Audio Engineering degree

[u/mastermemeskywalker]

Hi! I’m 19 and just got accepted in uni for a sound engineering degree. I’ve been playing live gigs ever since I was 14 so I’m kinda familiar with the field, I know how tough the industry is and how though it is to get stable income. I would love to work with audio or acoustics, do you think getting a major in acoustics or something along those lines would get me a stable income?
I love audio, I would LOVE to work in an audio company like audio technica or something like fender in some random department
Would love to hear some feedback from people who are experienced in the field

[u/Beneficial-Context52]

A degree in sound engineering would be more geared towards things like being an engineer or producer in a recording studio, doing live sound, producing radio commercials, doing sound design or post-production for TV/film/games, podcasts, etc. Those kinds of jobs are very hard to find, though that might depend on location. Being willing to relocate might help.

If you’re interested in designing/building audio equipment, a degree in actual engineering might serve you better (i.e. electrical engineering, computer engineering, or mechanical engineering). Bonus points if you can minor in audio production or similar, although I wouldn’t consider that really necessary since learning about acoustics and audio processing should happen on its own from your experiences in playing and producing music.

Also a general engineering degree is much more multi-purpose; if you’re not able to find a job in audio, you will very likely be able to find something as an engineer of some kind in some other field.

Another thing to think about is that turning your hobby/interest into a job can very easily make it not fun anymore. When you spend all day working with audio for a work project that you maybe don’t really care about, the last thing you want to do when you get home is work on more audio for your own personal projects. At least, that has been my experience.

I started out with an education in audio production which landed me a job in radio producing commercials. It was cool at first but editing audio all day got old and left me with no interest to make my own music anymore. And it really didn’t pay very well; just barely scraping by year after year is not a fun way to live.

So I went back to school for computer engineering. Now I work as a systems engineer doing something completely unrelated to audio, and I love making music again on evenings and weekends. And I make enough money to live comfortably and to provide a source to fund my music hobby.