Well... After two decades, my career as an engineer, producer and composer is over. I'm not really sure where it all went wrong, but over the past couple of years my clientele just dropped the hell off. As my income dropped below a sustainable level, I've finally started a job delivering packages for amazon. I'm unable to even keep my Pro Tools and plugin subscriptions going, I've sold most of my gear. Its over.

I have several major prodcer credits including a Billboard Top 40 and several major placements. It's been a really great career filled with a lot of fun, frustration and joy. Late night writing sessions and early morning commercial sessions...

For someone who was at a fairly high level in their career for so long, finding a job has been incredibly difficult. My resume is basically "made music for 20 years as a freelancer" 200+ applications and Amazon is the only one who's offered a job (their criteria is: "warm body with a driver's license")

Nobody wants to hire someone in their late 30s with no OTJ experience, no degree.

So here we are, day 2 of delivering vibrators and phone cases. I hate it so much, there is zero intellectual or creative stimulation.

This is the most humbling experience of my entire life.

If you rely on this industry to feed your family, my advice is to hedge your bets, have a backup plan, diversify income streams and dont rely on platforms like soundbetter that can drop off with zero notice.

This post is my shaking my fist into the void.

Edit: wow, I did not expect so much response! I figured I would get a couple downvotes for being a negative nancy. Thanks for the support everyone <3

At this point I miss the endless “top 5 lists of secrets the pros don’t want me to know”

There is a specific quality to ai sound that makesit sound weird. For example, there was an ai video with flowing water, but it sounded like it was trying to turn the water sounds into music or talking. And it adds random microphone compression artifacts everywhere so that it sonds like a laggy video call. Ai music has it's own weirdness, it sounds almost like truncated sound or something. You know when you put a youtube video at 0.25 speed? It sounds kind of like that, but I have not found anybody else talking about it so maybe I'm crazy. Everybody says that it sounds like the real thing. Is it all in my head? Can you hear the difference?

There are wayyyyy too many “experts” out there giving advice, tips, tricks, gear recommendations without discographies but with huge followings.

People talk about bad advice and misinformation… We as viewers have the power to control this by first asking ourselves “who is this person? Do they have a track record? Do they produce any commercial releases that I’m a fan of?”

Hello everyone, what's the most difficult concept to grasp in audio to you?

I've been making records with artists for over 10 years (I also have a background in physics). There are some concepts that seem basic to me but are difficult to understand for artists AND some concepts that seem convoluted to me but are obvious to artist.

I started posting on socials this summer, I talk about my vision on making records, my tastes, some music but I also try to demystify some concepts. I'm really inspired by some of the posts in this sub. It's giving me a fresh perspective about what needs clarification and also interesting points of view.

For example, I think one of the most misunderstood topic in audio engineering for music is: LUFS.
A few years ago I was producing an EP for a band. I delivered the master but they insisted for me to print a version at -14LUFS. I explained to them in length that it was not what they wanted. But it's hard to argue against "that's what Spotify says!". After them insisting I delivered them one version at -14LUFS and my proper version of the mastering.
The morning of their single's released they were all texting me about their song being way quieter than everything else on the platform...

That was years ago but I keep seeing so many misconception about LUFS online. I understand this topic is very confusing. So without going in detail about measurement (not everyone has worked as metrologist) I tried to demystify that topic for artists and made short video about -14 LUFS in my socials.

What are other topics or concepts you think are not well understood?

My name is Greazy Wil and I’m the engineer responsible for Killer Mike’s album, Michael, that took home 3 Grammys this year. If you haven’t already listened to it, please go listen to it now, as there is a lot of great engineering on it. It’s not your standard “drop some samples in a daw and rap on it” album. Follow me on Instagram and TikTok for more engineering and producing tips and my commentary on the state of the industry and what we can do to fix it.

I've been watching new plugins for years, and it's been a pleasure for me to try new ones. But nowadays, everybody makes a new plugin every day, vibe coding with some LLM or whatever.

I'm surprised that they can even ask for money for something we can also make by just kindly asking another LLM (they say prompting). But it's okay for people to try new things and make their dreams come true with those tools.

What makes me anxious is that I also stopped trying new plugins from even bigger brands, because I don't know about the code behind the plugin. So I just stick to the plugins that I've been using for years, and when I try new ones, they're always from the brands that I already kind of trust.

