Hi everyone. Believe it or not I've slowly upped the bar as far as what I post. Previously I posted every single thing I came across because you never know who might find value in what. Now there is so much stuff coming in that I think it would be overwhelming and even rude to put it all up. I know I get annoyed when other blogs post too much - I simply can't keep up and it actually pisses me off when more comes in. Sometimes I end up giving up. I don't want that to happen here. Typically I post between five and twenty posts a day. Is this too much? Annone annoyed with how much I post? One thing that concerns me is putting up new posts when people are engaging in the comments of another post, as that post gets pushed down. Is that annoying or not a biggie as you can just scroll down? Also, I only show three days worth of posts on the page, so scrolling is limited to that and then it's the archives.
So I'm just curious what you all think? Should I leave things as is or up the bar a little? A lot of what goes up is obviously personal taste, so upping the bar for me might not necessarily be upping the bar for you, but, what it would result in is possibly fewer posts. Let me know what you think. If no one comments I'll assume no one cares and/or whatever I do is fine.
Friday, September 29, 2006
49 comments:
To reduce spam, comments for posts older than one week are not displayed until approved, usually same day. Do not insult people. For items for sale, do not ask if it is still available. Check the auction link and search for the item. Auctions are from various sellers and expire over time. Posts remain for the pics and historical purposes. This site is meant to be a daily snapshot of some of what was out there in the world of synths.
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
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NO... NEVER ENOUGH POSTS!
ReplyDeleteI like to check a few times a day... keep it up!!
Everything including videos is great.
Maybe: up the bar like you said with a few quality posts during the day but at the end of the day: post one biggy with images, links to flickr pages, ebay auctions, etc. It would be like our Daily Dose of synth porn.
ReplyDeleteI like the high traffic of your posts. I miss that about Music Thing, which seems to be about once a week now. I guess summer time, new job, and all.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE THIS SITE !!!!!!!!! I wouldn't change a thing, this is a very happy part of my day. I love the posts and the video content. If in the unlikely event that I am not "in" to whatever you are posting, I just skip to something else great. BTW thank you, a lot.
ReplyDeleteDan
Thanks for asking. I have begun skipping over most matrixsynth posts because they aren't news. The quality is going downhill. Photos of unique gear very few have seen before can be interesting. But most of us already sub to musicthing or moogulator anyway, so for starters maybe stop regurgitating their posts. Also, maybe consider creating a separate RSS feed for all the usual stuff, like the photos of alesis ions and korg drum machines i don't care about :)
ReplyDeletei dunno, i can put it another way:
before you post, consider whether you're offering your readers something new.
and keep up the great work. i love this blog. thanks for your effort.
Yup, sorry about the slow traffic on Music Thing (and for the three really boring software stories I inexplicably posted last night)
ReplyDeleteFrom a reader's point of view, I don't think you have too many posts, and I really like the video clips, although my new internet job has a weird computer system so I can't get YouTube to work, and eBay is blocked deliberately. :-(
JS Rockit - you should do a 'what I bought and sold today' blog - it would be busier than Matrix Synth...
I like the site a lot. I like the frequency of posts, though I agree with JSRockit that it's been a bit heavy on the video clips lately. Personally, I like the info and pics of esoteric or rare gear, especially when accompanied with audio clips. A little video is great, but some guy tweaking a MPC is a little dull to me. That said, I really dig the site and appreciate your desire to keep it useful and interesting. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I've always respected about this blog is the willingness to post any and all material. What that means for us as loyal readers is that if at any point we were to come across something that we think will make for a nice addition here, we can feel comforted in knowing that there is at least one blog out there that won't pass judgement on our sensibilites. As for the quantity of posts, no one is forcing anyone to read (or watch) absolutely all of them, and sometimes I love waiting a day or two knowing that there will be a ton of new synthy goodness waiting for me. Please don't change a thing, and thanks again for all your hard work in keeping everything current.
ReplyDeleteHi Matrix,
ReplyDeleteI like almost everything about the site. Don't like that flash photo gallery (eats up a lot of RAM and maybe has a memory leak) -- is it still up?
Sometimes I see a pic of a normal synth that isn't that rare, and the photo's not that great. That's the weakest bit for me. I do like Studio pics, and info about poeple making stuff now as well as the historical vids.
