An audio engineer (also known as
a sound engineer or recording engineer)[1][2] helps to produce a recording or a
live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization,
dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, and reinforcement
of sound. Audio engineers work on the "technical aspect of recording—the
placing of microphones, pre-amp knobs, the setting of levels. The physical
recording of any project is done by an engineer ... the nuts and
bolts."[3]
Sound engineering is increasingly
seen as a creative profession where musical instruments and technology are used
to produce sound for film, radio, television, music and video games.[4] Audio
engineers also set up, sound check and do live sound mixing using a mixing
console and a sound reinforcement system for music concerts, theatre, sports
games and corporate events.
Alternatively, audio engineer can
refer to a scientist or professional engineer who holds an engineering degree
and who designs, develops and builds audio or musical technology working under
terms such as acoustical engineering, electronic/electrical engineering or
(musical) signal processing.
Research and development
Research and development audio
engineers invent new technologies, audio software, equipment and techniques, to
enhance the process and art of audio engineering.[6] They might design
acoustical simulations of rooms, shape algorithms for audio signal processing,
specify the requirements for public address systems, carry out research on
audible sound for video game console manufacturers, and other advanced fields
of audio engineering. They might also be referred to as acoustic
engineers.[7][8]
Education
Audio engineering schools
Audio engineers working in
research and development may come from backgrounds such as acoustics, computer
science, broadcast engineering, physics, acoustical engineering, electrical
engineering and electronics. Audio engineering courses at university or college
fall into two rough categories: (i) training in the creative use of audio as a
sound engineer, and (ii) training in science or engineering topics, which then
allows students to apply these concepts while pursuing a career developing
audio technologies. Audio training courses provide knowledge of technologies
and their application to recording studios and sound reinforcement systems, but
do not have sufficient mathematical and scientific content to allow someone to
obtain employment in research and development in the audio and acoustic
industry.[9]
Noted audio engineer Roger
Nichols at a vintage Neve recording console
Audio engineers in research and
development usually possess a bachelor's degree, master's degree or higher
qualification in acoustics, physics, computer science or another engineering
discipline. They might work in acoustic consultancy, specializing in
architectural acoustics.[10] Alternatively they might work in audio companies
(e.g. headphone manufacturer), or other industries that need audio expertise
(e.g., automobile manufacturer), or carry out research in a university. Some
positions, such as faculty (academic staff) require a Doctor of Philosophy. In
Germany a Toningenieur is an audio engineer who designs, builds and repairs
audio systems.
Sub-disciplines
The listed sub-disciplines are
based on PACS (Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme) coding used by the
Acoustical Society of America with some revision.[11]
Audio signal processing
Audio engineers develop audio
signal processing algorithms to allow the electronic manipulation of audio
signals. These can be processed at the heart of much audio production such as
reverberation, Auto-Tune or perceptual coding (e.g. MP3 or Opus). Alternatively,
the algorithms might perform echo cancellation, or identify and categorize
audio content through music information retrieval or acoustic fingerprint.[12]
Architectural acoustics
Acoustic diffusing mushrooms
hanging from the roof of the Royal Albert Hall.
Architectural acoustics is the
science and engineering of achieving a good sound within a room.[13] For audio
engineers, architectural acoustics can be about achieving good speech
intelligibility in a stadium or enhancing the quality of music in a theatre.[14]
Architectural Acoustic design is usually done by acoustic consultants.[10]
Electroacoustics
The Pyramid Stage
Electroacoustics is concerned
with the design of headphones, microphones, loudspeakers, sound reproduction
systems and recording technologies.[8] Examples of electroacoustic design
include portable electronic devices (e.g. mobile phones, portable media
players, and tablet computers), sound systems in architectural acoustics,
surround sound and wave field synthesis in movie theater and vehicle audio.
Musical acoustics
Musical acoustics is concerned
with researching and describing the science of music. In audio engineering,
this includes the design of electronic instruments such as synthesizers; the human
voice (the physics and neurophysiology of singing); physical modeling of
musical instruments; room acoustics of concert venues; music information
retrieval; music therapy, and the perception and cognition of music.[15][16]
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific
study of how humans respond to what they hear. At the heart of audio
engineering are listeners who are the final arbitrator as to whether an audio
design is successful, such as whether a binaural recording sounds immersive.[12]
Speech
The production, computer
processing and perception of speech is an important part of audio engineering.
Ensuring speech is transmitted intelligibly, efficiently and with high quality;
in rooms, through public address systems and through mobile telephone systems
are important areas of study.
