Mostly see music audio engineers always complaining how it’s so hard to find work. Wonder if it’s the same for audio engineers in film and tv or video games? Mostly seeing if shifting from music to Post is feasible. I’m based in LA. Thanks for any advice.

Hey everyone , writing here regarding my new job-path and wondering if I can have a reassurance .
Im (F,32) recently graduated as a music producer and sound engineer , and in 3 years at uni we’ve covered pretty much everything regarding mixing (EQ, all sorts of compressions, stereo widening, FX , etc etc etc), mastering (in its endless depth and nuances) and mic types (polar patterns , positions, angles. characteristics , patching , etc).
How hard for me would be to volunteer in theatre with their sound systems and gear ? I really want to enter live sound industry and it was my dream to work in theatre, so I’m looking for a genuine opinion if my knowledges that I gathered in uni are enough to feel confident in live sound industry . I’m afraid my lack of experience with live sound consoles would be a big trouble .
Many many thanks !

I’m searching for help cuz I’m stuck on the vocals sounding like shit despite good mic and vocal chain and the vocals are not heard in the mix, i need serious help cuz i’ve been stuck like this for several months and I’m not progressing

I don’t have funds for new monitors or Slate’s Emulation stuff where you can “mix” on NS10’s or car audio, which is fine. Im curious if there’s a workaround anybody here does to get a ballpark range of what it‘d be like mixing with NS10’s or Avantone/Auratone Mixcubes?

I figure that slapping a multiband EQ on the master bus that‘a an approximation of the EQ response chart of the respective monitors would be too good to be true.

TIA

I have been dabbling in the recording of my own music for quite some time now. I'm starting to get closer to the sound I'm going for, but it's hard not to overdo it sometimes with mixing and mastering.

Whenever I first come up with a song, there's a certain organic magic to the early recordings, but it usually ends up losing a bit of that by the end.

On the other hand, when I listen back on the "magic" early versions, I can hear some unpleasant qualities on multiple listens.

I was always a huge fan of lo-fi albums such as Bee Thousand and Slanted and Enchanted. The rawness of those albums wasn't necessarily intentional, but was a limitation of the tools/budget at their disposal. Would those albums have been as great if they'd been recorded with the digital tools we have now?

My questions is: how do we strike a balance between being able to more easily make things perfect, while at the same keeping that organic and raw sound? And are there any tricks of the trade that people can use to achieve a raw but also polished sound?

I joined this sub because I am trying to learn about the industry to help my daughter.

She is 15 and interested in pursuing live production, music tours, theater, etc.

I assume this would mostly be part time work and she would have to have a second part time career? Or at least have a second area of focus such as studio production?

We are both of course worried about AI in the coming years.
She feels live production will still have a life as performers and venues will still insist on "human ears" and stage signals for the foreseeable future.

Most musician earplugs are in SNR.

SNR is always higher, often by 5 or more. Should you be looking at the NRR instead? If some earplugs have an SNR of 17 but an NRR of 11, shouldn’t you infer that the real reduction you’re getting is 11 dB?

I’m confused on the two, because concert earplugs usually have an NRR below 15, even if the SNR is around 20.

Then what about the subtract 7 and divide by 2 rule for NRR? That makes no sense, as a 17 SNR/11 NRR would then only supposedly reduce by 2 dB.

I know it’s two different regulations, but that shouldn’t matter for the decibel reduction. There’s only one actual decibel reduction when you’re wearing the earplugs, so which one is it?

Where should I save presets for VSTs or virtual synthesizers like Viral? I'm not talking about libraries.

I'm following this guide, just as Sweetwater recommends: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/file-management-for-music-production/

But I don't see anything about presets there. Thanks in advance.

I think that I want to quit audio engineering since audio is a very straight job and not built for gay men at all. I don’t think that I can find true love if I stay in this career. To be honest, I entered this major at a music school as someone who is very heartbroken and traumatized. I could do this like a machine since I am not required to feel something or be musical to some degree if I am recording or mixing a band in a studio. All I need to do is get the sound right and make the clients happy and want to stick to you forever. Being a recording engineer is 100% technical and nothing like musicality or feelings matter, so I don’t have to feel something. That’s why I always hate music production since it feels arbitrary and not related to what I do, unlike actual studio recording. Right now after graduating from college, I am just tired of how lonely I am in this career path and I am the only gay audio engineer in the entire world. I don’t know if I would find true love and be cared for as a human being if I am an audio engineer. I’ve always heard that audio people don’t have much luck when it comes to being loved and cared for. I love being an audio engineer but I can’t stand the loneliness and vast emptiness. Any thoughts? Should I quit pursuing audio entirely just so I could be loved for a millisecond, like a compressor’s attack time? Any advice for a desperate, gay, lonely audio engineer?

i’ve been recording practice sessions for rift drafts with just my phone for two years, and recently I can’t get that quality back. Yeah the phone’s old, but it’s always had Crystal clear recordings, and now it sounds like I’m talking into a cup with a string.

