This Guide is my attempt at a summary to aid the training of volunteers in the basics of live sound mixing with an emphasis on non-technical details, and oriented towards acoustic music settings. It is based upon my experiences with sound at the Laurel Theatre and a few other venues over the past 20 years and includes details on the social aspects of being a good sound engineer along with a fairly quick overview of technical aspects.

It is designed to go along with a two-session workshop covering basics, and though I give some technical suggestions, these are not designed to provide anything other than complementary material to what you would learn by reading a good guide to sound or the manuals for whatever sound system you are using. Even more important is hands-on experience, and watching over the shoulders of experts. Some references are listed at the end of the Guide along with some Web sites for more info.

The below includes essentially no coverage of many highly important components of live sound. Notably excluded are details of effects (e.g. reverb, delay, and harmony units) which are used to mix in an external signal along with the original audio, signal processors (e.g. compressors, limiters, gates, etc.) which are used to modify the audio signal, and speaker details such as crossovers.