Practitioner[edit]
.jpg)
At
the front of house position,
mixing sound for a band
A variety of
terms are used to describe audio engineers who install or operate sound recording, sound reinforcement,
or sound broadcasting equipment,
including large and small format consoles. Terms such as "audio
technician," "sound technician," "audio engineer,"
"audio technologist," "recording engineer," "sound
mixer," "mixing engineer" and "sound engineer" can be
ambiguous; depending on the context they may be synonymous, or they may refer
to different roles in audio production. Such terms can refer to a person
working in sound and music production; for instance, a "sound
engineer" or "recording engineer" is commonly listed in the
credits of commercial music recordings (as well as in other productions that
include sound, such as movies). These titles can also refer to technicians who
maintain professional audio equipment. Certain jurisdictions specifically
prohibit the use of the title engineer to any individual not a
registered member of a professional
engineering licensing body.
In the recording
studio environment, a sound engineer records, edits, manipulates, mixes,
or masters sound
by technical means to realize the creative vision of the artist and record producer. While usually associated with
music production, an audio engineer deals with sound for a wide range of
applications, including post-production for video and film,
live sound reinforcement, advertising, multimedia, and broadcasting. In larger
productions, an audio engineer is responsible for the technical aspects of a
sound recording or other audio production, and works together with a record
producer or director, although the engineer's role may also be integrated with
that of the producer. In smaller productions and studios the sound engineer and
producer are often the same person.
In typical sound
reinforcement applications, audio engineers often assume the role of producer,
making artistic and technical decisions, and sometimes even scheduling and
budget decisions.[18]
In German, the
"Tontechniker" (audio technician) is the one who operates the audio
equipment and the "Tonmeister" (sound master) is a person who creates
recordings or broadcasts of music, who is both deeply musically trained (in
classical and non-classical genres), and who also has a detailed theoretical
and practical knowledge of virtually all aspects of sound.[citation
needed]
TV Audio engineer
Education and
training[edit]
See also: Category:Audio
engineering schools
Audio engineers
come from backgrounds or postsecondary training in fields such as audio, fine arts, broadcasting, music, or electrical
engineering. Training in audio engineering and sound recording is offered by
colleges and universities. Some audio engineers are autodidacts with no formal training, but
who have attained professional skills in audio through extensive on-the-job
experience.
Audio engineers
must have extensive knowledge of audio engineering principles and techniques.
For instance, they must understand how audio signals travel, which equipment to
use and when, how to mic different instruments and amplifiers, which
microphones to use and how to position them to get the best quality recordings.
In addition to technical knowledge, an audio engineer must have the ability to
problem solve quickly. The best audio engineers also have a high degree of
creativity that allow them to stand out amongst their peers. In the music
realm, an audio engineer must also understand the types of sounds and tones
that are expected in musical ensembles across different genres—rock and pop music, for example. This knowledge of
musical style is typically learned from years of experience listening to and
mixing music in recording or live sound contexts. For education and training,
there are audio engineering schools all over the world. In North America, the
most notable being Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida,
and OIART (The Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology) in London, Ontario.
Role of women[edit]
According
to Women's Audio Mission (WAM),
a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco dedicated to the advancement
of women in music production
and the recording arts, less than 5% of the people working in the field of
sound and media are women.[19] "Only three women have ever been nominated for best
producer at the Brits or the Grammys" and none won either award.[20] According to Susan Rogers, audio engineer and professor
at Berklee College of
Music, women interested in becoming an audio engineer face "a
boys' club, or a guild mentality".[20] The UK "Music Producers' Guild says less than 4% of
its members are women" and at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts,
"only 6% of the students enrolled on its sound technology course are
female."[20]
Women's Audio
Mission was started in 2003 to address the lack of women in professional audio
by training over 6,000 women and girls in the recording arts and is the only
professional recording studio built and run by women.[21] Notable recording projects include the Grammy
Award-winning Kronos Quartet, Angelique Kidjo (2014 Grammy winner),
author Salman Rushdie,
the Academy Award-nominated soundtrack to “Dirty Wars”,[22] Van-Ahn Vo (NPR's top 50 albums of 2013),
Grammy-nominated St. Lawrence Quartet,
and world music artists Tanya Tagaq and Wu Man.[citation
needed]
One of the first
women to produce, engineer, arrange and promote music on her own rock and roll music label was Cordell Jackson (1923-2004). Trina Shoemaker is a mixer, record
