkward on a phone.

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.

Finally, I'm not sure what the process is for "Needs Improvement" items when the item is incorrect. It doesn't seem possible for the submitter to change a bad item after it's been reviewed. So what's the point of reviewing it as needing improvement? Should it just be marked "completely incorrect"? And what happens to incorrect items, do mods delete them?

I want to help improve the quality of the data, but it sometimes seems pointless to review things if mistakes can't be corrected.

Edit: for example, I reviewed this to point out the gear was completely wrong (same manufacturer, totally different unit) and now it's a submission for the Analog Four that says "Machinedrum, no Analog Four here". Edit2: oh maybe only the original submitter can change the item? I've just realised that the user who updated the description on that item isn't the original submitter.

That was quick, thanks!

For some reason the images for the item seem to be broken now.

Just to clarify, do we need to add another brand now?

That seems to be the only item for that brand, and I think it's just a generic relabelled product anyway, so I'm not sure if it needs its own brand.

It's also not clear if "Sound Craft" is the brand, or that's the product range and "Conrad" is the brand. Both names appear on it, see 2:51 in the youtube demo of it.

So I don't know what the site's policy is (should every item have a brand linked to it?) but IMHO this doesn't need its own brand.

I have just created the Soundcraft brand, to link the dozens and dozens of mixing consoles and compact mixers to the brand. I incorrectly added the new brand to Soundcraft SA-2020 Mixer before realising it's a different brand. I have tried to remove the brand, but it doesn't work. Could a mod or admin please do that?

As I noted in the submission notes when trying to correct my mistake:

Edited name and removed brand that I just added, as this seems to be some semi-generic brand, not the famous Soundcraft mixing console company. Videos of this item at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIQCeMR0Kk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me1MwTEv-TE show it's a different logo, and in the UK it was sold under the Maplin brand, see https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143925346804 (Maplin was a high street electronics chain, like Radio Shack).

How much IQ do I need to delete item photos?

The first photo of the Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 mki and the first photo of the Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1UW mki are both wrong. They show SPS-1 mkii and SPS-1UW mkii respectively. You can tell because the mki units have three LEDs in the bottom right corner, and the mkii have four. I've just added a second image to each of them, showing the correct mki models, but I am not able to remove the bad images.

So can you do it now, with 898 points?

I can! Thanks @pkennethk! :-)

OK, thanks for confirming.

I've looked for it in the edit details page several times, and don't see anything relevant. Do I need more than 258 IQ to see it?

In some gear names the manufacturer name is a hyperlink, showing other gear from that manufacturer. For example Elektron Analog Rytm MKII links to Elektron. However, Elektron Analog Four MKII and Elektron Sid Station and Elektron Digitone and Elektron Analog Heat MKII do not have "Elektron" linked. Similarly, Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro links to Mackie but Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro doesn't.

What determines this? Is there any way users can edit the gear details to make the linking happen?