The Sound Engineering Diaries

Now, you don’t even have to travel too far to be able to get this kind of exemplary private tutoring, thanks to tutor services that are available online. Tuition fees vary a lot, depending on where you are in the world and the kind of college it is. In the modern world where a Google search is just seconds away, memorizing facts – especially facts that you’re not using right now – is a complete waste of time. To try and cater to more students, most schools will have basic ‘workstation’ type studios in little cubicles which you can work on using headphones but you’re probably just as well off working at home. There are plenty of over-ear headphones around that price and more. The reality is, in many ways the role of the audio engineer is becoming more technical and less artistic. The reality is, there’s always more students than studios. A lot of the big studio sound engineers who lost their jobs have since opened their own home studios to make a living that way, but every year there’s more and more people willing to do the job for less – kids who didn’t drop $100K on sound school and don’t have a family to support yet.

This isn’t exclusive to the sound industry, there’s plenty of Harvard graduates finding themselves serving burgers through the Macdonalds drive-through window because they can’t land the job they thought would be a guarantee. The sound engineering courses listed in this post are 100% online and free to enroll and they also offer a certificate after your studies. This degree requires courses in music theory, basic piano, live sound, audio electronics, acoustics, music production, music programming, studio recording and audio mixing and mastering. The result of adding a lot of filler content is that these courses tend to be soooooo drawn out. Student loans are an option, but just understand that as soon as you take out a loan your future no longer entirely belongs to you. You’re obligated to pay that loan back in a certain time frame, and that may very well mean taking jobs right out of college that you don’t like.

I’ve met plenty of sound engineering graduates who came out of sound school spoilt by all the gear, and couldn’t produce the results without it. Yet, one of the boxes our tester units came in was swathed in a list of marketing claims 29 items long, the first of them being “Maximum Performance.” No, it wasn’t one of our winners. The State Licensing Boards in practically every state require engineers to renew their professional licenses regularly with a minimum number of continuing education units. Mix and edit voices, music, and taped sound effects for live performances and for prerecorded events, using sound mixing boards. Synchronize and equalize prerecorded dialogue, music, and sound effects with visual action of motion pictures or television productions, using control consoles. The biggest factor in deciding whether to study sound engineering is almost always the cost. They take a subject that could be covered in a few short months, and drag it out over several years by adding unnecessary filler content that has little to do with the main subject you want to study.

The technology needed to produce music is so affordable these days that you can just about buy an entire studio for less than the cost of renting out a major studio for the day. Not a major disadvantage this, but just something to think about… While attending a “name” school is not everything, if you can make it work, at least think about this place. It’s simple, if you make a course two years instead of one you instantly double your profits. We’re talking multiple years. I’m talking about things like memorizing different types of clock sync methods and compression algorithms – really? I’m just going to come out and say it: Big colleges / universities love filler content. The very best time to hang out as well as enjoy after fantastic recipe. A lot of guys drop out very quickly when they find out they have to learn circuit diagrams instead of programming beats. The big institutions charge a lot because they have to.

It’s a lot of technical jargon, general audio knowledge, and different forms of media production which you may not have any interest in at all. They’ve got big buildings, a lot of equipment to maintain, lecturers salaries to pay, big marketing budgets to justify, and they still have to make a profit on top of all that. The biggest differences from this unit’s big brother are a lack of directional guidance and a less-robust, if still impressive, detection range. Radar detection range is impressive as well and performs especially well on the 34.7 GHz frequency of the Ka band, according to Vortex Radar. The speakers promise the high-quality sound we’ve come to expect from Teenage Engineering, and they’re meant to be paired with the FREKVENS LED spotlight and LED multi-use lights, as well as the the light up speaker base. Unlike engineering sound in the controlled environment of a recording studio, engineering sound for a live performance is fast-paced work with immediate consequences.

A foundation year at art school led to an interior design course at the Royal College of Art, which in turn tilted me towards engineering. The course would work well alongside other creative subjects such as Art and Design, Acting and Media, or technology subjects such as Gaming or IT. Reproduce and duplicate sound recordings from original recording media, using sound editing and duplication equipment. Record speech, music, and other sounds on recording media, using recording equipment. If your main passion is music, realize that most of what you’re going to be studying has very little to do with music. Make sure to specifically ask how much studio time you’re likely to get in the main studio/s, and long it takes before you get access to the big studios. I mentioned this before – yes, you get access to some nice studios but how much time you actually get depends on the school and facilities. What you really want is to spend as much time as possible in the main studios, that’s something you don’t have access to at home.