I'm pretty sure there are other people like me, and I genuinely think that this is going to hurt the industry in the long term.

Just wanted to share my ideas and hear about yours.

Cheers.

Hey folks! I went to college for Audio Engineering. They would not shut up about mixing in Dolby Atmos. Multiple classes fully dedicated to surround and atmos mixing, was talked about like “the next big thing”.

The first studio I worked at had a giant atmos rig that they used… for maybe half a dozen projects? This was a few years ago.

I never understood it. As far as I can tell, every musical innovation that stuck made music cheaper, lighter, and more durable for the end consumer.

Wax -> Vinyl -> Tapes -> CD -> mp3 -> streaming

Same goes for the advent of digital recording, and why quad never lasted.

So why would I expect Atmos, a format that is many times as expensive to experience properly (thinking about airpods, let alone a full 9.1.6 setup) more expensive to produce, and that has file sizes dozens or even hundreds of times larger than a compressed stereo format ever take off?

And maybe it’s just the bubble I’m in now as a touring and recording musician, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about Atmos, let alone PAY for its production in a couple years.

Am I missing something? Does anyone still care about atmos, or did the hype bubble pop? Curious to hear what you folks think, and I appreciate everyone’s perspective!

You've seen it, we've all seen it: that one question that begs for a condescending answer. I'm not referring to a question in particular but to the "genre" of questions that you can tell a mile away it comes from misinformation.

"What's wrong with my vocal chain?", "I have this plugin doing X but why doesn't it sound like Y?", and so on, I think you get it.

I'm a firm believer in helping people understand stuff better and I try as hard as I can to keep it chill and avoid "mean" answers, but I won't lie - sometimes I can't find any other answer than the condescending one.

The vast majority of media is made of amateur that have no fuckin idea what they're doing, or they do but they stick with "this simple trick" to get the views. This is, in my opinion, causing MAJOR turmoil in the audio engineering culture.

Sometimes, I read a post of someone asking for help and I wish, I WISH I could help but the question is so disconnected from the truth that I can't come up with a proper reply that might actually help.

Experimentation is cool, arguably it's the best way to learn, but how could you learn anything by experimenting with let's say parallel compression when your base knowledge of it is so skewed you don't even know what the point of it is?

And why have we stopped listening? Why are so many posts lacking audio examples? How can I tell what is wrong with the vocal chain if even you don't know why any of the FX is even there in the first place?

Sorry, I feel like a total dick by writing all this, but I swear I just wish I could help people but it's become way too difficult when the perspective is being skewed so hard.

And yeah, I know this phenomenon has been going on for years, but lately (like, a year or so) posts have either been super technical and advanced or completely off the rails.

Yeah, I'm mad, damn. Maybe coffee was too large.

https://youtu.be/0AxzJ-8n6qY

Sorry, I meant Dan. Dan has spoken.

Saw a clip of Jack Antonoff saying 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' is the best engineered and produced song of all time. He also praised the songwriting in the same way, but I want to just focus on the engineering and production aspect.

My 'perfect engineering' answer is 'God Only Knows' on Pet Sounds. My 'perfect production' answer is 'Suzanne' on Songs Of Leonard Cohen.

If I'm not restricted to 'songs', I'd say 'In A Silent Way' by Miles Davis is the single greatest engineered and produced musical work of all time.

I mostly engineered for my own projects, spent God knows how much on renting high-end condensers for the last 10 years, and even bought a TLM 103.

After moving to a major city, I live in a small space and don't have my glamorous studio setup anymore. I recorded vocal demos for my music friends and myself. One major factor is that dynamics are way easier to maneuver with while recording, which helps avoid vocal flaws (snap, crackle, and pop). You worry more about nailing the take and less about clipping or your vocals sounding too harsh.

You also don't have to worry as much about other people making noise around you. As long as you have a decent pre-amp/interface (a Cloud Lifter if you need the boost), you're good to go ideas just flow better when recording with the SM's.

Veterans have already mentioned this plenty of times, but to anyone starting out: please save yourself a lot of money and learn to work with the SM57's and SM58's. You can't go wrong for the price point, especially if you also perform live.

What do ya'll think?

