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On Audio/Video Production, Sound Reinforcement was extremely on topic, however recently, it has come up for debate whether this is still on topic for the site. Is sound reinforcement/live sound still on topic or has it been abandoned by the community?

In particular, the most recent form of the debate began from this post.

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Yes, it should still be on topic. We have a pool of resources who are excellent at it and the concerns are similar enough between live and recorded that many of the design questions can be relatively closely related to both. There is no good reason to abandon the live audio portion of the community in favor of restricting ourselves to a small portion of the population of the original community that was brought together.

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Yes - live sound, or the production or recording of live sound feels very on topic.

That said, I would regard questions asking for product recommendations as being off topic. So the post you linked in the question should be on topic (in my opinion) except for the piece asking:

Could I eventually use TASCAM DR-05 as a pre-amp?

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  • I agree in general principal, though I took that particular line as asking if the device could be used for a given purpose needed for using the mic rather than being a product recommendation. It is borderline asking too many questions, but in the context, it seems like he is looking to see if he can use his existing gear to help make a wired headset mic connection. It isn't asking "what is best", but rather "can this work".
    – AJ Henderson Mod
    Commented Aug 22, 2014 at 14:49
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Sound design is not live sound. It is that simple.

If this is what this forum is for, then you cannot call this site Sound Design. Just because people have crossover skills in this area doesn't mean these questions should be on-topic.

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  • +1 for Just because people have crossover skills in this area doesn't mean these questions should be on-topic.
    – Shannon Matthews
    Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 2:04
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No it should not be on topic, because there is a big resource online already for this type of questions. Sound Design however does not have this big presence(besides a defunct mailing list on yahoo and some generalities on filmsound.org). Furthermore the questions so far are on a very basic level, compared to the sound design questions. Of course sound reinforcement is a sound field that has mutual technical issues as sound design, however it never becomes an artistic issue (so far).

The focus of this website is blurred, with possibly any question regarding sound 'on topic'. This makes it an open invite to one stop shoppers that only drop a question here (and elsewhere) but don't help build the community. Having sound design and sound reinforcement together turns out to not exactly be helping getting a focus, it seems to me.

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  • I totally agree.
    – Mark Durham
    Commented Aug 27, 2014 at 8:37
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    -1 for there is a big resource online already for this type of questions. The StackExchange network is about finding a better format for question & answers.
    – Shannon Matthews
    Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 2:08
  • I agree, but the question is not about the functionality of StackExchange, it's about what type of questions (sound design) we should answer. I was referring to the fact that there is no place for sound design questions elsewhere (besides a defunct mailing list on yahoo and some generalities on filmsound.org).
    – Arnoud Traa Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 10:39
  • Added that to my answer.
    – Arnoud Traa Mod
    Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 10:44

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