Critical Listening

The Critical Listening Course focuses on developing critical listening skills through an engineering perspective that uses recorded music from studio sessions, live concert material, and audio postproduction mixes as the subject of analysis. Course topics include psychoacoustics of various audio environments, critical listening and the identification of engineering techniques such as balance, panning, EQ, reverb, compression, delay, and time-based effects, and instrument identification. Students also hone their critical listening skills by examining stylistic comparisons of engineering and mix techniques from several accomplished producers, studio engineers, and live engineers.

Course Outline

• Critical Listening and Engineering Analysis
• Psychoacoustics of Critical Listening Environments
• Engineering Techniques and Critical Listening
• Critical Listening Techniques for Various Audio Applications
• Case Studies