CLARISSE: [QUESTION]

ED CHERNEY: Yes. [PH] Clarisse -- Clarisse says -- I’m sorry, Clarisse.

CLARISSE: [QUESTION]

JIM PACE: Yes. There is a singular fee that for initiation, and that really is to cover the cost of the testing procedure and usual documentation that goes with this. Beyond that, there is no running royalties. There is no cost of business. The professional market is not one that is healthy enough in our mind to sustain something like that and really it would do injustice to what we’re trying to do.

ED CHERNEY: Next.

FRANK FILIPETTI: The object here is to differentiate, more than anything else, products, and the main thing is that if you look in any of the current magazines that are out there, be they EQ or Mix or any of the, you know, pro sound news, what you end up looking at is hundreds of products. How do you differentiate those products? What -- especially if you’re new to this business, so you’re new to this industry, how do you know what’s good and what isn’t good? What we’re trying to do is we’re not setting up -- We’re setting up standards from the standpoint -- We can evaluate a $1,000 product as much as we can evaluate a $100,000 product. The object being what we want to do is say in this particular category, if you’re looking for a budget microphone, this microphone is worth your consideration as opposed to looking at a bunch of other things. What’s important here is there’s no one that’s doing this kind of testing or high-end audio anymore. You know, 20 years ago, there were magazines testing all the time and doing. No one’s doing this any more and there’s so many products on the market that we want to recognize those that adhere to the standards that these -- our original founding pro partners adhere to.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [QUESTION]

JIM PACE: Yes. There will be a follow-on program to work specifically with educational institutions.

DAVE: [QUESTION]

ED CHERNEY: Hi Dave.

METALLIANCE: Hey Dave.

DAVE: [QUESTION]

ED CHERNEY: The question is if a company wants a product evaluated, do they have to be a member of META and Pro Alliance? And the answer is?

JIM PACE: Yes.

METALLIANCE: [LAUGHING]

ED CHERNEY: A resounding yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [QUESTION]

ED CHERNEY: George?

GEORGE MASSENBURG: Obviously it’s different between different types of equipment but exhaustive testing -- exhaustive testing of clocks and digital, exhaustive testing of the interface in digital products. You know, so often you’ll build a good clock and not be able to distribute it because your line drivers have noise themselves. I don't know how many of you know how much clocks are sensitive to noise in the control room. You know, we make a big deal about low-jitter clocks and then put them in noisy control rooms and the jitter specs go magnitudes out of range. Looking for those things that we hear in the studio means going back and forth between testing -- and we’ve got the best equipment to test -- and guys that listen to it, 10, scores, hundreds of times, and can come back and say, You know, I know what you say. I know what the numbers say but here’s what I hear,” and to be able to -- Maybe, in an outside case, to share this information with our partners, but exhaustive testing, and extensive microphone testing. We’ve got a microphone chamber. We’ve got an anechoic chamber.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [QUESTION]

GEORGE MASSENBURG: None really. No.

JIM PACE: The point there is not to publish our own specifications. Specifications we found can be argued all day. Generally, the feeling is specification can pretty much, with some certainty, tell you if something is bad, but a specification isn’t necessarily going to tell you with some certainty if something is good, and our point really isn’t to do other than verify what the manufacturer is representing in their verdict. So, there will be a lot of that. And we feel that because part of this -- part of this momentum will involve establishing the branding for that that we’ll be working with manufacturers on a lot of their newer products, and part of what we’ll be doing is we’ll be giving them feedback to say, “Okay. You know, this is good but maybe you should look in this area. Maybe you should look in that area,” and by then hopefully we’ll be actually elevating the quality of the products themselves.

GEORGE MASSENBURG: Well, as I just wanted to say, when we formed this group a few years ago, we have one criterion that was that whatever product we decide to certify, it’s not a democracy. It’s not, you know four to three or five to two. It’s unanimous, which means that if we certify a product that means seven of the best test ears in the business, in this group here, have certified that this meets their standards and their specifications. Their resumes speak for themselves but that was our goal was not to certify a product unless we all agreed it was of an exceptional nature, and I think that’s very important to remember this is not a vote. This is a unanimous decision by everyone that this product merits attention.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [QUESTION]

ED CHERNEY: Also, that being said, I really wanted to add that we feel that it’s our responsibility in our position and we have achieved in our careers to do service to the art of music and that’s really the bottom line of what this is about where we want to serve the music and the artist. Elliot.

JIM PACE: You could answer the question.

ELLIOT SCHEINER: I answer the dicey stuff. What is your question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [QUESTION]

ELLIOT SCHEINER: Okay. Well, I just want to say that a group of this stature we’re probably going to take a lot of hits about what we’re doing, and we’re not in it to make money. I mean obviously nobody can afford to pay us what we get normally, so we really are here to do this one thing, and that’s our passion and that’s what we’re going to do. No more questions? See you

JIM PACE: Okay. Great. Thank you all.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]

ED CHERNEY: Thanks for coming and listening to us.