Just scrolling on IG and I get this ad by Sonarworks for VoiceAI. Sure whatever, but the ad…. They are basically saying “why hire an audio engineer and a singer if for $99 you can have an AI singer”. I am extremely offended to the point I’m considering getting rid of SoundID and getting another system. I’ll show the ad in the comments w the link

I mean Valhalla is a fan favorite but anything better then that which is more powerful and versatile like Valhalla

This is not to knock the music or any one person. It’s for science. What are some of your favorite songs where the mix is not good. Maybe it’s really bad, but it doesn’t matter because the song is great or you just like it because.

Take this for what you will, but I feel I should at least share this as a warning / PSA to anyone concerned about these types of practices.

A while back I purchased a Volt interface and a couple of plugins from UA. To use them UA requires that you create an account and install their management software. I'm not a fan of this type of forced-account creation and forced-software installation, so I created a unique email address used just one time ever - for the UA account.

Three deal-breaking experiences have happened since.

1. UA's software "UA Connect" has turned out to be basically malware full of dark patterns. They do not offer an option to NOT automatically start the software at startup. They've designed it to constantly restart even if it is force quit. I spent a good hour researching LaunchAgents & LaunchDaemons and deleting any UA specific files, but in the end it just kept re-launching. I have no idea how they've done this, but that is malware. I immediately uninstalled UA Connect and will not reinstall it.
2. I have been getting more and more spam emails and phishing attempts to the unique email I created for my UA account. Again, the ONLY place this email has ever been used was in creating the UA account. They have either had undisclosed data breaches, have incredibly poor security in general, or sell user data. My guess is they sell user data and it's probably buried somewhere in their policy documents. These forced one-sided agreements are a whole 'nother issue, but the type of exposure and usage of this address is damning to UA in my book.
3. I tried to "connect" with UA to get some support, and was constantly denied any meaningful avenue and was instead pushed through dead end AI bots providing generic unhelpful responses.

I know not everyone gets as up in arms over this stuff, but I'd argue more people should. In my cases none of this is acceptable. I've of course uninstalled all UA software, have deleted the unique UA-specific email address, and will never give UA another hard earned dollar of mine. The hardware works fine without the software, and I'll use the installed plugins as long as they work under their current installed version.

We all know private equity is absolutely killing this industry - but there are good, trustworthy alternatives to almost all of these capitalist greed factories. Of course everyone should do what they believe in, but I believe that no one should be giving these types of companies any money at all.

Anyhow, take it for what its worth and be well.

Transparency note: I have posted this in another sub as well. Not trying to spam all subs and be annoyingly aggressive, but I think it's relevant to a few specific audiences.

Hi everyone, I’ve been using pro tools for the better part of 4 years. And have used pro tools for recording, mixing, sound design and editorial. I’ve seen a lot of sound designers now using reaper especially video game sound designers. Other than “reaper is just better” what reasons is reaper ACTUALLY better than pro tools at sound design? Have no loyalty to any actual DAW just want to know if there is an actual good reason to learn reaper and go through the whole process of learning a new daw or if it’s just diminishing returns. TIA

I’ve been in the industry for 40+ years. I started with decent stuff and somehow worked my way down to owning the absolute worst gear money...or the lack of it can buy. My mic collection is shit like i have random Amazon specials I find under 20 bucks, broken SM58s held together with tape I would steal from open mic nights, a studio condenser that hisses, a plastic USB mic that came free with a headset. Same story with everything else, $30 interfaces that clip if I do so much as scratch my nut sack, no real preamps, no outboard, just free plugins. Before fully embracing the garbage, I would occasionally upgrade to slightly less terrible clones or used junk. I’d be less miserable for a week until I started hearing one new problem. That one problem would snowball into “all I hear is how everything is broken,” and I’d either return it or just stop using it, losing money and motivation along the way. Eventually I decided I wouldn’t buy anything unless it was the cheapest, most compromised option available. I started collecting literal trash like toilet paper rolls and making mic diaphragms out of them, and boy does that shit suck. My no name dollar store 1 ply cardboard roll is the worst mic I’ve ever heard. A broken off xbox 360 headset mic is the only one I have now. Nothing sounds okay, everything sounds like it was recorded under a highway.