Vids are good by me. I play most of them and they're pretty great. I like playing them embedded vs. going to another site.
That being said, here are my main thoughts:
The best reason not to edit down too much is that you really can't please everyone. So post a lot. I love this site!
If you only have so much time tho, post what you think is the best vs. making it un-fun for you.
post as much as possible, I read Matrix while at work.
ReplyDeletebut if i get in trouble one day, maybe ill mention you should post less
It doesn't really matter to me. There is alot of Flickr and YouTube stuff that turns out to be pretty uninteresting, but it's easy enough to just skip over it. It's not like you need to read every single article in a newspaper.
ReplyDeleteI like that you repost stuff from the other blogs because I only check Matrixsynth.
As far as conversations getting pushed down too fast, I don't think it's a big deal either. People can always use any of the forums out there if they think something is important enough to start a real thread about.
too many ordinary synth picture posts. please skip the korg/roland/access/etc. stuff unless you have something unique (i.e., unreleased, protos), and stop parroting posts from moogulator because we can all subscribe to his rss too. thanks. otherwise, awesome blog and thanks for all your hard work.
ReplyDeleteWhatever you do, you're the best and this site is the best !
ReplyDeleteKeep it up !!!
Matrixsynth is unique because you made it unique. So, go on your same way.
I like the fact that Matrixsynth has lots of posts, for me it has taken place of musicthing in my "must check everyday" bookmarks. I like the fact that you post stuff of interest from other blogs/sites as I think this makes Matrixsynth required reading. I hate to think how many hits you get a day but I suspect it is a lot. I don't care either way about the videos, its easy enough to scroll past them if they don't interest me but sometimes they are cool.
ReplyDeleteSo keep up the good work you are a pillar of the (synth) community :)
matrix, your hearts in the right place. i think theres too many pics of cats and synths and also too many flickr reposts. theres no need to send a link to any analog synth pic that pops up on flickr, or to echo what every other blog says. each blog should have their own unique content. reduce the repetitive and blah stuff and things will be better AND easier for you to manage. this is something you should enjoy doing, not something you feel like giving up on.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty happy with "the more the better".
ReplyDeleteI like the current number and focus of posts. This blog is excellent.
ReplyDeleteIt's great as it is. I check in about once every day or so and you can scroll fast through it to see what interests you and skim the rest. It's not like you are emailing it to me or something! :J
ReplyDeletejust cut down on the non amazing flickr shots.
ReplyDeletethe ammount of video, auction, and news stuff is good the way it is.
Matrix I love this place.You should know as I have PMed you to tell you on numerous occasions!
ReplyDeleteI check here every few hours. I start to worry when nothing new has come on!
Being involved with synths for 20 or more years I dont really get excited by conventional keyboards be old or new, as I have owned/ played with them and the wow factor has gone. My new love is modular synthesisers.
I am alergic to cats and think people are mad letting animals on their synths, and outside photos make me wonder why do it....??
BUT
saying all this I appreciate some people are new to synthesis and I cant dismiss their enthusiasm, so at the end of it all I love everything you put up, I say more not less!
This is the best place online!
MATRIXSYNTH
ReplyDeleteEverything Synth
I'm fine with it the way it is, but agree that many photos are not very interesting. Just because someone takes a close-up photo of an everyday synth at some weird angle doesn't mean it's all special. Cat photos are ok if the synth is some special model or the cat is doing something unique. Otherwise, it probably won't mean much to most people.
ReplyDeleteThe "look at me make the word Matrix in my patch display" was a bit over the top.
Past that, great work!!
I like Matrixsynth the way it is. Wouldn't change a thing...
ReplyDeleteYour questions were
ReplyDeleteIs this too much? - NO
Anyone annoyed with how much I post? - TO THE CONTRARY
Is (Scrolling down) annoying? - NOT REALLY
Should I leave things as is or up the bar a little? - IF YOU NEED TO CUTBACK , WE'D BE SAD BUT WOULD UNDERSTAND
If no one comments I'll assume no one cares and/or whatever I do is fine.
=== Overall commment ===
Well I check the site several times a day...I'm just a junky...its even my homepage at home too....if you had to cutback, I'd suggest maybe a one "video clip of the day" but then you;d have to work at picking that out too....I'm always amazed at the prolific output, I mean between the job, the family and the blog, when do you get to make music??
