How we research guides
IEM Rig guides exist to answer one question each: what should go in your rack, and why. They are written to be checked. Every number in a guide traces to a document listed in that guide’s Sources section, and when a manufacturer does not publish a figure, the guide says so instead of estimating.
Where the facts come from
- Manufacturer documents first: user manuals, quick start guides and spec sheets from the company that makes the gear.
- Retailer spec sheets second, when the manufacturer’s own document is not published or does not carry the figure. The guide names which retailer.
- The IEM Rig catalog for rack units, depth, weight and port counts, which is itself checked against the same documents.
- Our own planner for anything it computes, such as phantom-power budgets or how many console outputs a set of mixes needs. Where a guide describes a check the planner performs, it describes the check as the code implements it.
What a gap looks like
Some figures are simply not published. Several digital stage boxes, for example, list noise and distortion measured at a fixed gain but never state the preamp’s full gain range. When that happens the guide says not published in that cell, and the Sources section ends with a short list of what could not be confirmed. We would rather show a blank than a guess.
How AI is used
Guides are drafted with AI assistance from the documents above, under a fixed template that decides what every guide must cover. The AI does not invent figures: each one is taken from a cited document, and the draft is checked against those documents before it is published. Corrections to a shipped guide are made the same way, with the source added to the guide’s list. Nothing on IEM Rig is presented as the first-hand experience of a named reviewer, and no guide claims we plugged the gear in.
What we do not do
- Score or rank gear in a guide. Ratings live on gear pages, with their own method.
- Reproduce manufacturer or retailer text. Guides summarize and link.
- Take payment or product from a manufacturer for coverage.
- Change a published figure without adding the document that supports the change.
Found a mistake?
Every gear page has a Suggest edit control, and a correction with a document behind it is the fastest way to get a guide fixed. Back to all guides.