Talking With The Pros

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:16
This is talking with the pro professional. This is talking with the pros with me just be I speak to the professionals in the world of audio to gain an insight into what it takes to become a pro. On this episode of talking with the pros, we're gonna dive into the basics of audio engineering, from a professional stance, Paul, he's going to walk us through what it takes when one approaches audio for the first time. And what is really necessary to know going into this world of audio Paulie, I know you have a lot of points you want to talk on, walk us through it. For those

Unknown Speaker 1:00
of you that are interested in audio equipment, buying a microphone, going to Guitar Center, and getting a speaker or you know, you want to do something with the mic section, right? You have a guitar that you want to make sound good. You have a microphone, your vocalist, and you want to make that mic sound good. How do you do that? What's the science? What's the technical side of audio? It's a fascinating one, I'll tell you that. Because what it takes is an understanding of what is really going on behind the scenes of audio specifically in an audio console, or a computer console, right? Digital Audio Workstation. So depending on your application of that understanding, hey, I want to make an album or I want to make I want to make a song, you want to make that song sound really good. There's a whole method going in that you're mindful of before you even get there. Before you even integrate yourself with the gear. There's a certain mindset, the way that works, you have the source material. Now the source material is the material that is not it doesn't even have anything to do with the gear it has to do. All with what's producing. Exactly. Yeah. So the talent the the instrument that you're using, right? Is it a good quality instrument? Or is it Are you a good speaker? Number one, are you somebody that can get a point across write or sing with skill, so it's all about raw talent. The early days of capturing audio were totally analog. There was no form of, you know, digital or anything like that. It was all about acoustics. When you go into a space, and you listen to an orchestra back in the day, they built that entire space specifically for audio acoustics,

Unknown Speaker 2:51
acoustics. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 2:54
So you go into a cathedral, you'd go into a stadium, you go into an opera house, it was all about amplifying the human voice. I haven't experienced where I went to Saragossa, Spain. I was in a college, where Einstein actually showed up and gave a lecture. And when I stood on the stage, I was shocked. I felt like my voice was already naturally like, louder.

Unknown Speaker 3:18
And was it booming? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 3:20
it was Bumi. It was I was able to say, I was able to talk in a normal speaking

Unknown Speaker 3:25
voice like this. And then did it reflect back to you?

Unknown Speaker 3:29
It it would, but I just I could feel the whole room built a certain way so that it could I could be heard in the back of the room. It just it felt like my voice was amplified. Like right now, as I'm recording this podcast with you, excuse me, as I'm recording this radio show with you. I am talking through a microphone, that mic is going into an audio console, it's coming back out through headphones. In my head, I can hear my own voice. That amplification can happen naturally when you build a space around it, right? So we don't necessarily need, you know, audio equipment to get a point across, right. But we live in the digital age. We live in an age where we're listening to content on our phones, and we're, you know listening to the radio,

Unknown Speaker 4:22
but also different venues lend to different applications or multi applications. So rooms aren't necessarily built for specific Lee hearing, music orchestra or speakers. Speaker having coming up on the stage, these rooms are like multi purposed. Right so they're not really putting into like the engineering part. For this room. It's more nowadays, the audio engineer has to now approach a room and work with the room versus the room working with set alexza

Unknown Speaker 4:58
likley. So let's say you're somebody listening right now and you just got your first microphone, you got your first instrument, your Sweetwater dog, yeah, from Sweetwater, or you're somebody that is interested in becoming an audio professional, right? And you're interested in working in this in this field. The skill set required is nothing other than using mostly your ear to operate the gear, it's not the gear, it's the ear. Like that. Now, the gear is extremely important, right to aggregate our signal our source, right where the source of the signal, or the talent is the source of the signal, but we need to get that to the end user. Okay. So really, what are we mixing? What is it? What is the role of an audio engineer, the role of an audio engineer is not to mix the audio. With using gear using consoles using all of this stuff in between the signal, it's all about how can I get from me to you? Or get the talent to you? That's all it is. If you think about it like that, it'll simplify the process of getting into the gear.

