24/05/2026
Ribbe Ribbeposted toSound Engineer Community
Why many sound engineers today no longer know how to do their job. Technology hasn’t killed creativity — it has simply exposed those who never had any. It’s 2025, and in live audio there’s a huge elephant in the room, but few are willing to look at it. Technology hasn’t made sound engineers better. It has stripped them bare. It has revealed who truly knows their craft and who is just pretending. And now it’s all visible: who really listens, who just copies presets; who understands music, and who thinks a plugin does the mixing for them.
Presets and plugins: the he**in of the modern sound engineer. There are engineers who, without presets, become sonically illiterate. Take away their magic plugin, and the mix collapses. Many young engineers think “knowing how to mix” means opening five compressors, boosting an analyser, copying other people’s chains, saving a snapshot. Zero ears. Zero choices. Zero identity.
Everyone stares at the screen. Almost no one listens. We have gone from engineers with huge ears to engineers with their eyes glued to an RTA. People who EQ by looking at the curve, not by listening to the result. Who mix by watching meter colours. You don’t mix with your eyes. If you use your eyes to mix, you’re in the wrong profession.
Infinite plugins, zero ideas. You have two hundred compressors and fifty reverbs — yet the mix is flat. Why? Because the problem isn’t technology. The problem is that many never learned the basics: what a microphone does, how to manage phase, how to clean up a noisy stage. Technology doesn’t make you creative. It only amplifies what you already are. If you are inconsistent, digital makes you even more inconsistent — just faster.
Today there are more digital operators than sound engineers. The truth is harsh but real: we are training operators, not sound engineers. People who are lightning fast at patching Dante, navigating layers, opening plugins, using snapshots. But take away the digital board and give them two mics, a PA, and an analogue console — they no longer know where to start.
The standard of mediocrity has become acceptable. Today everything must be fast, repeatable, the same every night, “safe”. And so creativity is smothered. Anyone who proposes a personal sonic idea is seen as a problem. Mediocrity has become the standard because it works and doesn’t cause trouble.
Live sound has become a studio — for those who don’t know how to mix in a studio. Tracks, clicks, sequences, stems, layers. Fake live everywhere. Many engineers today don’t mix a band. They mix a file where the drums are already compressed, the bass already mixed, the keyboards already processed. They just add a bit of sparkle and a reverb. That’s not mixing. That’s finishing.
Music has disappeared from the craft. The sound engineer’s job is a musical job. Yet today many techs don’t play any instrument, don’t listen to anything, don’t study anything, have no musical background. They focus on software, not on sound. On routing, not on arrangement. On the plugin, not on emotion. The result is obvious: technically correct mixes, but musically dead.
The final truth? Technology hasn’t taken anything away. It has simply removed the excuses. Those with competence are now soaring. Those without it are now clearly visible. Those with ears now dominate. Those who only look at the screen now get lost. Those with knowledge now create. Those who copy presets now merely survive. Technology hasn’t impoverished sound engineers. It has simply separated the real engineers from the fake ones. See less