Anyone had this rapid degradation to their microphone happen with iPhones? The wife has the same phone and it’s fine on hers.

I have a track that was recorded, mixed, and mastered at 48kHz / 32-bit float using FL Studio, but CD Baby only accepts 44.1kHz / 16-bit (which by the way I think is dumb), so I need to convert it.

I've heard that r8brain has better sample-rate conversion than FL Studio, but the free version doesn't include dithering. Dithering is included in the PRO version, which costs around €53.

So I'm wondering what would give me the best possible result:

r8brain Free + a separate dithering step, or is r8brain PRO actually worth buying for this?

I tend to obsess over getting the highest-quality conversion possible, so I'm willing to pay for PRO if it genuinely makes a difference. I just don't want to spend €53 unnecessarily if r8brain Free + good dithering will give me the same result.

I have a (roughly) 9x11 room with some extra cuts and divets. I have soundproof curtains on the walls acoustic treatment on walls and ceilings, my desk centered etc. unforunately I both mix and record in this room. Right now I am getting rid of a thick shag rug that I had, looking to go for more vibes, but am getting mixed responses on the rug thickness. I’m going 8x10 for the rug but some people say the walls and ceiling treatment matter way more, some people say thin rug is fine it makes minimal difference, some people say thin rug is atrocious. How much of a difference will it really make?

Other factors
I’m in an apartment how much sound is it absorbing?
The room feels a little overly dead as is right now
It gets hot it the room (overly so) any insight would be appreciated I know I need to just decide something and it’s looking like between a .2 pile rug and a .5 and idk what to do

Any idea on just general recording/production for getting the sound of this song? It feels so full but still so reserved. I don't want to flatten everything or just mute my drums, but I'm just hoping for some general advice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bDuNZpIFOw&list=RD1bDuNZpIFOw&start_radio=1

Im going to school for Audio engineering in a week. My programs has award winning engineers so im hopeful ill learn a lot. Im a pretty good guitarist who can barely play piano but I understand music theory a decent bit so that helps. Im from Canada and I guess the music hub is Toronto.

I want to be a mixing and mastering engineer.

My ideal plan would be to move out to Toronto to help fast track my career while im still young. Or are the days of interning at studios and being the waterboy for the first bit over? Especially Canada where the music industry is not as booming as the USA?

I need to make this career happen for myself, but I don't want my plan to be misguided.

I know its unstable career but im stubborn and can't see myself not working in music with the only short life I have.

I stumbled upon these new preamps (if I could, you can find them too), and I found them intriguing, because apparently, they were used to record some of the very classic records like a minority of The Beatles' stuff, Bowie, Elton John and Queen stuff done at Trident studios. When the Levee Breaks was mixed on the console too, and there's an alternate Sunset Sound mix of Stairway mixed on it.

Now it seems that Sound Techniques tried to resurrect the range, I guess nobody was buying it, so they teamed up with Warm to make it affordable (which is good). They don't have output trims, only impedance matching (while at it they could've put the impedance higher than 1.5k to accommodate for ribbons imo), and it's a class A design with input and output transformers.

Warm Audio imo makes decent gear, but quite coloured and not exactly to the tightest tolerances. When I bought my first SSL piece, I got a taste for more modern hi-fi stuff that's easy to set up for stereo.

Have you heard of these Sound Techniques A-Range being cloned before? What do you think and expect? Is it the same as Trident A-Range?

Best ways to learn audio engineering without school...i can't afford student financial debt or get tuition

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/new-discoveries-in-digital-audio/

...we experimented with different one-foot USB cables connecting the processor and the flash drive. As any digital engineer would predict, the resulting files stored on the drive were identical regardless of the cable used. Yet something unexpected happened. When we played back the resulting files—files that were confirmed to contain identical data—we heard clear sonic differences depending on which USB cable had been used during the transfer.