I find myself in the evening after work forcing myself to get off the blog and go fire up the rig before the exhaustion takes over .... so it;s up to you
Brian
you need more ron jeremy vs. synthesizer content.
ReplyDeleteOnce you begin to anticipate your reader's desires and cut back on content here and there you run the risk of making the site a little less interesting for everyone.
ReplyDeletei agree the Matrixsynth on my synth photo got a bit much same with the cats photos . other than that it is amazing. I cant believe you always have so much great stuff daily :-)
ReplyDeletematrix, i think you spend too much time on this blog and need to go out into the real world and enjoy life a little more rather than constantly posting stuff. i imagine its quite a lot of work keeping up with everything. dont worry about us, we will still check in. this is a great place, and you do a great job.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I ever find myself wanting are less lame pictures, and a way to have the youtube videos posted where they don't hold up the loading of the page.
ReplyDeleteThe "Matrixsynth" patch names were great! They just showed how many synthesists really love this blog.
ReplyDeleteEven though I don't like cats myself, I think the cats on synths pics are great too. So are the children with synths and studio mascots.
Don't change a thing and definitely don't limit the content because some grumpy people can't handle a little scrolling down. "ooh, my index finger is soooo tired from using the scroll wheel on my mouse!"
Keep it unique. I absolutely love this site but can't get a stiffy for flickr sets of new jap synths or vids of a regular guy playing regular noodles on a regular synth.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone. I sincerely appreciate all the feedback, and I'm feeling pretty damn flattered at the moment. I didn't expect so many favorable replies. Thanks for all of the kind words. I really, really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like overall things aren't bad. So that's awesome. It's not too much content and as long as the quality of the shots and videos don't go down it's all good.
There were a few rounds of videos I put up about a month ago that I thought were a bit redundant and not necessary. I kind of questioned putting them up, but then just did because I figured don't think, just do it. These are the types were you have sets of pretty much the same thing repeated - part1, part2, etc. Moving forward I think I will just put "the best" one up and link to the others. For performances where one video happens to be split into parts, I'll put them all up they are technically the same piece.
I'm also finding that synth stuff on YouTube is getting saturated just like Flickr. So, I'll try and keep the bar high without really cutting back. Think of it more as not putting up noise because it happens t be out there - same as I did for the Flickr shots.
I think I'm going to keep my average of at least five posts a day, but on days there is not decent content I'll just let it slide. We'll see how it goes and as always there's the comments if you want to let me know things are beginning to suck.
As for the flickr shots, I actually have cut back. Some I put up because I think they are pretty spectacular, and some I put up because of some little thing I find intesting. I try not to say what that is because it could be different from someone else. The Moog Taurus pedals for example were interesting to me because they were actually being played by someone in a live setting. It gave it a different context and feel than just seeing the static shots of them on the net. The Ebay shots and details I grab because I know they will be lost forever, but I do not have the time to grab everything.
As for the other blogs, I wouldn't post to them if I didn't think highly of them. I don't want to discrimate sources, so if I find something I would typically post on them vs. another site or list, it'll go up. As for not repeating info, if the content is on their site I will typically just post a blurb and a link to their site for more info. Just like other sites. I never want to "steal" content. To the contrary I want to drive traffic to them.
Now if the content they put up comes from somewhere else, I'll put it up as a unique post and typically put a via link to them, unless of course its a standard news item and/or I found the content myself as well. Alot of us sub to the same lists and track the same stuff. And if you see it on another blog first, you can just skip over my post. For those of you that don't I don't want you miss the content and I kind of want to archive it for myself, so these will continue to go up. As for just putting up news content, that's now what this site is about. There's Harmony Central News, Sonic State News and Synthtopia for that. I probably post one news item a week at max, so...
BTW, when I started out, Tom from Music Thing, Peter from CDM, and James from Retro Thing were super supportive and a huge help to me. When my site went down they all offered their help. I will never forget that and I will always be greatful. Later Moogulator of Sequencer.de helped out and of course Chris Randall of Analog Industries. Moogulator and I actualy first met online years ago on Sonic State's the-gas-station. This was the mid to late 90s. It's awesome corresponding with him and watching his site grow. There is way more to his site than just the blog.
