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Desiree Holiday
Being an audio engineer is an intriguing job. We have to be artistic and technical at the same time. We have to use both sides of our brain to bring about a great recording. The most challenging aspect of production and technology I have encountered is data storage and processing power. Thankfully, we live in a time where a one terabyte external hard drive only costs $60. As far as audio equipment and gear goes, it is one of the more easily afforded pieces. Turn-around time is everything: the time it takes to complete a project from the time it is started is what can keep an engineer in business for a long time, and what has halted me the most in the past year is the speed of my computer when using software and large data files. I have always kept my data on a separate hard drive; however, recently I have learned another way to speed up the buffering, rendering, and overall continuous processing of my computer is to have everything on a separate hard drive. I do mean EVERYTHING! One drive is dedicated to data, another to software and applications, a third one to the actual operating system, and another (or even several) to the backup of all of these files. My mentor always stresses the need to keep and hold onto every project that someone brings you, because they may come back ten years later and say “Hey…remember that recording we did forever ago, do you still have that? I want to work on it again.” Apparently, this happens a lot! I have always understood the need to know how the technology of engineering works, but have only recently seen the gravity of how important it is to know the specs of the computer gear you are working with.
