There are sound tech’s who are great and there are those who are not. The difference is the great ones survived the dip. Seth Godin wrote a book about the dip and in reading this book, I discovered many of us have fallen prey to the dip in all parts of our lives. But it’s the area of audio where most of us can relate.
The dip is simply described as the point in which an effort produces lesser results than previously experienced and where in if the person continues working on that effort, the quality of results will eventually skyrocket. Or just look at this picture:
The audio dip occurs after a period of time when a sound tech starts learning. For a period of time, the more you are learning about live audio, the more results you are seeing; you receive positive feedback, the mix sounds better, and you find yourself knowing what you are doing (“oh, now I know how to use the sub-groups“)! Eventually, the results aren’t as great. You might even read a whole book and only see minimal results and feel that you are the only one who even notices the difference. Then it happens.
You find yourself in the dip.
The dip is the place where most people quit. You could close your book, stop reading the audio magazines and web sites, and say to yourself “this is the best I can do.” For many of us, we experience the dip in a hobby like playing tennis or golf or chess. We reach a point where we say “well, I’m not going to the be the number one seed tennis star so I should just be happy with where I am.” That’s jolly good and all but that means you can’t experience the rapid increase in results if you would have worked through the dip.
Let me talk practicality. Let’s say you’ve got the foundational audio knowledge down pat and now you’re in the dip. What do you do? You have a few choices:
- Quit. There is a time for this such as if you are nearing burn-out or your family life suffers greatly because of your extra work.
- Stay in and learn as much as you can about everything audio – this is great but you might find yourself flooded with too much information.
- (My suggestion) Stay in and focus on a different area of audio one topic at a time. For example, focus on learning as much as you can about drum mic’ing and mixing. In time, you can become the “expert” in your church on working with drums. After that, learn about acoustic guitar mixing and effects or mic’ing and mixing backup singers. You might spend a season learning about equipment repair.
The dip is real. The dip gives us reason to stop learning. The dip gives us the moment to pause and ask yourself, “am I happy with where I am or do I want to put in the time to be an expert?“
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I'm Chris Huff and I've been working behind a mixer for over twenty years. Since 2008, I've been helping other sound techs learn all about the art of church audio through behindthemixer.com.
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This is so where I am. My church just recently allowed me to go out buy thousands of dollars worth of new gear. Mics and rack effects mainly. This is a very big deal for a church of 250 people. Regardless of the size I pride myself at creating acceptionally good sound. But since I have super nice gear now I’m having a hard time finding ways to improve the sound anymore. I’m a perfectionist and a notorious tweaker. I’m one of this guitarists with a massive board of overpriced pedals. So to deal with the dip I have decided to dedicate my energy to creating the best service recordings possible. Its cool to read about someone else that has experienced the same thing.
I have tech question too if you don’t mind. How do you run your compressor? I have the two channels set up as two auxiliary loops going in to two stereo line inputs. Then that signal being sent to a group, which is then assigned to the main left and right buses. Is there a better cleaner or simpler way to set it up? I use the compressor on the lead male and female vocals, drum kick, and bass.
Nevermind! I decided running a compressor in an auxiliary loop would be bad because the loudest vocal would activate the compressor, thus compressing any other signal going through the loop. So I just did an insert on the bass and lead vocal. Ill just get another compressor to use on the drums. I only write this out in hopes of someone discovering this via Google and using my trouble shooting to save time and Money. Sometimes the simplest tasks are the hardest to complete. Anyway, love the blog, and keep working for the kingdom.
Thanks for the article and the inspiration Chris.
Glad it's been an inspiration to both of you. I spent this morning looking at many parts of my life with the same idea – am I in a dip in a certain area and do I quit or keep moving. A great exercise to undertake – very revealing!