The Myth of a Thousand Little Choices: The 80/20 Rule as Applied to Audio Engineering

Image courtesy of Flickr user Erica Zabowski

We often make hundreds or thousands of decisions on any given project. How many of them really count?

Most of us like to tell ourselves—and others—that although any one of our little tweaks may be too small to be heard, it’s the net effect of all of them together that really makes the difference.

There may be some truth to this idea. And so, we feel justified going back and forth, boosting and cutting a vocal by a quarter of a dB, or obsessing about whether to center that EQ around 1kHz or 1.2. We might move a mic a quarter inch one way or the other or wonder about whether we should have used that other preamp instead.

But as important as it is to care about the little details, it may be even truer that for every thousand decisions we make, several hundred of them might not really matter at all.

The Pareto Principle

In the early 20th century, an engineer with Western Electric, named Joseph Juran, took an absorbing interest in the relationship between efficiency and quality. He wondered endlessly about how the two could move in tandem, reinforcing one another.

In 1941, Juran came across the work of the pioneering Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who had, among other things, gone around Italy measuring stuff. He had noticed a striking pattern: In Pareto’s country, 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people. In his garden, it turned out that just 20% of the pea pods produced 80% of the peas.

To Juran, all this seemed eerily familiar, and he went on to popularize these kinds of observations throughout his career as a consultant and author on quality and efficiency. He called it “Pareto’s Principle of Unequal Distribution.”

Since then, countless others have added their observations to the pile: 20% of a company’s products account for 80% of its sales; just 20% of nations account for 80% of the world’s GDP; 80% of health care costs come from 20% of patients; 80% of the computer crashes come from 20% of the bugs; 80% of the crimes are committed by 20% of the criminals, while 80% of complaints come from 20% of customers, as do 80% of the profits. (Though presumably, from a different 20% of customers.) Even sound waves in the air behave according to this kind of “power law.”

And so it is, so much of the time, in the world of audio. We make 80% of our revenue from 20% of our clients, we we spend 80% of our time on that stubborn 20% of the project, and perhaps, 80% of our choices make very little difference at all.

The 80/20 Rule in Audio

At first, this idea can be discomforting. A belief in the crucial importance of each of our thousand little choices serves as a welcome and ego-enriching crutch.

To think: You might have settled on the exact opposite choice for every single one of your smallest tweaks, and it would have made no significant difference in how great or terrible your mix turned out. So many of the choices you spent the most time obsessing over may have made little or no appreciable difference at all.

Bah! But who wants to think that way? As far as appearances are concerned, fussing about with differences that are barely audible to others (if they are in fact audible at all) can make you look like some rare and inscrutable mad scientist, hyper-devoted to the project and in touch with something in the ether that mere mortals can not grasp. (This kind of thing is a plus when your field of competition includes, at least in theory, anyone with access to a reasonably powerful laptop or tablet.)

But once accepted, this idea is much more empowering than it is disquieting. It means that 20% of our activities give us 80% of our results. It means that as long as we can identify and do well with those choices and tasks that matter most, we have tremendous leeway to be expressive and to enjoy the process; tremendous power to become faster and more effective.We have tremendous room to make art.

The Biggest Wins

The underlying reality is that great work comes not from the thousand little choices themselves, but from the few big principles that inform them all.

If you can get those key principles right, 80% of the job will fall into place without much thought or effort at all. Focus on improving those 20% of choices and habits that have an outsize impact, and the rest will rise to meet the standard you’ve set.

With that in mind, here are a few of the guiding principles that, if gotten right, will have benefits that ripple through your work. These are the things that we all talk about, but few of us remember to do, each and every time.

1) Take Breaks, Take Notes

We often do our best mixing when we’re not mixing. How’s that for proof of the futility of our tweakiness?

Whether you’re listening to a rough mix in your car, on a walk with some headphones, or on the couch of the back of the room, some of our best and most powerful choices are inevitably made when we can’t touch anything.

Nothing is a better cure for the urge to run circles down the rabbit hole, making a thousand tweaks that don’t need to be made, than a little break to clean the ears and reset the mind.

2) Start With the Most Important Elements

Some of us start a mix, recording or arrangement with drums because… well, that’s just what we do. This is a bad idea.

You should only start with drums, or anything else, because you think they are one of the most, if not the most, important element in this particular mix.

A lot of great mixers in the vocal-heavy pop domain start their mix, not surprisingly, with the vocal. In some styles or songs you could do worse than to start with synths, strings or guitars if those are the elements or relationships that define the mood and purpose of the piece.

Whether recording or mixing, get those central elements in early and let them be central. Each additional element should support these driving forces rather than detract or distract from them.

