I often get queried about how Pro Audio Review evaluates products in the live sound environment. After all, you can’t deliver a line array or a big digital board to the editor’s office and expect a real world evaluation.

From the beginning, Pro Audio Review has always done live sound reviews with live sound engineers. Case in point is the front-cover review of Digidesign’s highly-regarded Venue. We worked out a schedule with stalwart PAR reviewer Tom Young, who works as engineer for Tony Bennett and has more than 30 years of experience in the business.

In order to do a proper test, Digidesign sent Tom the console a few days in advance of a scheduled Atlantic City show. A couple of days of training with a Digi’ tech and it was placed in the concert system for the gigs. That is the way we do reviews — in a real job.

Will James, owner and chief engineer for Atlantis Sound in Arizona, is another longtime PAR contributor who has done numerous reviews on medium-sized gigs, ranging from L’Acoustics (we may have been the first magazine in the U.S. do an actual real-world evaluation of V-DOSC), Meyer Sound, Soundcraft, MIDAS, Klark Teknik, Allen and Heath, A-Line Acoustics and many others.

Heck, Allen and Heath once complained a little that Will returned one their desks a little dirty from use at a fairground concert. ‘”Hey, I used it on a real gig,” Will told me.

Other PAR reviewers for the live sound/installed sound niches include Andy Roberts, owner and chief technician for Rockville Music Service in Washington, D.C., whose jobs are as varied as political speeches (gives us a chance to try out lots of cool mics and speakers) to regular performance gigs at the Kennedy Center performance rooms to houses of worship.

For the theater product reviews, we rely on Tony Angelini, who travels between Broadway and the theaters of D.C. Dave Rittenhouse, a longtime engineer for Md.-based RCI Sound Systems, has done everything from small gig PA speakers to the recently tested Yamaha M7CL.

After more than 10 years of publication, I think PAR’s caliber of experience from our testers makes for product reviews that end-users can trust. Because of our stature as a credible review publication, I consistently get queried about reviews that have not yet been published. Readers tell me in e-mails and phone calls they are considering buying a certain product and want to know PAR’s opinion before they shell out the cash.

One of my most memorable conversations of pre-review persistence was from the late 1990s. A reader called me on the phone, asking me if PAR was going to review the new Soundcraft Ghost console. I told him that the review had been completed, but the review was not scheduled to publish for another two months.

The caller persisted in trying to get me to tell him the prepublication opinion of the console. He said he had a great deal pending on a Ghost, but he was not going to buy it until he found out whether PAR liked it. I finally relented and told him that the Ghost tested quite well. The guy responded, “I’m buyin’ it. Thanks.”

Pro Audio Review’s reader surveys also bolster the credibility of our reviews. Of those who read Pro Audio Review, according to the latest survey, about 70 percent said we have the most credible product reviews of all the industry magazines, and about 75 percent of them said they have bought a product based on a review in PAR.

We do not take lightly the credibility that we have with our professional readership. We are always seeking to do more reviews, reviews with a more system approach and more bench tests (PAR is the only U.S. pro audio mag to regularly do bench tests).

Sometimes readers have such great ideas for unique approaches to product reviews that I hire them to write for PAR. In fact, we are constantly looking for experienced writers who can offer keen insight into a product when it is under evaluation. (Those interested in writing reviews should drop me an email at jgatski@aol.com.)

In PAR’s case, I really believe that experience equals credibility.

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