producer and sound engineer who
became the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album in
1998 for her work on The Globe Sessions.[23]
Gail Davies was the first female producer
in country music,
delivering a string of Top 10 hits in the '70s and '80s including "Someone
Is Looking for Someone Like You," "Blue Heartache" and "I'll Be
There (If You Ever Want Me)."[24] When she moved to Nashville in 1976, men "didn't want
to work for a woman" and she was told women in the city were "still
barefoot, pregnant and [singing] in the vocal booth."[24] When Jonell Polansky arrived in Nashville in 1994, with a
degree in electrical engineering and recording experience in the Bay Area, she
was told "You're a woman, and we already had one"—a reference
to Wendy Waldman.[24] KK Proffitt, a studio "owner and chief
engineer", states that men in Nashville do not want to have women in the
recording booth. At a meeting of the Audio Engineering
Society, Proffitt was told to "shut up" by a male producer
when she raised the issue of updating studio recording technologies.[24] Proffitt said she "finds sexism rampant in the
industry".[24]
Other notable
women include:
·
Sylvia Robinson,
early hip hop music producer
·
Susan Rogers,
engineer for Purple Rain
·
Genya Ravan,
producer The Dead Boys' Young, Loud and
Snotty;
·
Delia Derbyshire,
British electronics pioneer
·
Lari White, a
co-producer on Toby Keith's White
Trash With Money
Sub-disciplines[edit]
There are four
distinct steps to commercial production of a recording: recording, editing,
mixing, and mastering. Typically, each is performed by a sound engineer who
specializes only in that part of production.
·
Studio engineer – an engineer working within a studio facility,
either with a producer or independently.
·
Recording engineer – engineer who records sound.
·
Assistant engineer – often employed in larger studios, allowing
them to train to become full-time engineers. They often assist full-time
engineers with microphone setups, session breakdowns and in some cases, rough
mixes.[18]
·
Mixing engineer –
a person who creates mixes of multi-track recordings. It is common to record a
commercial record at one studio and have it mixed by different engineers in
other studios.
·
Mastering engineer –
the person who masters the final mixed stereo tracks (or sometimes a series of
audio stems, which consists in a mix of the main sections) that the mix
engineer produces. The mastering engineer makes any final adjustments to the
overall sound of the record in the final step before commercial duplication.
Mastering engineers use principles of equalization, compression and limiting to fine-tune the sound timbre
and dynamics and to achieve a louder recording.
·
Audio/sound designer – broadly an artist who produces sound
tracks or sound effects content for media.
·
Live sound engineer
o Front
of House (FOH) engineer, or A1.[25] – a person dealing
with live sound reinforcement.
This usually includes planning and installation of loudspeakers, cabling and
equipment and mixing sound during the show. This may or may not include running
the foldback sound.
A live/sound reinforcement engineer hears source material and tries to
correlate that sonic experience with system performance.[26]
o Wireless
microphone engineer, or A2. This position is responsible for wireless
microphones during a theatre production, a sports event or a corporate event.
o Foldback
or Monitor engineer –
a person running foldback sound during a live event. The term
"foldback" comes from the old practice of "folding back"
audio signals from the front of house (FOH) mixing console to
the stage so musicians can hear themselves while performing. Monitor engineers
usually have a separate audio system from the FOH engineer and manipulate audio
signals independently from what the audience hears so they can satisfy the
requirements of each performer on stage. In-ear systems, digital and analog
mixing consoles, and a variety of speaker enclosures are typically used by
monitor engineers. In addition most monitor engineers must be familiar with
wireless or RF (radio-frequency) equipment and must communicate personally with
the artist(s) during each performance.
o Systems
engineer – responsible for the design setup of modern PA systems, which are
often very complex. A systems engineer is usually also referred to as a
"crew chief" on tour and is responsible for the performance and
day-to-day job requirements of the audio crew as a whole along with the FOH audio
system. This is a sound-only position concerned with implementation, not to be
confused with the interdisciplinary field of system engineering,
which typically requires a college degree.
·
Re-recording mixer –
a person in post-production who
mixes audio tracks for feature films or television programs.
Equipment[edit]
Correcting
a room's frequency response.
An audio engineer is proficient with different types of
recording media, such as analog tape, digital multi-track recorders and workstations,
plug-ins and computer knowledge. With the advent of the digital age, it is
increasingly important for the audio engineer to understand software and
hardware integration, from synchronization to analog to digital transfers. In
their daily work, audio engineers use many tools, including:
·
Analog-to-digital
converters
·
Digital-to-analog
converters
·
Digital audio
workstations (DAWs)
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