But you know what I found? I could still fuck up a recording even harder with the worst gear money can buy. That’s when it truly hit me. Bad gear actively makes bad engineering worse. I’m stuck with the gear and don’t get me wrong not just because it’s terrible, but because it’s made me realize that when I’m not getting the sound I want, it’s definitely the gear’s fault and never mine. I’ve got endless excuses now. I can always blame my $29 Amazon mic because it isn’t a real U47. That fact has destroyed my business. With the “this gear is actually unusable” excuse permanently available, it forced me to stop focusing on technique and instead just complain about the sound at the source. My engineering chops have gone downhill since getting all the worst gear, because I started focusing only on the gear part. Now, because I’m less confident in my engineering. I feel like I couldn’t get usable sounds even if someone handed me the good stuff.

I’m sharing all this to say I didn’t have to buy all the worst stuff. I was too focused on THAT being the thing holding me back and it turns out it was. I wouldn’t trade any of what I have for slightly better gear at this point its too late the damage is done, but I can also acknowledge it became the perfect copout excuse for never improving. Learn how to get the sounds you want with what you have… or don’t. Remember, plenty of people have made terrible sounding records on terrible gear in terrible rooms. Most of them stayed terrible.

TL;DR: Buying the most garbage gear made me realize I had infinite excuses for getting less than ideal sounds. I’ve learned nothing about technique since getting the shit tier stuff and that is what has truly ruined mixes and my spirit. I'm done. My best friend from high school hooked me up with a mixing job at Dairy Queen.... mixing blizzards. It isn't ideal but at least I'm mixing something...

This is what happens: Somebody asks a question about something specific, like which synth plugin might be better for a getting X sound like their favorite artist on a specific song, or what kind of gear was used to record X drums on X album, etc.

Then some people kindly offer up their opinion or some knowledge and move on, leaving the rest in the hands of the person that asked, trusting that the person who asked the question knows what do with that information.

But you can always expect at least a a few people that take it upon themselves to deconstruct your entire approach before offering any help at all, with a condescending girth of assumptions about what you already know, without knowing anything about you at all. It goes something like this:

"You're approach is all wrong. Instead of looking for a specific piece of gear or plugin, what you really need to do if you want to sound like X is to is focus first on songwriting and arrangment. Then you need to get it right at the source. Try focusing on recording first, mic placement, room treatment, etc. Then when you are mixing, instead of looking for a setting, just trust your ears and find what serves the song, instead of chasing another person's sound and Stop trying to polish a turd."

EDIT: "And why would you even want to sound like X, when you could just sound like youself and do what serves the song?"

Now techinically, that's good advice, in a vaccuum, like audioengineering 101, if you KNOW that person is a beginner. But it's absolutely useless advice when somebody comes to you asking for a SPECIFIC thing, that already knows the fundamentals. They came to a sub about audioengineering after all, not songwriting or composing, or musical fucking philosophy.

And you have no idea if somebody has already done those things or not. It grinds my gears when somebody starts assuming that I haven't FIRST done all of those things, because I have. Some of us are just looking for other's ideas of how to achieve that last 1-5% of whatever we are trying to achieve, and we don't need an entire sermon about how our entire way of makig music is ass-backwards, from a stranger on the internet that knows nothing about us.

It's like you come to this sub to ask for an apple, and you'll get at least a couple people start preaching about how "you actually want an orange" according to their professional degree in the philsophy of fruit dynamics. It's exhausting.

Like, if somebody asked which brand of mayo was better, are you going to start chastising them about how they need to go back to sandwhich school?

If you don't have anything constructive to say and would rather try to deconstruct somebody else's entire philosophy behind how they make music than offer a straight forward answer to their question, then it's better you please just stfu.

I really hate the term “high pass filter”. I realize it means the same thing as low cut, but the operation is primarily about cutting the lows. That should be the term we use.

How did hpf become the norm? Why is it even a term at all?

What popular plugins do you think are not that ​special ? What were your disappointing plugin purchases ?

Well, here we go, folks. After Fender's acquisition of PreSonus in 2021, it seems like the slow decline of Studio One has begun, and it's becoming more obvious by the day.

Just this month, PreSonus quietly started merging their user accounts with Fender IDs without any announcement. The result? Dozens of users suddenly couldn't log into their accounts or access their legally purchased software. Check out r/StudioOne. People are getting error messages saying their passwords “don't meet criteria” or that their accounts “cannot be found”. Some users are stuck in support ticket hell where they're told to log into their accounts to view the reply about why they can't log into their accounts. Absolutely brilliant.

