4 Ways to Better Use Your Time as an Engineer
Matthew Weiss has another insightful article out this week, called “Audio Engineers: You Care About The Wrong Stuff.”
It covers 4 critical areas in which you should be focusing more of your attention as an audio engineer. This one shreds apart some of the most often debated topics on audio engineering forums.
Weiss starts off by eviscerating any preciousness over sample rates: “Folks seem concerned about potential data loss (which I guess translates to aliasing distortion) and the effect that will have in thinning and distorting the audio. Frankly, I don’t believe I could pick out different sample renderings in a blind test and even if I could, I don’t believe I would actually care. I firmly believe that the end result would have no bearing on the listener’s enjoyment of a record or inclination to purchase it.”
He contends that microphone positioning and room acoustics play a significantly more important role than the sample rate you use. “Even subtle amounts of comb filtering will affect the sonic fidelity far more prevalently than sample rates. So rather than waste one more minute debating between 44.1 or 192 — try perfect mic positioning and room acoustics to get the best capture with the least amount of negative room interference.”
Weiss focuses on the importance of a great performance, and how it plays a far bigger role than great gear when creating music. People “get very emotional about gain staging,” he says, and goes on to point out some of the key big-picture differences between digital and analog gain staging.
Most centrally, Weiss maintains that while it’s easy to get caught up with “the mix,” the focus should always be on “the music.”
“What I’m learning as my career matures,” he writes, “is that so much of what I need to focus on is actually the music itself. For example, a very common question I see is ‘how do I get my vocals to sit in the record correctly?’ And there are a million mix-related answers to this question that are important. But before even addressing things like EQ or compression, we have to consider tone and timing.”
Read Weiss’ full article via the Pro Audio Files to get his full scoop on the topics mentioned here.
This is a theme we can’ t get enough of. For some of SonicScoop’s own homegrown articles on the subject, try:
The Myth of a Thousand Little Choices (The 80/20 Rule as Applied to Audio Engineering) and Big Wins: Audio Upgrades That Really Matter
Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.
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