what do Audio Engineers do?

What all does the Audio Engineer job consist of in a area of Music?

press play, press record, and make sure that the signals dont peak while recording.

among a few other things.

what he said, at first at least. Once you get some chops and a little reputation people will start bringing mixes to you more often because their engineer isn't doing a good enough job. Any monkey can record in protools but I think it takes some time to develop your talent at mixing. The difference between the guy who does it for a living and the guy who records in his mom's kitchen is how badly they want it.

If you're willing to intern and learn from some real professionals and are not too full of yourself to work for free for a while you could probably eventually get a full time paid job, or take the knowledge and open your own studio for pretty cheap (less than 4000) and work w/local artists for a pretty decent bit of change.

But you have to be good, and by good I don't just mean being able to record a session but be able to do it quickly and efficiently. I've won over more clients by doing mundane things like pasting hooks in 2 seconds than giving them really good mixes. You also need to be good w/people.

You could also do things like post production which is pretty boring. You probably started doing this so you could work w/music anyway so why bother w/film.

good points man!!

i noticed he said audio engineer with no references to mixing or mastering so i based my answer as just the guy who records you and nothing else.

but it does evolve from there. and the engineer is a really important person. in fact, he is prolly more important than the mix engineer because there is only so much a mix engineer can fix. if you give him / her messed up (clipping / over modulating, too soft, alot of background noise) audio files, its gonna be really hard to deliver a good, clean mix to the client. thats the thing i like about doing both myself. i record my clients as well as mix their music and i find that it works out for me because i trust myself enough to know that i'm gonna have to mix this in the future, so i better do this right the first time lol!

So basically the job of Audio Engineers is too take musical recordings of the producer and do all the mixing and mastering and tweaking to give it that perfect sound right? I've been considering this career I just wanted to be sure on what they do. also to clarify a few things, a mix is when you take the tracks of the song and put them together and mastering is when you tweak it and edit it right?

no and yes.

mixing, mastering and recording are all different jobs that can be performed by the same person but are better when done by different people who specialize in one. here is a little breakdown of each job...

Engineering / Recording: Setting up the recording session, importing audio files from the producer or recording the band. recording each track making sure that the levels are where they should be and the audio doesn't peak or over modulate.

Mixing: taking what the engineer recorded and editing out empty space, flying the hooks (if needed), applying effects and dynamics and adjusting volume levels and eq to make each element of the song fit together. the song is done for the most part.

Mastering: takes a stereo track from the mix engineer and applies dynamics, eq, and limiting to give the track a full sound and increasing the dynamic range. this is really effective when mastering a whole album because the idea is that dynamically and in the case of volume, each track sounds the same. that is the main point of mastering.


like i said, each job can be done by one person but it turns out better when people who specialize in mixing do the mixing, ect. because they focus on that certain facet in the track. if you want a career in audio / music, i would say pick a field and just focus on that field. i mean, its good to learn certain things in the other fields because they all work together, but its better to master one rather than be a jack of all and a master of none.

I agree w/audigy you're better off just focusing on one of the jobs engineers can do if you're going for a career. I would also like to add that of all the different paths you can go with engineering music that mastering is the most lucrative. It's a harder to break into cause the playing field is so small, but the big guys make literally hundreds an hour. This kinda sucks for the rest of us, when you spend hours recording and mixing down a track then some guy makes twice as much as you in 30 minutes.

Audissey wrote:no and yes.

mixing, mastering and recording are all different jobs that can be performed by the same person but are better when done by different people who specialize in one. here is a little breakdown of each job...

Engineering / Recording: Setting up the recording session, importing audio files from the producer or recording the band. recording each track making sure that the levels are where they should be and the audio doesn't peak or over modulate.

Mixing: taking what the engineer recorded and editing out empty space, flying the hooks (if needed), applying effects and dynamics and adjusting volume levels and eq to make each element of the song fit together. the song is done for the most part.

Mastering: takes a stereo track from the mix engineer and applies dynamics, eq, and limiting to give the track a full sound and increasing the dynamic range. this is really effective when mastering a whole album because the idea is that dynamically and in the case of volume, each track sounds the same. that is the main point of mastering.


like i said, each job can be done by one person but it turns out better when people who specialize in mixing do the mixing, ect. because they focus on that certain facet in the track. if you want a career in audio / music, i would say pick a field and just focus on that field. i mean, its good to learn certain things in the other fields because they all work together, but its better to master one rather than be a jack of all and a master of none.

That best example given overall... by the way, all of em are types of audio engineers

4dahaterz wrote:That best example given overall... by the way, all of em are types of audio engineers

thanks! and great point! that is definitely true!