The first day in audio class, I always ask people why they pay to come to class. The answers I get vary only slightly.
People want to learn audio because sound is very emotional for them. It “presses their button”, so to speak. When they hear something, there is no getting around it, no ignoring it, no denying it, they get a feeling. Sound goes right to the core of their existence, directly to their soul, and does something emotional to them. Music is the organization of sound into a still more powerful emotion. Words do not suffice for its interpretation. Whether there are lyrics to make it clearer or not, the sound of music has an emotionality that speaks to them.
And, if it is not music, it still has an emotionality, just, a less powerful one.Audio should be taught from this point of view. Audio’s purpose is the creation, amplification, storage, restoration, and transmission, of sound’s emotionality. How does this answer the questions: What is an audio Engineer? And what does an Audio Engineer do?
I like to say “We are translators”. But, unlike language translators (who translate one cultures word sounds into another cultures word sounds,) we audio engineers translate form one of sound’s energy system to another.
When Edison made his cylinder player/recorder (and I don’t want to argue the exact history here), he took acoustical energy and converted it to mechanical energy. He took “Mary had a little lamb” and turned it into a squiggle of depressions on a previously smooth surface. That is to say, he took the acoustic energy of the sound and translated or converted that energy into a mechanical drawing on a previously blank surface. Then, to play it back, he took that mechanical energy caused by re-tracing that drawing, and converted it back into acoustical energy. I like to say he translated Acoustical energy to Mechanical energy (for recording), and then Mechanical back to Acoustical (for playback).
Then, Berliner comes along and invents the microphone, and flat audio disks instead of cylinders. With the invention of the microphone, we add another energy medium to translate to and from. The medium is electricity. Now, we are translating from Acoustical energy to Mechanical energy to Electrical energy (for recording, and the reverse for playback).
Next in line is Magnetic energy (unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no name to the phenomenon called “Magnetical” energy (and there should be), even though there is the word Magnetically). With the introduction of magnetically driven speakers, microphones and the wire recorder, we added new levels of energy systems and complexity in the recording or amplification/reproduction process. Now, we are translating from Acoustical energy to Mechanical energy to Magnetic energy to Electrical energy (for recording, and the reverse for playback).
In film, sound was ultimately added in the form of optical energy. Here, we would turn audio (sound) into light, and scribe it into the emulsion on the edge (along side) of a motion picture. Film-mixers had to learn yet another form of audio translation.
So, by this time, the process went like this. Incoming acoustical energy was translated into mechanical energy, and by sometimes going through a magnetic energy state, it was translated into electrical energy. We now had analog electrical signals to emulate acoustical ones. The electrical signals were either amplified and then the process reversed, going from electrical to magnetic to mechanical to acoustical, in the case of PA or sound re-enforcement, or with a side chain of storage, either magnetic, optical or mechanical storage, in the case of sound recording.
Each a form of energy ending in “al”, (except for magnetic which is just a funny word).
Then, digital came along. And now, we have the most recent language we have to learn to translate into and out of, to manipulate sound.
Why this multi-energy way to understand sound and the history of sound? Because, in every case, in order to maintain, amplify, or enhance sound’s emotionality, the engineer must know how to best translate from one medium to another.
[An example:] If you don’t know how to properly convert an electrical signal back into an acoustic one, it’s not going to sound good. Overload an amplifier, push a speaker into reproducing what it wasn’t designed to reproduce, overload a microphone, try to exceed the bit depth available, or a million other possibilities of poor conversion or translation, and your sounds are going to be really bad, and not just technically bad but emotionally bad as well.
Where is this translation conversation going? Who cares how we achieve sound? Just stay within the parameters of any conversion into another medium, and the sound will be fine. WELL, IT’S NOT TRUE. Just staying within the working levels of a system does not mean the sound is going to have the same “flavor”. There is another conversion that we haven’t mentioned, that is going on, that operates more subtly than any of the others. This conversion is what controls the “flavor” of the sound or music.
Where-in lays the flavor?
We described our sound as it went from acoustical, to mechanical, to magnetic, to electrical, to digital. Then we manipulated the heck out it of some more. Then we went back from digital, to electrical, to magnetic, to mechanical, to acoustical. What we didn’t describe was how it was, before it became acoustical.
