I’m just curious about the backgrounds and professions of the people here. After all, audio gear and Cubase updates aren’t exactly cheap!
Do most of you work in music and audio engineering full-time, or do you hold completely different jobs to make ends meet?
I work in IT/networking during the day, which means that by the time I get home and look at the Cubase screen, my eyes are already exhausted. How do you all strike a balance between a ‘9-to-5’ job and the energy required for creative work like composing and mixing music?
I used to work in Networking as well. All remote so stuck in front of a screen most of the day. It certainly paid for the gear. I’ve retired now and buy upgrades when on sale. I’ve played drums for a living in the past and helped out at a studio. I’ve just never wanted to do it full time. I like to pick who and what I want to record.
I’m cured of GAS. Lucky me.
I have a bunch of plugins that “do it” for me. To buy a new plugin would mean having to discard a favourite. The ones I use are all favourite "go to"s.
Unless the plugin is very specialised, such as HEARS.
That’s awesome that you used to be in networking too! Remote work definitely saves the commute, but staring at routers and terminal windows all day definitely takes a toll. Retiring and just picking the audio projects you actually want to work on sounds like the absolute dream. And I totally agree with you on the instruments over plugins, there’s always room for one more synth, right?
Being completely cured of GAS is a superpower! I’m trying to get to that point. I’ve finally realized that having 10 different analog EQ emulations doesn’t actually make my mixes any better, it just slows me down while I try to choose between them. Sticking to a solid “go-to” template is definitely the smarter way to work.
I do freelance software dev and IT consulting. It pays for the gear, but sitting at a desk all day makes me not want to look at a Cubase project at night. Sometimes I just play my hardware synths to avoid the screen. Getting away from the mouse is an essential tool for my sanity!
I feel you on that. Screen fatigue is a real red line for me after a 9-to-5 networking shift. How do you manage your freelance hours without it eating into your creative time? I always end up way too exhausted to mix anything properly.
It’s tough, especially since I work with a lot of international clients. The time zone differences mean I’m often replying to emails when I should be tracking vocals. As long as they try to put in the effort to communicate it’s all good, but it still drains my energy.
Time zones sound brutal. I guess that’s why having a solid “go-to” template in your DAW is so important. When you only have an hour of energy left, you don’t want to waste it routing tracks. It’s a fundamental plug-in for a good workflow.
Exactly, templates save lives. But honestly, my biggest issue lately isn’t even the music side, it’s the administrative headache. Tracking hours, doing timesheets, and dealing with billing just totally kills the creative vibe before I even open Cubase.
Oh man, tracking hours is the absolute worst part of the job. It feels so unprofessional and sloppy when you lose track of time on a project. I do networking and even standard IT timesheets drive me crazy. How do you handle all that with overseas clients without losing your mind?
It used to turn me into a total hothead, honestly. I deal a lot with South American clients, specifically Brazil, and their labor laws (CLT) have crazy math for things like night shifts and overtime. Trying to calculate that manually in spreadsheets was an absolute nightmare.
That sounds incredibly frustrating. I’m a non native speaker when it comes to HR stuff, so just hearing about foreign labor math makes my head spin. I assume you eventually found some kind of software to just handle all that automatically so you can get back to music?
I tried, but most of the tools out there were just poorly designed or full of errors of all sorts basically issue is budget. Since I do web dev anyway, I ended up just coding my own automated calculator to do the heavy lifting for me. It was the only way to save my sanity and get my evenings back.
Not disagreeing, just wanna mention that coding your own HR tool just to free up time for music is the ultimate flex! Is it just a personal script on your computer, or did you make it an actual public site?
