Mario Kart is easy until someone online throws the perfectly placed banana at you and you want to pull your hair out because you are in last place after winning against the AI repeatedly.
Audio is really easy until one thing completely changes what you need to do to achieve your sound.
Hiring an audio person is more than just hinge someone with the fancy gear. It's hiring someone with the experience to fix a problem that would take you 30 minutes of ChatGPTing to fix. Sound is all fun and gamers until you need to learn it from the ground up.
I've run into multiple productions recently where audio was a second thought and the producers paid for their mistakes.
That being said, here are some no-no's of audio that you may or may not have heard before, either way its a good refresher:
- Don’t turn your speakers sideways like a savage.
They weren’t designed for that. Unless your monitors have rotatable tweeters, you're destroying the stereo image and smearing the phase response. It’s not avant-garde — it’s just ignorant.- If your speakers aren’t calibrated, you’re not mixing — you’re guessing.
Know your room. Measure it. Treat it. Angle the monitors correctly. This is the bare minimum for a professional, not a lifestyle choice.- Stop reaching for the volume knob like a child.
Want it louder? Use a multiband compressor. Use saturation. Use harmonic exciters. Don’t just crank it — craft it.- EQ, ducking, panning, compression — these are your weapons.
Want your dialogue heard over music on TikTok or a commercial? Then make room for it. Don’t be lazy. Sculpt the mix like your reputation depends on it — because it does.- Composing starts with scales, not presets.
If you haven’t touched a piano or picked apart a Bach fugue, you’re not a composer — you’re a button pusher. Study. Drill. Understand. Elevate.- Field recording isn’t just hitting ‘record.’
Are you designing sound or just collecting noise? Use 96kHz. Try stereo arrays. Know your patterns — XY, AB, ORTF. If you don’t know what that means, go read something that isn’t a Discord thread.- Read. The. Manual.
If you don’t know what every button on your recorder does, then you’re not a sound recordist — you’re just holding a sound recorder. Learn your gear before you embarrass yourself on set.- Your storage system is a reflection of your mind.
Use fast, reliable media. Label your files. Date them. Back them up. Chaos is the enemy of creativity — and of professionalism.- Communicate like your job depends on it — because it does.
Your mix doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If you can’t articulate what you’re doing or how it integrates with picture, you’re a liability, not a team member.- Gear is not a crutch. It’s a weapon — if you know how to wield it.
Have the right mic for the job. Lavalier? Shotgun? Large diaphragm? Know the difference. Be prepared. If you’re improvising with the wrong tools, you’re not innovating — you’re just wasting time.
