Audio engineering in the context of Sam Slyfield

Stagecraft is a technical aspect of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes constructing and rigging scenery; hanging and focusing of lighting; design and procurement of costumes; make-up; stage management; audio engineering; and procurement of props. Stagecraft is distinct from the wider umbrella term of scenography. Considered a technical rather than an artistic field, it is primarily the practical implementation of a scenic designer's artistic vision.

In its most basic form, stagecraft may be executed by a single person (often the stage manager of a smaller production) who arranges all scenery, costumes, lighting, and sound, and organizes the cast. Regional theaters and larger community theaters will generally have a technical director and a complement of designers, each of whom has a direct hand in their respective designs.Within significantly larger productions, for example a modern Broadway show, effectively bringing a show to opening night requires the work of skilled carpenters, painters, electricians, stagehands, stitchers, wigmakers, and the like. Modern stagecraft is highly technical and specialized: it comprises many sub-disciplines and a vast trove of history and tradition.

A film school is an educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are usually incorporated into most film school curricula. Technical training may include instruction in the use and operation of cameras, lighting equipment, film or video editing equipment and software, and other relevant equipment. Film schools may also include courses and training in such subjects as television production, broadcasting, audio engineering, and animation.

Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, samples are taken 44,100 times per second, each with 16-bit resolution. Digital audio is also the name for the entire technology of sound recording and reproduction using audio signals that have been encoded in digital form. Following significant advances in digital audio technology during the 1970s and 1980s, it gradually replaced analog audio technology in many areas of audio engineering, record production and telecommunications in the 1990s and 2000s.

In a digital audio system, an analog electrical signal representing the sound is converted with an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) into a digital signal, typically using pulse-code modulation (PCM). This digital signal can then be recorded, edited, modified, and copied using computers, audio playback machines, and other digital tools. For playback, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) performs the reverse process, converting a digital signal back into an analog signal, which is then sent through an audio power amplifier and ultimately to a loudspeaker.

Lady in Satin is an album by the jazz singer Billie Holiday, released in 1958 on Columbia Records, catalogue CL 1157 in mono and CS 8048 in stereo. It is the penultimate album completed by the singer, and the last to be released in her lifetime. Her final album, Last Recording, was recorded in March 1959, and released just after her death. The original album was produced by Irving Townsend and engineered by Fred Plaut.

The road crew (also known as roadies) are the support personnel who travel with an artist or band on tour, usually in sleeper buses, and handle every part of the concert productions except actually performing the music with the musicians. This catch-all term covers many people: tour managers, production managers, stage managers, front of house and monitor engineers, lighting directors, lighting designers, lighting techs, guitar techs, bass techs, drum techs, keyboard techs, pyrotechnicians, security/bodyguards, truck drivers, merchandise crew, and caterers, among others.

In audio engineering, electronics, physics, and many other fields, the color of noise or noise spectrum refers to the power spectrum of a noise signal (a signal produced by a stochastic process). Different colors of noise have significantly different properties. For example, as audio signals they will sound different to human ears, and as images they will have a visibly different texture. Therefore, each application typically requires noise of a specific color. This sense of 'color' for noise signals is similar to the concept of timbre in music (which is also called "tone color"; however, the latter is almost always used for sound, and may consider detailed features of the spectrum).

The practice of naming kinds of noise after colors started with white noise, a signal whose spectrum has equal power within any equal interval of frequencies. That name was given by analogy with white light, which was (incorrectly) assumed to have such a flat power spectrum over the visible range. Other color names, such as pink, red, and blue were then given to noise with other spectral profiles, often (but not always) in reference to the color of light with similar spectra. Some of those names have standard definitions in certain disciplines, while others are informal and poorly defined. Many of these definitions assume a signal with components at all frequencies, with a power spectral density per unit of bandwidth proportional to 1/f  and hence they are examples of power-law noise. For instance, the spectral density of white noise is flat (β = 0), while flicker or pink noise has β = 1, and Brownian noise has β = 2. Blue noise has β = -1.

In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for film cinematography or theatre lighting in much the same way (see fade (filmmaking) and fade (lighting)).

In sound recording and reproduction, a song may be gradually reduced to silence at its end (fade-out), or may gradually increase from silence at the beginning (fade-in). Fading-out can serve as a recording solution for pieces of music that contain no obvious ending. Quick fade-ins and -outs can also be used to change the characteristics of a sound, such as to soften the attack in vocal plosives and percussion sounds.

In Jamaican popular culture, a sound system is a group of disc jockeys, sound engineers and MCs playing music such as ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub reggae, dancehall and ragga. Sound systems are an important part of Jamaican culture and history, especially with the Windrush generation in Britain. Sound clashes involve crew members from opposing sound systems pitting their DJing and MCing skills against each other in venues or at festivals.

Osbourne Ruddock (28 January 1941 – 6 February 1989), better known as King Tubby, was a Jamaican sound engineer who influenced the development of dub music in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tubby's studio work, in which as a mixing engineer he achieved creative fame previously only reserved for composers and musicians, was influential across many genres of popular music. He is often cited as the inventor of the concept of the remix that later became ubiquitous in dance and electronic music production. Singer Mikey Dread stated, "King Tubby truly understood sound in a scientific sense. He knew how the circuits worked and what the electrons did. That's why he could do what he did".

Errol Thompson (29 December 1948 – 13 November 2004), better known as "ET", was a Jamaican record producer, audio engineer, and one of the first studio engineers to be involved in dub music.

Nigel Timothy Godrich (born 28 February 1971) is an English record producer, recording engineer and musician. He has worked with acts including Radiohead, Travis, Beck, Air, Paul McCartney, U2, R.E.M., Pavement, Roger Waters, Arcade Fire and Idles.

Early in his career, Godrich worked as the house engineer at RAK Studios, London, under the producer John Leckie. He first worked with Radiohead while engineering their second album, The Bends (1995), at RAK. Radiohead hired him to produce OK Computer (1997), which was a major success and brought him attention from major artists. He has produced all of Radiohead's albums since, along with several other projects with the Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. Godrich won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Album for the 2003 Radiohead album Hail to the Thief.

Sean Slade (born 14 November 1957) is an American record producer, engineer, and mixer. On many of his productions he worked in partnership with Paul Q. Kolderie.

Show control is the use of automation technology to link together and operate multiple entertainment control systems in a coordinated manner. It is distinguished from an entertainment control system, which is specific to a single theatrical department, system or effect, one which coordinates elements within a single entertainment discipline such as lighting, sound, video, rigging, or pyrotechnics. A typical entertainment control system would be a lighting control console. An example of show control would be linking a video segment with a number of lighting cues, or having a sound cue trigger animatronic movements, or all of these combined. Shows with or without live actors can almost invariably incorporate entertainment control technology and usually benefit from show control to operate these subsystems independently, simultaneously, or in rapid succession.