It really starts out as emotional energy. The composer, performer, writer, speaker, or artist had a thought they wanted to communicate, a piece of emotional energy they wanted to express and communicate. They tried to generate some acoustical energy that was a translation from their emotional energy. After they have done the best they can do, it then becomes the job of the audio engineer to collect, amplify and distribute that emotional-now-acoustical energy, through the whole process to digital and back, into more acoustical energy again, hopefully amplifying (in every sense of the word) the emotionality of the performance. That emotionality is the flavor of the sound. And that is our job.
Take a great emotional performance, record it great, amplify it great, translate it from one system to another great, always preserving and/or increasing the inherent emotionality, and the recording or live performance will be emotionally greater (enhanced). You have amplified the emotionality. Take a great emotional performance, record it poorly, amplify it poorly, translate it from system to system poorly, never preserving only diminishing the inherent emotionality, and the recording or live performance will sound terrible, leaving you wanting to run away. Or, on a more subtle level, choose the wrong microphone, get the wrong tone color for a vocalist, make the snare drum too loud or too soft in a mix, take a five part sax harmony, and only hear three of the parts, and, in every case, you take away a little of the emotionality of that performance.
Our job is to amplify or, at least, maintain the emotionality of a performance. Anything less than that, and the sound engineering job turns into a strictly technical process, probably better left to a machine. Do anything less than that, and you are a technician, and not an artist.
Here are all the steps:
Emotional, Musical, Acoustical, Mechanical, Magnetic(al), Electrical, to Digital,
and back, from Digital, Electrical, Magnetic, Mechanical, Acoustical, Musical, to Emotional.
Energy Conversion Job Titling
From Emotional to Musical, you are a Composer
From Musical to expanded Musical, you are an Orchestrator/Arranger
From expanded musical energy on paper to the Musicians who will perform it, you are a Contractor.
From Musical to Acoustical, you are a Musician
From Acoustical to Electrical is the job of a Microphone, selected by an Audio Engineer.
From Electrical to Digital is an A/D converter, selected by an Audio Engineer.
From Digital to Electrical is a D/A converter, selected by an Audio Engineer.
From Electrical to Acoustical is an Speaker, selected by an Audio Engineer.
From Acoustical to Musical in the Playback-sound Environment, is an Acoustician or Acoustical Audio
Engineer
From Acoustical/Musical to Emotional is the listener.
We as Audio Engineers have a number of important roles. Don’t screw them up.
What we as audio engineers need is like the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.”
Not just sonically bad but emotionally bad.
Take a great emotional performance, record it (well) great, amplify it (well) great, translate it from one system to another(well) great, always preserving and/ or increasing the inherent emotionality, and the recording or live performance will be emotionally (enhanced.)greater. You have amplified the emotionality. Take a great emotional performance, record it poorly, amplify it poorly, translate it from system to system poorly, never preserving, only diminishing the inherent emotionality, and the recording or live performance will sound terrible, leaving you wanting to run away. Or, on a more subtle level, choose the wrong microphone, get the wrong tone color for a vocalist, make the snare drum too loud or too soft in a mix, take a five part sax harmony, and only hear three of the parts, and, in every case, you take away a little of the emotionality of that performance.
Our job is to amplify or at least maintain the emotionality of a performance. Anything less than that, and the sound engineering job turns into a strictly technical process, probably better left to a machine. Anything less than that, and you are a technician, and not an artist.
Emotional, Musical, Acoustical, Mechanical, Magnetic(al), Electrical, Digital,
Digital, Electrical, Magnetic, Mechanical, Acoustical, Musical, Emotional.
From Emotional to Musical is a composer.
From Musical to Acoustical is a musician.
From Acoustical to Electrical is a microphone, is an audio engineer.
From Electrical to Digital is an A/D converter, is an audio engineer.
From Digital to Electrical is a D/A converter, is an audio engineer.
From Electrical to Acoustical is an amp/speaker, is an audio engineer.
From Acoustical to Musical is the playback-sound environment, is an acoustical audio engineer.
From Musical to Emotional is the listener.
We have a number of important roles.
Don’t screw them up.