The cool thing is all of our blogs are different. CDM is like reading a professional music publication. Music Thing is a mix of that and personal editorials. And it covers more than just synths. As a side note, I ran into a friend of a friend who reads Music Thing and loves it. He said he loves the humor in the posts and the oddball musical instruments that come up. He's a music major who teaches, plays music, and works with music as a profession. He is one of the few if not only music majors I know who makes a living in music not as a rock star or engineer, but more in the education and arts world. And... He absolutely loves Music Thing. I showed him my blog and he found it interesting, but I know it's not his thing.
Anolog Industries is a whole other ballgame and an awesome read. Gotta love the Ftard of the week posts, classic performances by musicians that gave their all, tech posts, and his direct no apologies writing style. I eat that stuff up.
Sorry for the long blurb. I just wanted to make sure people understood the relationship with the other blogs and what I'm doing when I post to them. I think we are all different and all serve a different purpose. It's not a blog vs. blog thing. We all compliment eachother. It's like synths. Prophets, Moogs, Oberheims, Sequential Circuits, etc. If we could afford them all we would. The awesome thing is we can afford all of the blogs. BTW, I mentioned the major players who have helped me out in the past, there are tons of great blogs out there including those on my blog roll. They may not post as often but when they do something really cool, usually comes up. Oh and of course there is Synthwire. If you want to post but don't want to start your own blog, Sythwire is perfect for that. You can also plug your own stuff there, so check it out.
Thanks again for all of the feedback, I really appreciate it more than you might know.
In the end it's just me posting random stuff I come across along with what others send me. Thanks for riding along.
cheers,
matrix
Oh, and to anonymous. No hot dogs on this site, just pets. Hmm... I guess it's someone's pet.
ReplyDeleteCorrection to the blurb above: In regards to a news site, that should have read this is not what this site is about, rather than this is now what this site is about. No changes.
Do want it? well there is no "too much" I have my rss feed and I like to come here and check it all, it's not all "news" but there is always stuff that can be interesting, you COULD categorize it so ppl could choose to ingore or list only one kind of thing..
ReplyDeletewell, since there was some input about crossposting.. well since we are really friends we "steal" the posts from each other but we could also add that to another category, when it is quoted,..
I have no idea if it's cool or not, since some of our stuff will travel and I really assume some check more than one blog, others don't so.. for thos who check others will see some other "remix" of the same content.. to me it is something like a service on you all.. so, for me you are doing fine .. sometimes I am still wondering how we all can still have THIS output.. but, hmm.
it is cool as is to me, the only thing I really ignore is gear with cats on.. ;)
in fact some pics are just there, but it's as most of your said.. a dose of gearporn.. sometimes one has to shoot that cat off the synth to really see it ;)
to me it's like this: we are friends, we respect seach other, we even comment in the other blog, just because.. well.. we are a bit silly for synths.. ;)
for me a quote with backlink is something like an hnour that it was interesting enough to copy it and give it a link to the original.. so you still find the source and thats very fine.. so, matrix.. you do a GOOD job.. it's YOUR blog so, YOU should decide what to do, if you feel it's too much.. hmm.. but I really like what you are doing and your approach of an open bookmark and gearporn celebration center™ ;)
INCLUDING youtube, ok.. we can check for "synth" or "gary numan" ourselves, but.. well.. I also like this, I liked quite a lot of videos quoted here.. maybe it's enough to post the link with short info what will be there?.. but it's fine as is..
your choice..
and yes: it's not a bad idea to have new comments on top, so an intresting posting could stay for a little while.. it's a lot of stuff,.. just one day lost and it's gone ;) so it is almost like news.. hey, how about a test - ratating the info stuff from last year.. is it "old" and not worth seeing again?..
to me the coolest idea could be to have a perfect access to older ones.. but I have no idea how.. if you really want something new, maybe try a way to finding things easier.. it's a hard job.. sure!!
One thing no one seems to have noticed (I didn't want to bring it up -- but it seems no one is noticing) -- and I think it's the MOST GLARING PROBLEM with MATRIXSYNTH..
ReplyDelete>> More cow bell would be nice. <<
No. Really.