Unknown Speaker 6:27
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Because it's more reliant on approaching it through the lens of what am I working with today? As an audio engineer, what am I going to be getting? What do I need to put out, so knowing we're going to have one person on the microphone a singer, we're going to have to set up the drum kit and take that source. And then we have plugins, we have electric guitar coming in, and we have other electrical instruments. And then those things are the source material. When

Unknown Speaker 7:01
you watch an orchestra concert, the sound engineer is the conductor. Because the conductor is physically with his hands, dynamically controlling human beings, and telling them to come up, turn up, turn down, bring this section, bring this in, and he's mixing the entire show. Just with his hands,

Unknown Speaker 7:27
right? Like that

Unknown Speaker 7:29
you can't even write he can't even say anything during the show. It's all quiet all visually. Right? So that's the essence of an of an audio engineer. But you're doing it with digital equipment, or analog equipment. It's so cool, right? You're a conductor, you think in the mind of somebody? How can I make this mix audible, so people can understand it? Understand the speech, understand the singing, and also quality, the sound quality? How can I feel the energy and the vibe of this mix? Right? Right now? We're talking through SM seven microphones. So to a trained ear, you could probably tell maybe. But also, how is the listener hearing us right now they're hearing us through a card system or a home theater system, or maybe their air pods, their phone. And what's awesome about this is all of this stuff going in between is eventually just getting to another human being. So if you just think like source material, to end user, our job as audio professionals is getting all the stuff in between, right?

Unknown Speaker 8:45
And making that happen. Right. And that includes the console, the wires, and even the speaker system. within an environment

Unknown Speaker 8:54
exactly. You don't necessarily know as a casual listeners or people just normal people that are not engineers, they don't know what's really going on. They don't really think oh, there's a speaker there, or oh, there's a they just walk into a space.

Unknown Speaker 9:09
And the room is shot. Right? So shooting those speakers in a certain way where it's balanced and right bringing in like

Unknown Speaker 9:17
subs, they just, they just go, Oh, this is cool. What is this and the air changes, right where, you know, air air is moving in a certain way. And with, you know, live sound systems, studio systems and systems, you know, even with casual listening, like from our phone where our phone is right, alarm systems, even whatever. There's so many different ways to get into this industry. There's so many different facets. But ultimately, it's that simple, just getting from one point to the other. That is done with a very simple concept in audio, inputs and outputs. That's it. If you can think about audio as inputs and outputs, you can understand what's happening in your workstation. If you're using Pro Tools, Ableton if you're using a very expensive multimillion dollar console. Well, if you're using a I mean, they're not like multimillion dollar consoles, they're not like super, super, super expensive there are like in recording studios there are, but majority of them are like in the whatever. Tangent. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 10:35
so this is expensive gear. It's just, it gets expensive.

Unknown Speaker 10:40
Yeah, like, hundreds of it can get to hundreds of 1000s. I'm just saying, whether you're in your garage with a microphone, a speaker and a little tiny $200 mixer versus an entire production in a stadium. The concepts are the same inputs and outputs, if you know how to take something from the source, and get it to the end user. That is the process of understanding inputs and outputs. Where's the starting? And where's it going? Similar to plumbing, where's the water starting? Where's it coming from? It's coming from the mainline, okay, now this the water is coming from the mainline. So I need to now route it to sinks I need to get it through the House or to an apartment building and get it to a sink on the fifth floor. Right? So if you think about an audio mixer, and an audio professional, their skill set is defined by how much they can really tolerate with inputs and outputs. It's like, how can you route it? And how good are you at doing that inside of an audio console? Taking the end going to the out? And can you make it sound good when it comes out? And

Unknown Speaker 11:56
what do you mean by tolerate? By tolerate

Unknown Speaker 11:58
tolerating the the stress because sometimes there's you can have like

Unknown Speaker 12:04
literally tolerating all maybe managing, right, right and balancing all of those inputs coming in.

Unknown Speaker 12:14
Exactly right you could have, you could have one input coming in one channel of audio coming in. But it's going to 1000s of outputs, you're throughout a whole matrix. For example, here at 91.5, there is an entire array of rooms, right? Recording rooms, broadcasting rooms, but we can go on air at any point in any room. Right now, if we wanted to, at the flick of a switch. And it's really interesting, because that concept of input and output, you can just, if you really, really get good at understanding those things, you can you can mix a lot in just you. In other words, you can go as far as you want in your career, you can talk, it's about how much you can tolerate. Really, right. And that goes for careers too, the more stress that you can handle in your career, the higher the income will be in your job.

Unknown Speaker 13:23
Right. So to talk about the different channels, different systems, there are multi faceted, you can put them in different slots, like that's the new upcoming technology that we have here. And on different consoles. For audio, you can switch a channel, and then put them where you want them so that your workflow and your tolerance can be managed.

