Sound Engineer

Introduction

The Sound Engineer for a given production is charged with implenting the sound design as given by the sound designer (obviously, on smaller shows, these are one and the same person). In many cases, the sound engineer will be working with the equipment and resources provided by a given space, but depending on the show budget it is certainly possible to bring in additional gear. This guide is intended to introduce you to the basic concepts of sound reproduction and engineering, give you an understanding of the gear you will likely run into, and provide you with the knowlege you'll need to make intelligent choices about the use of that equipment and/or what to rent.

In other words, by the time you finish this you should be able to face something like this:

and not be completely at a loss as to how to use it. Sound gear can be extremely complex and confusing, with bizarre terminology and acronyms, and sometimes it's very easy to push the wrong button and make very loud noises that get everyone upset with you, but with a little patience and research you will discover that the basic concepts behind it are relatively simple.

Basic Concepts

OK, here are the basic concepts: sound reproduction consists of four basic stages: the source, the mix/control, the amplification, and the speaker. Throw into that two variations, the effects loop and multiple channels, and you cover every aspect of sound engineering. Of course, all of the above can be combined in virtually infinite combinations, but remember: if you understand these six basic concepts, you will understand sound engineering.

Let's start with a simple example of each of these. Let's say we have a woman singing onstage, and we want to hear her better. We can set up a microphone, some volume control, an amplifier, and a speaker to do this. In this case our source is the microphone (capturing the woman's voice), the mix/control is the simple volume knob, the amplification and speaker are, of course, the amplifier and speaker respectively.

Of course, each of these components could be more complicated: we could do some equalization of her voice in the mix/control phase, for instance, or we could hook up multiple speakers to spread the sound better. Each of these concepts and multiple variations will be explained further in later sections.

Next, let's look at some more fundamental variations. Let's say that the woman's voice sounded a bit thin, so we wanted to add some reverb to it (Reverb produces the effect of reflections off of walls and other surfaces; the best way to accomplish good reverb is to place the sound source in the environment you want, e.g. think of monks singing in a large cathedral, but thankfully we can now purchase small devices that will "fake" the same thing, saving us the need of relocating our show to a cathedral). We can do this with an effects loop; essentially we will take the output of the mix/control phase, split it, and send part of it to the effects unit. The output from the effects unit (which is just the reverb, with no original vocal) is put back into the mixer, and combined with the original voice. In practice the mixing of the reverb with the original vocal can be done in the effects unit itself or in the mixer, and there are a number of tweaks you can perform to change how it all sounds, but we'll leave it simple for now. Note that the reverb plus vocal, once combined, is sent through the amp and the single speaker as one signal.

Now let's add the other variation, multiple channels. In this case, let's just say that a man now walks out onstage, and starts singing as well. We'll give him a mike too, and of course he'll need his own volume control, since as it happens the woman sings quite a bit louder. So we find it convenient to amplify her a bit less, so what the audience hears are well-balanced voices. The two input channels (him and her) are combined into one submix by simply adding them together; this mix is then amplified by a single channel of the amplifier and sent to a single speaker.

We could if we like create multiple channels in many of our basic stages; we could split the voices into two channels after the mix/control stage, and send each to separate amps and speakers for instance. We might do this to get more volume, or create a stereo signal, or provide an onstage monitor so the vocalists can hear themselves. Again, the implementation and purposes of these additional variations will be explained in further sections.

Wrap-up

You now have all the basic concepts you will need to understand all of sound engineering. As mentioned, the various combinations of these basic concepts can get quite complex, but they can all ultimately be boiled down to the six concepts above. As we go through this guide, I'll try to reference our basic stages and explain simply how they have been varied to create a new setup. I hope things will stay clear.

Sources