Conventional Wisdom for the Audio Engineer

What is conventional wisdom anyway? From the Wikipedia; “...is a term used to describe ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public or by experts in a field. The term implies that the ideas or explanations, though widely held, are unexamined and, hence, may be reevaluated upon further examination or as events unfold.”

This explanation does very well in defining the wisdom and critical thinking process that audio engineers use to do their jobs. Most of the job is “unexamined” meaning it’s not laid out in some step by step fashion that has been deemed the “correct” way to do things. Instead there are widely held ideas that are the “accepted” method yet have no deep truth. Instead these techniques have a lot of abstract value because most of the time, they solve the problems you seek to remedy and they work just fine.

The key to the Wiki statement is the last portion of the sentence. “....may be reevaluated upon further examination or as events unfold”. This again is precisely why Live Sound 101:FOH Mixing is a good place for aspiring engineers to start. Here’s an example. If you have not been introduced to the conventional wisdom of an experienced engineer, you can easily assume that because noise gates block unwanted noise from your inputs in your mix, that using a noise gate to remove bleed-through from all mics onstage is the right thing to do. But it’s not. Noise gates on things like a vocal mic can absolutely destroy the intelligibility of the spoken word. Speaking and singing both have similar requirements for intelligibility and a gate accidentally cutting off the beginning or ending phonemes of a presenter or singer’s words will render them meaningless. This effect, known as masking, is very detrimental to the spoken word. The examples of this kind of wisdom are too numerous to go into here. Needless to say, take the class to find out more!

It’s easy to look at a piece of equipment and assume that it’s operation must be very straightforward. Yet audio engineers spend many years developing personal techniques that take simple devices and solve complicated problems. Furthermore, audio processing devices can just as easily render a performance unintelligible as it will make it sound better. Learning the conventional Wisdom from a working engineer is one of the ways that newcomers to audio engineering can bridge the gap between the simple OJT (On the job Training) approach and the need to understand what’s a workable solution versus what’s a waste of time. Don’t waste years tinkering around with audio devices when you can learn the Conventional Wisdom straight from an experienced audio engineer. Sign up today!