Unknown Speaker 13:52
Exactly simplifying it is the key to success. In audio, you simplify the process of something coming in and something going out, the better you will be at your job, especially when you have to do it in a professional setting. in a professional setting. There's no room for, hey, can we make this happen? And is this going to take? Yes, there are technical difficulties and things happen where you have to address it. But ultimately, when someone's paying for it, right? It's important to get that content out. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 14:31
And that you were mentioning that something that sparked the reason for soundtracks. So the technical issues that can be really honed in during a rehearsal and then setting up your workflow. So then on the night of the performance, or in a couple of hours from then you can know exactly how you want to set up your workflow so you can have those tolerance and work ease Aliy and mitigate any issues and be able to approach it smoothly,

Unknown Speaker 15:05
exactly. I made a comparison that it's similar to a commercial pilot, in a sense, because we got a lot of fancy gear in front of us, there's a lot of fancy lights, and in front of an audio console. Yeah, it looks really, really fancy, right? Lights, a lot of lights. So it looks like we're behind a frickin airplane. cockpit, right? But it's not as stressful as shout out to commercial pilots. Like, that's a real stressful job, because you have lives on the line that there's actual life or death involved in your decision making. Here, it's just, you know, someone has a million dollar show. And if you mess that up, you will never get called back again. Or the people that really need to hear a certain message, they're not getting it. That's, I mean, that's, that's still stressful. It's just, you just have to know how to manage that, that it's what you can tolerate. I was using the plumbing analogy, right? Routing plumbing for a small, three bedroom, two bath house, right, versus an entire apartment complex. That's the skill set. If you think about audio engineering that way that hey, on the engineer that can do smaller venues with smaller gear. Great, but then the complexities of, you know, a huge apart apartment, right? That's, that's the bigger consoles, those are bigger inputs, bigger sample larger sample rates,

Unknown Speaker 16:38
I mean, just more channels Exactly. To manage and more inputs to manage and right,

Unknown Speaker 16:42
that's in your skill set required. But all it is, is inputs and outputs, inputs and outputs. That's all it is. So we can get into microphones a little bit, we can get into source material, let's start at the source. And then let's get to the end user. How about that? Okay, so the start of a signal is the source. And if you make the source sound good, your mix or your experience making something sound good is going to be so much easier. So as long as you sound good from the very beginning, like you tell me right now for this show. Fist away from the from the mic, right? Where I'm talking into the mic versus really close versus far away over here, that makes a huge difference. This is the source material. And like all that, right? So once you have the source sounding good, that source needs to get captured, you can use a microphone, you could use certain cable that goes to it, right? We're human beings. So we need a microphone, but guitar, guitar strings need pickups, those pickups then go out to a little control device nodes have like a volume knob right Gain knob on the guitar. And that sends that regulates how much voltage think of faders and Gain knobs or anything that is an amplifier. Think of it as a dimmer switch on a light, you know, in your house, like if you can dim the lights, turn the lights up, turn the lights down, you're just giving more voltage to that or taking away. Turning it off is completely is no no voltage at all. And then you're just adding voltage, the more you write. So that's what a fader is. That's what amplifiers do. They add and take away signal. Okay, how does that apply to a microphone? Let's say? So, me talking into this mic. It's going through, I'm speaking the source material, right, the diaphragm of the microphone is picking up the sound waves through the the range of human hearing, which is 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz of, of actual sound waves. So that's the range of human hearing and it's going through a wire and that wire is ending up somewhere, right? Where that wire is plugged in. is potentially, you know, it could be a speaker if you want it to. And then like how would you add amplification to that signal? Right, how do you get it's called a preamp. So we have a microphone preamp okay. Now, every console has either digital trim or a preamp in it and you add voltage to the device to give it life to give it you know signal right. So, the job of the audio engineer once you understand the the basics of fundamentals of audio, write it is knowing how to mix and regulate voltage. Really, we're just we're electricians, but we're doing it creatively. It's a creative decision. Most of it is creative in a lot. And it's just mixed with technical.