3) Get The Monitoring Right, and Always Use References

None of the choices you make will be good ones choices unless you know what you’re hearing. Good monitoring environments are crucial, but even in the best of environments, so are great references.

We all know we’re supposed to use references, but do you? How often? Know what your room sounds like inside and out. Deeply understand what’s considered appropriate and edgy in the style you’re working with. Even if you want to break the rules, you’ve got to know what they are in order to break them.

Make sure your clients have a good handle on this as well. Listen to references with them in the production space, and encourage them to bring their own. As often as you do this, you will forget what things really sound like from time to time, as you are not a robot. So refer back to your references.

(Note that some people don’t like the idea of references because they think their project is a unique beautiful snowflake. That’s fine. But how are you supposed to know if you’ve succeeded at being a unique beautiful snowflake unlike any other in the history of creation, if you have no basis of comparison?)

4) Work Quickly

If there is a key takeaway here it is that you must not allow yourself to get too bogged down on any one choice.

Whether creating or mixing, it is essential to get the momentum started and to keep it going.

Analysis is for the time before the creation process, after it, or at stages in between. It is for troubleshooting when something goes wrong, and for refining the process for the future when you have some time off. It is not for creation itself.

If the work bogs down or slows down around a decision, sound or performance, see #1 and consider taking a break.

5) Compare a Limited Set of Options, Then Decide Quickly

Image courtesy of Flickr user drestwn

Even if most choices really don’t matter much, you can try and give yourself a few that matter more.

When EQing, listen for what too much and too little energy at a given frequency might sound like before trying to settle on the spot that works best. Go a little too far in one direction, a little too far in the other, and find the balance that works. Give yourself a meaningful basis of comparison.

When working on balances, move the fader too low and too high. You will quickly intuit where the happy medium is with a minimum of fussing about quarter-dB increments.

When recording, put up two or three mics for a singer and pick one. Audition two options for guitar tone or a mic placement and pick the one that works. (That’s two or three. Not twenty.)

Try out countless options only when lost. If you remain lost, revisit #1 through #4.

6) Decide What’s Important and Make Bold Moves

With few exceptions (most notably in esoteric ambient art) every section of a piece of music or scene in a film should have a central element or focal point.

So decide what’s important and be ruthless about that decision. Decide what any given section is really all about, and make that focal point clear. This can be a single instrument or an interplay between two parts.

While you’re at it, do not be afraid to push an effect beyond reason to the very edge of taste. Do not be afraid to leave things bone-dry. Do not be afraid to add a touch of shine to everything. And do not be afraid to leave things as they are.

Instead of trying to find the “perfect” EQ point, try a wide shelf or a Baxandall filter. Instead of fussing with the attack time down to the millisecond, try different compressor or try not compressing at all.

Be bold. Be authoritative. Make a statement. No one remembers a cup of weak tea.

7) Listen in Context

The solo button will lie to you. Every time. Listen in context, and make your choices in context.

If, while overdubbing, you keep raising and raising the volume of  each new part, so that you can actually hear it over the mix, then the sound is wrong or the part is bad.

Each new piece should lock into the puzzle as you add it. What if you forced yourself to record each overdub at roughly the level it would actually appear in the mix? What kinds of choices would you make? What kinds of sounds and parts would you add?

Never force, never cram in a sound or a new part, no matter how good of an idea it seems in isolation.

8) It’s Not The Gear

A poor craftsman blames his tools. A poor audio engineer thinks he needs better ones.

Once the basic requirements are met, any additional equipment is a luxury, not a necessity.

It’s not worth fretting over luxuries. They are to be enjoyed, not worried over.

End Groove

Get the essentials right and 80% of your project will fall into place. As for the other 20%? There’s another saying: The “perfect is the enemy of the good.” 

If you can get even half of the remaining 20% right you’ve got a 9 out of 10 right there, which is far better than most projects in the world end up. Most of your favorite records are probably a 9 out of 10 at the very best. You probably have some favorite movies books or records that you’d rate an 8 out of 10. (That’s 4 stars out of 5.)

Perfection is not for this world. While the rest of them are driving themselves neurotic by shooting for perfect, focusing on the 80% of meaningless choices that give 20% of the results; while the rest of them are rarely, if ever finishing and delivering great results on that 80% essential core of the project, you can be on to the next project and the next.

That’s how great careers are made. They are not made while fussing over “perfect.” Because perfect never comes. And so, “done” is better.

Justin Colletti is an audio engineer, educator and journalist. He lives in Brooklyn, and two out of every ten paragraphs he writes probably has a typo in it somewhere. (Maybe more.)

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