Using this Website
This is a community-driven website and tour membership club that will evolve over time based on the wishes of the membership. In that light, these are suggestions below are only to provide a vision to get started. That being said, these suggestions will be updated as they evolve over time. The intent here is to specify the intention to avoid any confusion so that we are working together in a common manner.
PLEASE NOTE: This is an early stage for our website. Many of these processes will change as we find ways to automate common tasks such as tour applications, joining tours, newsletters, new tour notifications, etc. Feel free to make suggestions in the forums or directly to me at billb@AudioTiers.com. We are also in need of volunteers that understand WordPress/Elementor-based website technology to help us reach our vision.
Browse and Search Content
The AudioTier website content is open and free for all to browse and search. Our goal is to give back to the audio community by providing compelling audio content and discussions. Even better, we are offering direct experience through our tours to offer a variety of opinions and perspectives on their performance allowing broader discussions.
Menu Structure: The menu structure was designed to provide easy access to the desired content. Feel free to randomly explore.
Tags: You will see linked subject tags in blue throughout the site when exploring our blogs that offer quick search options for like content. For example, click the CIEM tag and you will quickly get a search list of all CIEM content.
Search: The search icon in the top left gives you access to a powerful search engine that allows you to search all content in this site.
Forum Discussions
While our reviews and tours take the form of blogs that can be discussed in the comment section, our Forum was created to have free form discussions on a variety of topics. Currently, we are broken out into several categories that may be expanded later:
- General Tour Conversations: We can discuss tour procedures, suggestions, expansion, etc. here while specific tours are managed as Tour Blogs with related comments focused there.
- Getting Started: As we come up with “administrative” or “how-to” content and discussions, it will go here for viewing or open discussions. Remember, this is a community lead site so your opinion matters.
- CIEMs: This is where we can discuss CIEM related topics. My vision was to group topics by manufacturer, then add comparison or optimization topics as needed.
- Headphones: This is for headphone related topics, broken out by manufacturer and topics.
- Sources: This is for source related discussions, again by the manufacturer and then by topic.
- Cables: This is for cable-related topics, broken out by manufacturer and topics.
- For Sale: We will eventually end up selling and trading our equipment amongst ourselves, so here is a place to list your items.
Please remember, this is your forum and these are suggestions only to get started. The important note is that this is a discussion board, not where we manage our specific tours or reviews.
Tour Participation
While we originated our tours on HEADFI, we have outgrown our ability to continue our tour management there as we are now too visible. Going forward, we will be managing our tours here on the AudioTiers.com website to offer better control over our tours. This will allow a better and more automated application and tour signup process as well as better communication and notification systems so we don’t risk missing out on tours we car about.
Membership Applications: We are currently taking applications manually at my billb@AudioTiers.com email. However, we are working on an online application system to simplify the process with better visibility and more automation for speeding up the process. This will also allow visibility into your account and the ability to update the information directly as necessary.
Joining Tours: Currently we are doing manual requests by commenting on the tour blog here on this site. However, we are working on automating the work of joining tours to allow you to simply click a notification link to join with a confirmation email.
Managing Tours: We will start with manual PMs per the rules here on the tour blog. However, we are hoping to automate many of the manual bits to managing the tour once the kit is in motion. We will see how that automation turns out, but we should be able to automate the notification of the next two in line to receive the kit with an easy click to confirm your shipping address and that you are ready with that address being delivered to the shipping participant.
As you can see, we have big aspirations for this tour site and can use help from anyone fluent in WordPress.
Adding Reviews
Any member can be a reviewer and submit content to this site. Please request your membership to include blogger access and we are happy to assist in any way for those that are not familiar with submission. We will have volunteers that will help upload any reviews as well. To request to become a reviewer, please email me at billb@AudioTiers.com or reach out to any moderator as our administrator staff grows. Please let me know if you would like to be a moderator or assist in uploading reviews for other members.
Ideas for new Tours
We are always looking for ideas for new tours that will be popular with our membership. To justify a tour kit, we have a target of 15 members which is about a 6-month tour for each kit. To motivate our sponsors, we are looking for tours that our members are willing to either consider a purchase, commit to writing an informative review, or at least provide discussion and impressions. For this reason, going forward our tours will be “Reviews go first” tours. Please help us out with suggestions, introductions to manufacturers, and we always invite manufacturers to reach out directly.
- Suggestions: We have created a Forum Tour Suggestions thread specifically for your tour suggestions. The more popular suggestions will be turned into a “Tour Idea” blog that you can register for. Once we reach 15 registrations, we will work to make the tour happen.
- Introductions: Please offer potential introduction options to our Forum Tour Suggestions thread or feel free to reach out to me directly at billb@AudioTiers.com.
- Manufacturers: Please feel free to reach out to me directly at billb@AudioTiers.com.
