Course Description
Audio Engineering II Laboratory is the hands-on companion to Audio Engineering II, applying advanced recording techniques to complete a finished mixed project. It builds directly on the first laboratory: students who have learned to capture clean tracks now work on more complex sessions, more demanding sources, and the mixing and processing decisions that turn recorded material into a finished record.
Within the SCNS taxonomy, MUM is the Music: Commercial/Music Production prefix, and the L suffix denotes a laboratory-only course. Daytona State publishes it at 2 credits with prerequisite MUM2600L and corequisite MUM2601, offered in fall with a $100 lab fee. It appears at approximately four Florida institutions.
The shift from the first course to this one is from capture to judgment. Recording cleanly is a skill that can be assessed objectively — levels, noise, phase. Mixing is a set of decisions with no single correct answer, and developing the ear and the confidence to make them is what this laboratory is for.
⚠ The same content is packaged three ways in Florida — and the credit totals differ
Audio engineering is one of the clearest suffix-divergence cases in this repository, and the credit consequence is real rather than cosmetic:
- Daytona State splits it: MUM2600 "Audio Engineering I" at 3 credits (lecture) with MUM2600L "Audio Engineering I Lab" at 2 credits as a corequisite — 5 credits in total. The same structure repeats for MUM2601 / MUM2601L.
- Other Florida institutions integrate it as MUM2600C and MUM2601C. This repository carries those at 3 credits — MUM2600C at 60 contact hours and MUM2601C at 72.
So the same subject is 5 credits at one institution and 3 at another. SCNS equivalency does not cross numbers, and the suffix is part of the number. For a transferring student this matters concretely: completing the C-suffixed integrated course does not automatically satisfy a program expecting the lecture-plus-lab pair, and the credit shortfall can require an additional course. Have any transfer evaluated in writing, and read the credit value rather than the title.
Learning Outcomes
Required Outcomes
- Plan and execute a complex multitrack session including full band or ensemble tracking.
- Apply advanced microphone technique to demanding sources and difficult acoustic environments.
- Apply overdubbing, punch recording, and comping to build a performance.
- Record and produce lead and background vocals to a professional standard.
- Apply equalization with clear intent: corrective versus creative, and subtractive versus additive.
- Apply compression and dynamics processing and explain the effect of each parameter on the result.
- Apply parallel processing, bus compression, and gain staging across a mix.
- Use reverb and delay to construct depth, space, and a coherent sense of place.
- Use automation to shape a mix over time rather than setting static levels.
- Construct a stereo image with deliberate width, placement, and mono compatibility.
- Diagnose and resolve mix problems: masking, muddiness, harshness, and lack of definition.
- Use reference tracks and multiple playback systems to evaluate a mix objectively.
- Prepare a mix for mastering and describe what mastering does and does not do.
- Deliver a finished, correctly formatted project to specification and on schedule.
- Collaborate with artists and producers and translate non-technical feedback into technical action.
- Apply hearing conservation practice throughout extended sessions.
Optional Outcomes
- Apply analog summing and outboard processing in a hybrid workflow.
- Apply pitch and time correction transparently.
- Produce a mix in surround or immersive formats.
- Record and mix a live performance.
- Apply introductory mastering technique.
- Develop a professional portfolio or reel.
Major Topics
Required Topics
- Complex session planning and full-band tracking
- Advanced microphone technique and room treatment
- Overdubbing, punching, and comping
- Vocal recording and production
- Corrective and creative equalization
- Compression, limiting, gating, and expansion
- Parallel processing and bus architecture
- Reverb, delay, and spatial construction
- Automation and mix movement
- Stereo imaging and mono compatibility
- Frequency masking and mix problem diagnosis
- Reference tracks and translation across playback systems
- Mix preparation for mastering
- Delivery formats, metadata, and specification
- Working with artists, producers, and clients
- Session workflow, time management, and hearing conservation
Optional Topics
- Hybrid analog/digital workflows and summing
- Pitch and time correction
- Surround and immersive mixing
- Live recording and mixing
- Introductory mastering
- Portfolio and reel development
Resources & Tools
- Modern Recording Techniques (Huber, Runstein) — carried forward from the first course.
- Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio (Senior) — the most useful practical mixing text available, with a free companion multitrack library.
- The Mixing Engineer's Handbook (Owsinski) — the other standard.
- The studio: console or control surface, outboard processing, monitoring, and a treated control room.
- A digital audio workstation with a full plugin set; Pro Tools remains the common professional standard.
- Cambridge-MT Multitrack Library — free professional multitracks for mixing practice outside booked studio hours; the single most valuable free resource for this course.
- Reference tracks in the genre being mixed, and at least two contrasting playback systems — studio monitors plus consumer earbuds or a car.
- AES for technical papers and standards; musicians' earplugs for any live work.
Career Pathways
- Mix engineer — increasingly freelance and remote, and the most direct destination of this course.
- Recording engineer and tracking engineer.
- Audio post-production engineer — the continuation into MUM2640.
- Live sound engineer — front of house and monitors; Florida's venue, cruise, and theme park sectors hire continuously.