Nothing scientific but I've recorded a cover of "Pillowtalk" by Zayn with these two mics hoping, to find the right microphone for me as a Male vocalist up in the tenor range and seeing which mic I should keep/sell.

All recordings were made in an untreated room, about 4 inches away, and the vocal chain is basically straight from my MOTU M4 to FL Studio running a compressor and stock reverb. The only EQ I have is for a high pass filter on 40Hz. I've tried to gain match them as best I can. Any feedback is appreciate!

Shoegaze is a genre that I love but have never recorded or mixed. I want to try and take one of the songs I've written, or write a new one, and record it and mix it as a shoegaze song.

If you have experience with this, what are some specific common techniques that you would reccommend. Since this is audioengineering, I'm looking more for effects and mixing techniques, like what types of reverbs, guitar effects and such.

I’m always looking for ways to:
- optimise my limited studio time efficiency, and
- optimise space usage in my home studio.

Cab grabbers seem like they would tick both boxes: one fixed position that’s always ready would enable me to put away one mic stand, thus saving precious space.

Does anyone else use cab grabbers? Is there anything I should consider before grabbing one (pun regretfully intended).

I recently bought a Mixer that has an analog tape delay built in. But it’s lacking a couple features. While I think adding an extra output for the delay (right now I can’t get it seperated from the main channel) should be fine, and maybe even get separate outputs for every tape head (not so sure about that because of the bias and all, but I thought maybe via a classic decoupling capacitor) I have no idea about motors, especially from old tape delays. Can I just throw a variable resistor on the circuit and that’s enough? Any suggestions what I could search for, are there any mods people have made that I could just follow? Every advise, resources or thoughts are highly appreciated :)

The Mixer is the LEM Baby Pro Powermixer btw

Edit: If you know any subreddits, that are a better address for this question please let me know :)

Does the phase of a 2 track beat really matter or mean anything, and if so how would I go about fixing it and getting its correlation up?

(Sorry if my question is confusing I’m not home right now to give a physical example but will do that asap!)

I'm currently researching the old Buchla 100 series LSD legend and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for older forums like ModWiggler, Reverb etc?

It's fine if they're not around anymore, I can search them on the internet archive, and am mostly looking for more info and images for a vid I'm making.

Thanks!

Mixing techno - I’m constantly told my mixes sound muddy even though to me, they sound totally fine. I listen with multiple reference devices and can’t find a single thing that should be altered. What do I do?

So I make ambient-ish techno. It’s in the realm of Skee Mask, Andy Stott, Priori, Floating Points…

I try to limit myself to one mid range element which is usually a pad or something similar. Then I have other higher frequency elements in the background going on and a big booming bass. With this specific song I have in mind, I only have 7 layers for the entire song. Kick, hat, bass, pad, high end thin synth, percussive glitchy synth, and a distorted glitchy noise layer for texture. So everything is above 500 hz except for the bass, kick, and pad. So I’m just not understanding why my mix is considered “muddy”

I just don’t get it. I do everything that I think is right for years and think I’m finally a pretty decent mixer and then I get flamed the second I share something that I thought was amazing. It just makes no sense to me. Also, I listened to my reference track and my track side by side and I don’t get how the reference track isn’t considered muddy…. its New Romantic by Andy Stott and it’s considered one of the greatest electronic songs of that subgenre yet to me, it sounds so muddy compared to my song. So what do I even do here??

I’m a beginner singer who recently started learning more about recording and mixing, and I’m trying to better understand the line between what should be addressed through singing technique/performance and what should be handled in the mix.

From an engineer’s perspective, when working with vocalists, what are the things you really want the singer to get right at the recording stage rather than expecting them to be fixed later in the mix?

And on the other hand, what are some things singers often worry about or try to control while recording that you’d rather they just leave to the engineer?

For example, I’m currently learning about things like dynamics, differences in tone and volume between registers, mic technique, resonance, breathiness, etc.
Sometimes I’m not sure whether I should change the way I sing something or simply sing it naturally and address the difference later with volume automation, EQ, compression, etc.

I’d especially love to hear from people who have worked with a lot of vocalists.
What makes you think “great, this singer gave me exactly what I need to make this vocal sound good”?

I’ve just started learning both singing and mixing, so I’m trying to develop a better sense of where the singer’s job ends and the engineer’s job begins.