When Studio One 7 was announced with promises of 3-4 major updates per year? Well, we're now 12 months since the October 2024 release, and we've gotten exactly one legitimate update (7.1 in January) and one minor update (7.2 in June). Sure, maybe they meant 3-4 updates starting from January 2025, but that's still looking pretty fishy given the current pace. People bought a subscription that lasted a year from the release date, only to receive 2 useless updates.

In November 2024, PreSonus straight up killed their official forum. No transition period, just “thanks for all the fish” and they redirected people to Facebook groups. Thankfully, community hero Lukas Ruschitzka stepped up and created his own unofficial forum, because apparently a community member has to do what the actual company won't.

And here's the kicker. Lukas has created more useful Studio One add-ons and tools than PreSonus themselves have managed to produce. The guy literally wrote Harmony Wizard, Scoring Tools, and a bunch of other extensions that make Studio One actually usable for certain workflows.

This is where it gets really concerning. Fender CEO Andy Mooney has openly stated that he finds Studio One (one of the easiest DAWs ever made) to be “too complicated”. His exact quote: “Having dabbled in recording myself, I've never found a DAW I didn't need an MIT degree to actually use”.

Surprise, surprise. Fender launched their own “Fender Studio” app in May 2025, a dumbed-down mobile/desktop recording app that's clearly where their development focus has shifted. Meanwhile, Studio One users are left wondering where those promised updates are.

It's becoming clear that Fender bought PreSonus not to improve Studio One, but to cannibalize its technology for their own simplified products, while letting the main DAW slowly rot through neglect and zero substantial changes.

The writing's on the wall, folks. We're watching the classic tech acquisition playbook unfold in real time: acquire the competition, gut the advanced features, redirect development resources, and slowly squeeze the existing user base.

RIP Studio One's golden era. It was good while it lasted.

I was reviewing my studio and said damn I have of gear! As in alot, and i stopped and said as great as these afe they werent worth it.

I have a pair of PSI Audio A21m! They sound great but my room is not optimized for them and thus they typically stay turned off! My audeze LCD-5 get way more useage!

What about y'all

I tried a friend's extremely expensive camera recently and was *stunned* by the quality. Photos looked incredible before any post-processing, and miles better than any other photos I had ever taken. The detail, color, and depth of field was just beautiful without me doing anything. Has anyone had a similar experience with a microphone? I'm sure someone will say "I get great vocals with a 58, it's all about the song", I get that, and I love cheap gear. But has a high-end microphone ever reset your expectations or just made your life so much easier that you thought...holy shit?

. So like everyone else I've been gobbling up Jim Lill preamp vid reaction content.

Seems like the most controversial part of the video is the section on preamp distortion, where Jim claims that 99% of the time engineers don't drive mic pre's. And when you do, it sounds exactly like hard digital clipping.

Lots of people have come out of the woodwork to say "of course we drive pre's", which I believe. And that Jim's class AB preamp is clipping at the transistor stage---as opposed to a class A (or some other class AB) preamps that are saturating the transformer, which supposedly produce a more musical, asymmetrical distortion.

Ok, here's the weird part: I cannot find any videos of anyone objectively showcasing what transformer preamp distortion sounds like.

Does anyone know of any video showcasing transformer distortion where:

1. The distorted and clean clips are LUFs-normalized
2. The preamp EQ curve is flat
3. The exact same loop of audio is used for testing

I don't own any transformer-saturatable preamps, otherwise I'd legit make this video myself, because it's maddening trying to find a clear example anywhere online.

UPDATE: Thank you u/thebishopgame, looks like diyrecordingequipment on instagram tested it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaNyD4DHXVF/?igsh=d2p0cTNpaTQ2M2lw .

I downloaded the files and ran a 30 round triangle test myself, and got 9/30, which is not even close to statistically significant, so I guess for me Focusrite and 1073 distortion indeed sounds the same! I'd believe someone with a trained ear for different styles of saturation could do it though, but for me it was extremely difficult and I tend to do ok on these things normally.

I encourage anyone curious to download the files and run a triangle test yourself: https://docs.diy.re/samples/preamp-dist/