- Mastering engineer — a specialization requiring further training and exceptional monitoring.
- Game and themed entertainment audio — Orlando's attraction industry.
- Broadcast, streaming, and podcast audio.
- Producer — for engineers who develop the musical and organizational judgment alongside the technical skill.
- SOC codes 27-4014 Sound Engineering Technicians and 27-4011 Audio and Video Technicians.
Special Information
⚠ Hearing damage is the career-ending injury in this field, and it is entirely preventable
Nothing else in this guide matters as much. An audio engineer's hearing is the instrument, and noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus are permanent and cumulative — there is no recovery and no treatment that restores what is lost. The profession has a well-documented problem here, and the damage is done in exactly the environment this course takes place in.
The specifics worth internalizing while the habits are still forming:
- Risk is a function of level and time together. NIOSH recommends a limit of 85 dBA over 8 hours, and the permissible exposure time falls sharply as level rises — roughly halving for every 3 dB increase. At 100 dB, safe exposure is measured in minutes, not hours. A long mixing session at a level that feels "normal" is the risk, not a single loud moment.
- Mix quieter than feels good. Loud monitoring is seductive because everything sounds better — the ear's frequency response flattens at high levels, so a loud mix flatters itself. Professionals monitor at moderate levels and check loud only briefly. This protects hearing and produces better mixes, because balance decisions made loud do not translate.
- Take real breaks. Ear fatigue is measurable within an hour or two. A short break every hour improves both judgment and safety, and engineers who do not take them make bad decisions late in a session and then live with them.
- Use proper protection at live events. Musicians' earplugs with flat attenuation preserve the frequency balance while lowering level, unlike foam plugs which dull the high end. They are inexpensive and they are what allows a live engineer to keep working.
- Tinnitus is a warning, not a badge. Ringing after a session means damage occurred. Persistent tinnitus is permanent. Students who normalize it will lose the career they are training for.
Get a baseline audiogram now, while your hearing is intact, and repeat it periodically. It is the only way to know whether you are losing anything, and by the time loss is obvious in daily life it is substantial and irreversible.
⚠ Mixing is a judgment skill, and the traps are consistent
Students arriving from a tracking course expect mixing to be a matter of applying the right processing. It is not; it is a sequence of decisions under conditions that actively mislead. Four traps account for most student mixes that do not translate:
- Louder sounds better. The ear perceives a louder version of the same thing as improved, which means any processing that raises level appears to help. Always compare at matched loudness — gain-match before and after, or the comparison is meaningless. This single habit changes mix quality more than any plugin.
- Ear fatigue after ninety minutes. Judgment degrades measurably, high frequencies begin to seem dull, and engineers respond by adding brightness that is not needed. The mix that sounded finished at midnight sounds harsh in the morning. Break often, and never finalize late in a long session.
- Boosting instead of cutting. The instinct when an element is unclear is to boost it. Usually something else is masking it, and cutting the competing element in that frequency range is the better fix — it creates space rather than adding energy, and it keeps the mix from becoming a pile of boosts.
- Soloing. Every element sounds better soloed, and none of them exist soloed. Solo to diagnose; decide in context.
The discipline that ties these together is referencing: import a professionally mixed track in the same genre, match its loudness, and switch between them. It is humbling, it is instantly informative, and it is what professionals do.
⚠ Mastering is not a fix, and "fix it in the mix" is not either
Two related misconceptions worth correcting explicitly.
Mastering does not repair a mix. It is the final stage — level, tonal balance across a program, sequencing, and format preparation — and it works with small adjustments across the whole. It cannot separate a buried vocal, undo a phase problem, or rescue an over-compressed mix. Delivering a mix with the expectation that mastering will fix it is the most common way student projects fail. Leave headroom, do not put a limiter across the mix bus to make it loud, and deliver the mix at the specification the mastering engineer asks for.
Similarly, "fix it in the mix" fails upstream: a badly captured source constrains everything downstream. Both principles are the same idea — each stage should hand the next one something good to work with, and no later stage can create quality that was not captured.
Worth knowing on the loudness question: streaming platforms apply loudness normalization, which means a hyper-compressed master is turned down to the same perceived level as a dynamic one and simply arrives with less dynamic range. The commercial argument for extreme loudness has largely evaporated. Verify current platform targets rather than relying on figures from a textbook — they have changed and may change again.
Course format, credits, and contact hours
Daytona State publishes MUM2601L at 2 credits with a $100 lab fee, prerequisite MUM2600L, corequisite MUM2601, offered in fall. The 60 contact hours follows the studio-laboratory convention of roughly four scheduled hours per week for a two-credit lab and is a derived value — confirm on your syllabus. Note that this repository carries the integrated MUM2601C at 3 credits and 72 hours, which reflects a different packaging of the same subject.
Assessment is by finished project: a completed, mixed piece of work evaluated technically and musically, usually with public listening and critique. Booked studio time beyond the scheduled hours is normally expected, and studio access is the limiting resource — book early and treat cancellations as a professional matter, because in this field they are.
How Florida course levels affect transfer
The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.