Unknown Speaker 20:16
Would you say that? As an audio engineer, it's almost as vital as having like, I've read it. I've read a book. Sorry. I've read the book on audio engineering, like the book. Okay. I don't know if you know, I got a book, the book. So it talked about having a golden ear. Now, do you think that's also as important as the source material and knowing all the technical ins and outs of your board being able to add voltage, but even having ears so

Unknown Speaker 20:56
the ear is the most important? At the same time? It is also I said earlier, it's it's not the gear, it's the ear, but you can't do it without the gear. Can't really do it. Like, I cannot amplify my voice in an acoustic space if the if the space is not built sure to boost my acoustics, right? So it's a compliment, right? But you use those. So so the reason why I'm going through the signal chain to the end user is understanding how to get how to regulate voltage. So that way, it's not, you know, you know, impeded in during the process. So the more open, you have the signal chain, the better. There's a term in audio called the unity. And if you notice on all of your audio consoles on even in your audio software, there's this thing, it's it's zero, that zero indicates open.

Unknown Speaker 22:02
Right? Is it sometimes isn't like an infinity symbol? No.

Unknown Speaker 22:06
So the infinity is just is is there's no signal, it's just dead. infinity means there's just no, no signal going to it. I really don't know the reasoning why there's an infinity symbol should ask, I guess, maybe, maybe.

Unknown Speaker 22:22
But I liked how you touched on even the pickups on an instrument and knowing those things and those technicals. And going back to the source material, and having what I like to emphasize is the golden air, and how all those things really complement. But are all like important to know,

Unknown Speaker 22:47
right? Have exactly so. So understanding the technical aspects of audio is crucial to getting the right result with your ear. Because you could be hearing something, oh, this mix sounds pretty good. I like it sounds nice. And then you look at your gear, and it's all clipping, it's all distorting and you have no idea what's happening because

Unknown Speaker 23:12
louder equals better, right? So

Unknown Speaker 23:15
that so there's a compliment between the gear and the air. Ultimately, it is the ear at the end if you really need to get a result really quickly. And but having better a better technical understanding will make the mix mixing process much easier for you. And so it'll take the stress off of you more simply, you can make the process the better. And the simplest way I can explain it is as the mic. So I'm talking to a mic. My voice is going down a wire and coming into an audio console going into a router specifically. And mixer router, whatever. As it comes in. It's it has an amplifier that's sent to it right? Well, that signal in the console needs to go out. So now we have the we covered the input. That's that's the basics of an input right there. After an input, it has to go out. And when you send it out. Exactly Did you know that you can turn any microphone or any speaker into the opposite? So what I'm saying is, I can turn a microphone into a speaker if I really wanted to. Wow, I could turn a microphone into a speaker. Say those. I don't know if I said those like it's kind of funny. Like, I can turn a speaker into a microphone and a microphone into a speaker. Okay, because they're actually the same thing. If you look at a diaphragm on a microphone, it's a speaker. If you look at a speaker, the design of it is a microphone They're kind of the same they, they they work through a process called electromagnetic induction, which is, yeah, the process of a magnet, positive and negative magnet going through a coil. And that coil pushes sound waves out, and it will capture sound waves. So how you route the signal, the polarity and how you just hook it up that the electronics inside dictates how its dictates the application of that? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not an electrician, but I know a little bit of that. So. Yeah. And now, on the output side, right, getting to the speaker, knowing the the way that the speaker sounds right, is different from the mic, knowing the application of the of the output? Are we in a stadium with two huge line arrays? Or are we in our house with studio monitors? Or our headphones? Right? So from the audio console, from the output, that this microphone is going to output, the output is going now to headphone amps to a recorder, that's recording our show. And we're able to hear everything. And that's audio. Wow,

Unknown Speaker 26:23
mind blown. I mean, I love knowing the ins and outs and those details. And I know there's so much more that goes into audio engineering, being an audio professional, where you're coming from, but just what you walk into in being an audio engineer, when you walk up, day one, you have a board, you have people on a stage, okay, what do I do? What is this thing? You gotta know, the beginnings, the origin story, if you will, of audio. So thank you for that rap. Employee

Unknown Speaker 27:02
inputs and outputs. All audio is is inputs and outputs, inputs

Unknown Speaker 27:07
and outputs, man. All right. Well, I loved hearing about all that stuff. This has been

Unknown Speaker 27:18
we can actually on another show. Yeah. We can then talk about how to mix those inputs and outputs how to make those inputs output sound, good. EQ, gain staging.

Unknown Speaker 27:29
Yeah, those things. I love it. I want a whole dictionary here at the end for our show. Professionals. Bye. Bye. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if you missed any of today's episode, you can find us anywhere podcasts are available like Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts. Thank you for listening to today's episode of talking with the pros with me. Just be I love you and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye

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