Waldorf manuals are great. They cover the basics then build on them.
Great and funny. I miss those guys.


Analogeezer wrote:
(Mike Rivers) wrote in message
news:znr1051184744k@trad...
In article
writes:

I don't think I've ever seen a worse manual, even before the cat:
6 pages of
errata. I think there were even errors in the "corrections".

When I first got interested in writing manuals for audio companies,
I
interviewed for a job doing that for Roland. At the time, about 5
years ago, the way it worked was that they got the product and the
manual (the Jinglish version) from Japan about five minute before
product introduction. Their plan was that within a month or so
they'd
put out a decently written guide to the basics, add detailed
application notes to their web site, and eventually put it all
together into a new US manual. After waffling for a few months,
they
eventually hired someone else into the position, someone who had
written manuals for them in the past under contract and was
intrerested in a permanent position.

I think his advantage over me was that he had written manuals for
musical instruments, something I had never done. Anyway, reports
are
that things have improved slightly but they're still a long way
from
supplying decent manuals for complicated equipment fairly promptly.
Paul Lehrman wrote a couple of good ones for them back in the early
sampler days, but that was as good as it ever got.

Be that as it may, musical electronics is getting extremely
complex,
and it's expensive and time consuming to publish a decent manual.
Since the product may well be extinct before a good manual can be
put
together, more and more often, it never emerges. The right way to
do
it is to start writing the manual when the product's technical
specs
are complete and the engineers know what they're supposed to be
designing. Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way in this
industry.


A lot of good points Mike, one thing I would add is that if all synth
product manuals were as bad as Roland's, we'd just chalk it up to the
nature of the product(s), but Roland seems to excel at making really
bad manuals for really good gear.

OTOH, my day job often deals with writing/reviewing technical
specifications and good technical writing is very, very hard to
do...especially when the end user might not be that technically
inclined.

FWIW, Korg seems to run a close second to Roland, their
Trinity/Triton
manuals are a really good example of suckdom.

Great manuals for synths....check out Waldorf, those guys are
great...they even have humorous stuff in there in addition to the
good
info, who said the Germans don't have a sense of humor.

Analogeezer