*More Cowbell* (get on it :)
Ask and ye shall receive: link. BTW, I put this up already here, so no new post. : ) That's the one thing I try to do - zero double posts. I think I have one true exact double post and a couple of close calls, but slightly different.
ReplyDeleteWhat's intersting about that post is I made the title link directly to the source, Boing Boing in this case, rather than the site with just a via link to Boing Boing which is the standard. Funny how you learn blogger etiquette over time.
As for categories, the next version of Blogger is supposed to support tagging, so that should take care of it.
Thanks for dropping by Moogulator and Tom. It's always fun to have the other bloggers drop by.
Your site's at the top of my daily reading list. Please, don't change a thing, keep them coming, keep them separated. 'Thank you, thank you very much.'
ReplyDeleteHmmm less video clips would be good becoz we can youtube too. But a link to some nice finds can give us selective choice...
ReplyDeleteBut never enough posts is very true. More gears, more synths, more new gizmos! MORE :)
Dun give up.. my daily dolsage of online surfing depends on you.
Sonicbrat
youtube vs non-youtube stream would make it perfect for me
ReplyDeletestupid dialup.
I freely admit my addiction to this blog. I don't get much internet access, but MATRIXSYNTH is my first, and sometimes only stop when I do! I'm fine with most of the content, and i only have one critique, which i've seen others post as well. About the videos... Yeah, it seems to me they only get in the way when they're sandwiched among other photo and information posts. Since it takes a miracle to get any of them to work on my machine [iMac running OS9], i tend to skip over them, no matter how interesting the content may be.
ReplyDeleteBorrowing from some of the others' ideas, it might be prudent to limit all videos/flickrs to a single post per day or to replace the imbeddee video thumbs with picture thumbs or text links.
Other than that, this blog is in fine form, and I thank you for many hours of synthesized enjoyment!
Keep posting everything you find, even remotely related to synths. More videoclips, more auctions - i dont care as long as i get my daily synth-fix every morning
ReplyDeleteI don't read any other blogs, because Matrixsynth is excellent one-stop shopping.
ReplyDeleteI cracks me up that the thread on possibly limiting the amount of posts has 45 comments. Irony at it's best!
ReplyDeleteBut there's your answer... DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING. Accept possibly the anonymous posting option - if you can do that.
Comments are cool, opinions are cool, but trolls who hide behind anonymous postings are, IMHO, annoying and I dare say chickensh@t, bordering on cowardly. Allowing a hidden ID option I think just encourages them.
Other than that, CNN.com and this site is all I read.
- P
I like it as it is now. Each blogger has his own personality, so it's fine for me even if you post too much stuff.
ReplyDeleteKeep the good work.
Sasarasa88
Thanks. Regarding Anonymous comments. I track every single comment that comes in. If a comment is out of hand or enough people complain about a given anonymous comment I have no problem removing it. I want to keep the anonymous comments open because one a lot of good stuff comes in from the anonymous commenters that probably wouldn't come in if they had to sign up, and two I don't want to require people to have a blogger account just to post a comment. Personally, I know I've passed on commenting on some sites simply because I didn't want to sign up at that particular moment. Maybe I was in a hurry, maybe I didn't want to go through the sign up process, but in the end I didn't.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe you post as much as you do! Don't change a thing - it's great. I do regret when I miss checking for a few days (e.g., off on business and just can't get here) and I know some posts have rolled off the bottom.
ReplyDeleteAll of it is good; what doesn't interest me I just skip over.
And I kinda like the Flickr posts because sometimes it leads to a whole series of photos where someone's opened up or modded their gear.
Again, don't change a thing!
Thanks. Don't forget the archive links if you are away for a bit. They load one months worth of posts at a time. Takes a bit, but it's all there. : )
ReplyDeleteBTW, I just realized I misread the suggestion/comment on News posts. For some reason I was thinking press releases. I now realize the comment was probably more on general news meaning new items that come up like the recent Dave Smith video. Sorry about that.
matrix:
ReplyDeleteyou mentioned analogindustries...
actually there's one thing i really like about matrixsynth: each post is something to be excited about or something one might find interesting
analogindustries is unpleasant and negative. it saddens me that he needs to waste space on his otherwise spectacular blog by making fun of people. please don't ever stoop to that level with matrixsynth...