Two of my favorite toys these days are the Pro Audio Review digital edition and the latest generation of digital Flash recorders.

First of all, I am quite pleased with the industry reception to our digital edition of PAR that began "e-mailing" out last August. The email-delivered, Flash-operated, digital edition of the print magazine (complete with turning pages) is the complete magazine with editorial ads and active links. Rich Media features are on the horizon as well. Total digital edition page views, through the Feb. issue, total nearly 3.1 million. The Feb. New Gear Guide issue garnered 500,000 page views in its first four days.

The people who view the digital edition say they like it because because it works well as an Internet-navigated version of the print magazine, and it is immediately accessible via a computer from anywhere.

Because of the digital edition, PAR is no longer just a U.S. magazine; we now have digital subscribers from across the world — Europe, the U.K., Middle East, Australia, China, Japan and South America. With the digital edition, they don't have to wait three months to read it. When combined with our web site visitorship, about 70,000 per month, and our 28,000 print run, PAR is being distributed to about 150,000 in total every month!

No matter what the access point is, however, this popularity, I believe, is rooted in just one fact; our reviews. Our real-world, end user written reviews has made PAR a resource the pro community trusts. For over 10 years, if the professional audio engineer wanted to know about products, they looked in PAR. The digital delivery mechanisms just makes it easier to access.

Not A Flash in the Pan

Now back to those digital Flash card recorders. Two of them are reviewed in this issue, the full-featured, TASCAM HD-P2 and the iPod-sized M-Audio MicroTrack. And so is the very nice Sony MZ-M100 MiniDisc recorder, which records using either the space-saving ATRAC data-reduction scheme or linear 44.1 kHz.

I am so impressed with this generation of recorders — with their ability to record high resolution at such low cost. The portable DAT recorders of the 1990s worked pretty well and sounded good, but their media fragility and the limit of 48 kHz sampling always left you with the impression that location recording could be done better. The $400 street priced M-Audio MicroTrack sounds better than any DAT portable I have ever owned, which has been plenty.

We plan to review more of these recorders, including the Fostex, Edirol and Marantz version over the next few months, along with some expert bench tests to see how they measure up as well.

So long, old friend

I want to wish a fond farewell to my longtime friend (best man at my wedding) and coworker Alan Carter. Alan, who served as our national sales manager for the last four years and numerous other positions at IMAS Publishing, is leaving after 18 years to take some time off and travel the world. I wish him well, and I am sure I will see him frequently for our Greek pizza lunches.

John Gatski is publisher/executive editor at Pro Audio Review magazine. He has officially entered the pre-middle age demographic with his purchase of a V8 muscle car. Vrroom-Vrroom.

User Input

PAR is looking for reader/owner comments on the following gear: BIAS Peak XT, JBL LSR 4300 monitors, Digidesgn Venue console and dbx DriveRack 4800 processor.

We Want Your Feedback

We want to hear from you. Send your comments to jgatski@aol.com. Please include name, city, state and job title and firm in the email. For product submissions, contact Brett Moss at bmoss@imaspub.com.

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