Lessons From a Live Sound Engineer
My name is Golden. I was born in 1973, and in many ways, I grew up in this industry.
My dad did this work—audio, production, live events—and he also spent 25 years teaching Audio Engineering and Record Producing at Golden West College. Many great engineers came out of his program. So from an early age, I was surrounded not just by gear and stages, but by people who were serious about learning the craft and doing it well.
What started as exposure eventually became a career. Over the years, I’ve worked in clubs, churches, corporate events, and live music venues—mixing front of house, monitors, and broadcast, solving problems in real time where there are no do-overs.
And that’s really what this blog is about.
This isn’t theory. This isn’t textbook audio.
This is real-world sound.
I’m writing The Soundcheck Diaries because I love to teach. Through years of hands-on experience—hundreds of shows, countless soundchecks, and more unexpected problems than I can count—I’ve built a deep well of practical knowledge. The kind you only get by being in the room, under pressure, making it work.
This blog is for:
- Aspiring audio engineers trying to break in
- Church engineers and volunteers doing their best with what they have
- Musicians who want to better understand the relationship between themselves and the sound engineer
- Anyone who works with audio gear and wants to make things sound better
Because the truth is, most of us aren’t mixing arena tours every night.
We’re in clubs.
Churches.
Corporate ballrooms.
Outdoor stages.
Small rooms with big challenges.
And those environments demand a different kind of knowledge—practical, adaptable, and grounded in reality.
In this blog, I’ll get into the nitty-gritty through stories. When situations arise, I write about them. I’ll walk you through the problem, what was at stake, and the solution I came up with in the moment. Sometimes I got it right. Sometimes I didn’t. But there’s always a lesson.
A lot of industry content focuses on the touring world—and that’s valuable—but this space is for the rest of us too. The engineers, musicians, and techs out there every day, making it happen in less-than-perfect conditions.
These are my stories.
These are the lessons I’ve learned.
These are the mistakes I’ve made—so maybe you don’t have to.
There’s always a technical takeaway.
But it’s told in a way that keeps it real—because that’s how we actually learn.
Welcome to The Soundcheck Diaries.
Soundcheck Diaries 