In this society, the concept of being a music producer is often romanticized. We do a comparison of them to P Diddy complete with the bling, white suits, and sun glasses with beautiful women all over them. Or we picture them as mystical, longhaired geniuses; tinkering with this knob or that in an effort to arrive at some perfect audio they’ve spent their profession chasing.

Nevertheless, the fact is, music producers aren’t even like that at all. A number of these people are experts who do not care a lot of about standing, image, or perfection.

This is not to say that music producers do not have secrets. Most of the time they are not and that includes keeping the secret about excellent producers having faith on their audio engineers.

Audio engineers focus on the backdrop. Although the producers may appear to take the credit but their success relies heavily on the capability and talent of their audio engineers. Audio engineers are responsible for much of the real work that goes into recording music.

They are in charge of configuring the studio and adjusting the playback volume in the headphones utilized by singers. They frequently man the mixing boards during sessions and will be the one who is actually delivered into the studio to tinker with the gain levels on a guitar player’s amplifier.

The job of an audio engineer may not seem as exciting as that of a record producer. There are no romantic archetypes for audio engineers, no Phil Spectors or Puff Daddys. But audio engineers are the people who make sure everything runs, as it should in a recording period. A good audio engineer will know their stuff inside and out. Often they would be more than able to do the job of a record producer, and many do in fact work in both capabilities.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that record producers are useless. They certainly are. The record producers are the ones who often have the vision to make someone a success, to make someone a star. Nevertheless it is the audio engineers task to help the producer carry out this vision, often by crawling around the studio floor doing the grunt work.

If you are the type of person who does not put too much thought on glamour and is in love with music then you are best suited to become an audio engineer.