Are you becoming worse at audio engineering?

Saturday, March 7th. The date of my last gig before everything was shut down. I remember joking with the band and other crew members that we should say our goodbyes as we were leaving, because we might not see each other again for a long time. Now the joke became true and it is a bitter pill to swallow. But this prolonged period of not doing live sound offers another bitter realisation - we are living in a world of bad sound quality.

I suspect I am not alone in spending my time off work trying to become better at what I do. Luckily for the majority of us, the leading players in the audio field stepped up and offered online training, free courses and other great educational opportunities that can further our career (although probably also negatively impacting the sound education community in the process, but that is not the topic of this article). So I am spending my time glued to webinars, online calls, Zoom conferences and other online meetings that have been promoted, only to realise one frightening concept - most of the time the audio in these is severely substandard. It is not surprising, if you think about it. Most of this content has been recorded through Bluetooth microphones, integrated computer mics or headsets of questionable quality, then squashed by the online conferencing software that is only concerned with getting “some kind” of an AV signal through the already oversaturated network connections to the consumer, that is ingesting it through computer, phone or tablet speakers, Bluetooth headphones or headsets of questionable quality. The name of the game is not if you can hear the delicate audio examples that are trying to illustrate a point, but if you can hear anything at all. So we spend a huge amount of our waking hours listening to content that is just slightly better than a garbled speck of a waveform, where our listening skills are put to work on discerning the words, not the details of the sound transmission. Not to mention that we add to that all of the online calls and phone conversations with our friends and family, where we get more of the same. Then we spend our “down time” watching Netflix shows (with reduced streaming quality) and YouTube content where quality of production often takes a back seat to just getting the message across.

Now, we can’t really influence how all this content is produced. We have no means (and desire, for that matter) to tell the people who are producing this content “hey, could you be a doll and get yourself a better mic, dampen the room a bit and then lecture on this amazingly important audio concept” - we are just thankful that they do it. We also can’t really influence the way sound is transmitted via conference calls or webinar sessions (although I am still waiting for the brave soul who will have the vision to say that in the next update of the software we will give you the option of reducing the video quality for the sake of having an amazing sound transferred to your audience - just tick this box).

But we absolutely can influence the way we ingest content on our end. We have the power of putting on a great pair of our reference headphones instead of using some wireless Bluetooth model that affects the sound quality even more. We can use the monitors in our small studios, not the tiniest computer or phone speakers that cut off any remaining low end that was left standing from the battle of web transfer. 

Because if we don’t do that, I am seriously worried that our listening abilities might get severely impacted. Consider how much time we have spent training our ears and our brains on how a good vocal should sound. How many hours did it take us to get to the level where you can play some pink noise and immediately know that something is off in our reproduction system. How much effort it took us to discern compression amounts on audio material?

Think also about how we did that. We exposed ourselves to high quality audio content for days, weeks, months, years. We trained our ears and minds by repeating exercises on discerning panning positions, frequency alterations and dynamic processing. And we went out in the field and transferred that skill into real world applications. We got instant feedback from artists, audiences and our peers. We took our exposure to great sounding material from reference tracks and tried to create great sounding material in the room, combining technology and artistic decisions to transfer energy from the artist to the audience. We were able to do that, because we were exposed to great sound or we at least had the inside knowledge why it was sometimes lacking.

If we don’t maintain that skill while we are trying to learn new ones, then how much better off are we going to return to our work, if we can’t use all that new knowledge because we are struggling to recognise the minute details of sound, so severely dismembered by the awful sound experience we have been exposed to for so long? And how long does it take to “train” your ears to be tuned to a slightly worse version of the audio content - are you willing to find out?

I am not saying in any way that you should not learn new things about your craft. I truly believe we have a great opportunity here to raise the quality of work in our field immensely by raising awareness about new concepts of our work and brushing up on old ones. I am also not suggesting that you not talk to your friends and family members - that is what makes it all bearable. 

What I am suggesting, though, is that we should not forget to maintain our listening skills and the art of critical listening. So take an hour a day, put on your reference headphones or go to your custom monitoring system, and do some critical listening exercises as well. Remind yourself how a well produced vocal sounds like, how a well placed reverb can change the mood of a song, how panning affects your in ear mixes. And if you have the ability to do so, please tell the people who create online communication software, who create content on social media, who decide on audio formats for Netflix and other streaming services that sound matters. It shouldn’t be just an afterthought, it needs to have its own seat at the table. Trust me, no one cares as much about audio as people that make a living in the audio industry. We should fight for it tooth and nail. And until we succeed, we should make sure that convenience does not overrun our strive for audio quality. Stay safe, and protect yourself - from bad audio as well.