Audio Engineering Basics

Written By Jaimee Pappas

You may not realize it, but audio is surrounding you in your everyday life. From the music you listen to, the sound effects in your favorite video game, and to the background music you hear in movies, sounds go a lot deeper than what most of us hear. There is certain engineering to sound that is created by many talented and professional people in the industry. These people create sounds using real-life objects and tools and bring them all together through editing to create a new and improved sound.

There are numerous types of equipment, software, and tools that go into audio design. The jobs that involve sound engineering and design can include titles like “audio engineer”, “sound designer”, or “music producer”. The environment surrounding this field can be quite cool. For example, most of the employees are involved with some type of audio design and editing work in places such as movie studios, radio stations, music studios, and other creative environments.

Touching more on the equipment aspect of audio design/engineering, the main thing people need to even properly run and handle any heavy-duty editing is a decent computer. I’d personally say that you don’t want to be using one of those weak laptops for some serious business. Digital audio engineers use DAWs (digital audio workstations) to get their editing and recording done. DAWs are usually any type of sound editing or producing software that enables the user to create new and completed sounds either by editing the way a single piece of audio sounds or by combining and editing several different sounds together into a multitrack session. Some examples of popular DAWs include Adobe Audition, FL Studio, and Reaper. I've used Adobe Audition for sound editing projects and it is pretty simple to use, but I will say that there aren’t as many editing options as some other bigger DAWs.

Below is usually what the essential layout of a DAW will look like.

In terms of more technical equipment that allows sound designers to do things like capture voiceover work and create sounds, decent audio recording microphones are a must if you are going to record any sounds yourself. It’s important to have somewhat good ones because factors like popping and background noise are accounted for with them. Ultimately, the equipment of an audio designer can be the bare minimum or go completely overboard.

You’re probably wondering what exactly a sound designer does and some terminology used. The main jobs of an audio designer are editing, mixing, and mastering. Editing is done by fixing and arranging the sounds that have been recorded. Mixing a piece of audio, or a track involves adjusting the sound levels of each track throughout the entire session. Mastering is done by finally doing the little last step fixes in a recording, bringing all tracks and sounds together to become consistent. This is the final product in sound editing and can vary depending on the editor/producer’s desired results.

As for audio design as a career or side job, almost anyone with the knowledge can do it with the right tools and dedication, just like most things. There are a lot of people who work from home as producers or audio designers with purchased and kept equipment. It’s a nice thing to be able to have if you’re really interested in that. Most professional audio engineers, as I’ve noticed, later decide in their career to create a custom at-home studio and still be able to bring in money using it! Now, if we’re talking about jobs for companies and businesses regarding audio design, that can be different. The median hourly pay for a sound designer is about $20. This can range quite a bit with experience, though. The overall total pay of a sound designer can range from about $24,500 to $81,500. Since this field is a little less paid attention to in the audio field compared to writing music or performing, there are always job opportunities for it somewhere, and this also makes it better paying. There is quite a bit of information to know about audio designing and you definitely can’t get it in within just a few tries. Most jobs require some type of degree in the field because of this that can show them you are guaranteed to know the information. Some job titles I have come across when doing a job search on Indeed include “Audio Engineer”, “Sound Engineer”, and “Recording Engineer.

All in all, there are many things an audio engineer can accomplish and learn.

Sources:

Jaimee Pappas
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