Education

Skill matters more than gear#

A bad workman blames his tools. Many people don't know how to use the EQ and compressor they already own, and that is often what drives Gear Acquisition Syndrome: the mix doesn't sound right, so they buy another plugin. The remedy is education on the tools you have, not more purchases. Probably the one purchase that really does separate an amateur from a pro is a properly treated room; see rooms.

An audio degree will not get you an audio job#

Doctors and lawyers need university, because universities hold the keys to those professions. Audio is different. No mixing, recording, mastering, live, game or film audio job requires a degree. When I had a studio, a wave of CVs from new graduates arrived every summer, and I wasn't interested in the slightest. What I cared about was whether you could talk to clients professionally, keep calm under pressure and even insults, and do the job at a high level with a track record to prove it.

My own degree taught me nothing about mastering, which is what I have done for my entire career, and nothing about preparing a mix for mastering. Much of the syllabus was basic or irrelevant. To be fair, it gave me friends I still work with twenty years later, and a couple of lecturers with real industry experience were excellent. But if I were 18 again, I would not go.

Internships and courses from people who do the job#

The best route in is often an unpaid internship. If I were starting again, I would start as the tea boy and work up. I worked for free and everyone in this industry with a reputation has done some version of that. Experience doesn't teach you everything, though, so I would add targeted online courses from working professionals, on the specific things you want to learn. That often beats three years and tens of thousands on cost, time and relevance.

It's worth choosing those teachers carefully. The industry has a lot of self-proclaimed experts teaching nonsense, sometimes even university lecturers, so paid courses can be hit or miss.

AI compared with courses#

I put free Ai chatbots to the test as a coach for mixing a rock track. They sent me on various wild goose chases. When the right answer did turn up, it was buried in the middle of such an overwhelming list that it probably wouldn't help someone who didn't already understand the problem.

That said, AI seems to be better than a paid course from someone who doesn't know what he is talking about. But it falls far short of a well-curated course from a professional who steers you to a coherent method. An ocean of unsorted, unfiltered knowledge is just as bad as no knowledge at all. More in AI.

Audio engineers should know engineering#

In most fields, especially in Europe, "engineer" is a protected title. It implies scientific training and the ability to reason clearly. Audio engineers in the 1950s came from rigorous science and electronics backgrounds. Today almost anyone who can press record calls himself an engineer, and many audio degrees are arts degrees that put feelings ahead of rigour. Without that background, engineers can become indistinguishable from audiophile laymen, which is how pseudoscience gets in.

So audio engineers should know basic electronics and how speakers work, and should be able to spot a flawed comparison and say so. Many have never been taught logic, which is probably why audio arguments are so often full of straw men and ad hominems; see evidence. None of this needs heavy maths. Class A, harmonics and FFTs can all be explained with drawings.

Making great records and being right about theory are different skills#

Many legendary engineers learned on the job by copying the people before them. Their records can be superb and their theory still wrong, and that doesn't take anything away from their craft. But when those beliefs get passed on as teaching, audio can start to look mystical, when it is a well-understood science.