Formal Electronics Education

I found a little bit of discussion of this by UTFSF but I'd like to get some more input if it's all right.

I will be graduating in about a month with a degree in Music Industry with an emphasis in audio production.  It's sort of not quite as much audio as a recording school degree and not quite as much music (though close) as a performance degree.  I would really like to record music for a living, but I'm also very into building my own gear.  I would really like to work in some capacity as an audio equipment designer/tech, whether as a studio tech or engineer/tech, or as a product designer/troubleshooter at a company big or small or whatever.  My point is that I want to know the gear inside and out, and be able to understand it in terms of how it sounds, why it sounds that way, and how to make it sound different, though the degree to which that skill would be used in my job is up in the air for now.  I actually wouldn't mind doing non-audio-related EE work and just do my audio stuff on the side.

My question, in that context, is this:
What are some solid ways I could get to that point?  I'll probably be in Minneapolis so I have thought about getting an EE degree from the U of M Twin Cities.  I realize they probably don't offer many audio oriented classes so I'd have to get a lot of that on my own.  Is there a school out there that does offer more in the way of audio?  God forbid there be one where they still teach tubes... or would I be better off trying to apprentice myself to someone who already does this for a living.  Mind you I won't be satisfied with a schematic and a layout that I can use to build something.  I want to have to knowhow to actually design a product that hopefully sounds good without resorting to ripping off someone else's design and changing a few things.  I realize that has it's place and I've already done that and will probably do it again... and again... and again.  If I could get somewhere near someone like PRR's understanding of both audio circuits and electronics in general I'd be very happy.  I know formal training is no substitute for hands on experience and that there are many things you'll never learn til you actually do, but I think formal training would eliminate a lot of wasted time stumbling about trying to understand things.


Whaddayathink?

What really helped me was Anant Agarwal in MIT's 6.002 (ocw.mit.edu) and Ing. Dieter Nührmann, though he's in German.

livingnote said:

What really helped me was Anant Agarwal in MIT's 6.002 (ocw.mit.edu) and Ing. Dieter Nührmann, though he's in German.

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Thanks much!  Regardless of what path I choose that looks like some info I could use.

Ben

> graduating ...with a degree in Music Industry

What degree is that? SMU's 50-credit B.A. degree?

> I have thought about getting an EE degree

Seriously? An EE is very hard work. In fact "hard work" may be its main virtue; the field is so broad and evolves so fast that you won't be good for much when you get out. Real engineers find a job and learn its craft over a period of years. The EE degree is reasonably valuable, and its "hard work" is a good starter skill. I realized I could never hack it, would be among the very large proportion of EE freshmen who flunk-out.

What I really wish I had skill in is "selling". I've never made $1K "on my own", I live on salary and I'm "valuable" mostly because I found a stable funded community of technical idiots. I see many folks with slim technical skill who are good self-promoters and adequate managers making an OK living running studios.

> understanding of both audio circuits and electronics in general

OHM'S LAW. Not as an abstract thing: you should be able to glance at a small circuit and "instantly" know I and V, the way a soccer player glances at the ball and knows the angle and kick to put on his leg.

Same for the funny-name Theorems, Kirchoff and Thevenin. Glance at a mesh of 2, 3, 7 parts and "instantly" get a sense where the voltages and currents are relatively big or small.

Extend to AC. Memorize a few capacitive reactances. 0.01uFd is 1Meg at low audio and 1K at high audio. Then if you find a 220uFd cap feeding a 8 ohm speaker, you know if it passes deep bass or shaves a bit.

READ! Especially schematics. Don't exclude non-audio schematics... "audio" is a human concept, electrons are not human, many non-audio systems could be audio systems with change of capacitors.

> I'll probably be in Minneapolis

Don't get stuck in one town. TC is a fairly good area, but it could turn sour. And you should gain broad experience and contacts. I don't really regret staying within a 70 mile zone most of my life, but it is an in-between zone with a lot of density and diversity. If I were doing more general audio-for-hire, it would have been good to spend time in Calif and Memphis and Toronto and St Louis.

> What degree is that? SMU's 50-credit B.A. degree?

Not quite.  It's from MSUM (mnstate.edu).  The music end of it is fairly legit, though I'm not that please with what I got on the audio side.  I feel like most of what I know I had to go and get myself.  Not that it shouldn't be that way anyway but a course in audio production should accelerate that process rather than necessitate it by the course's lack of useful instruction.  I'm about 130 credits deep.

> Seriously? An EE is very hard work. In fact "hard work" may be its main virtue; the field is so broad and evolves so fast that you won't be good for much when you get out.

I certainly read you loud and clear on the "hard work" bit.  I was looking through course requirements for a few programs today and they're daunting, to say the least.  It's not just to learn about electronics, but also to provide me with a skill more likely to land me a salaried position than "audio engineer."  If I can get by doing audio work that's awesome, but the wife and I would like to have kids and feed 'em too, and as long as I can do a little music on the side (if not as my main profession) I'll be a happy fella.  The EE thing could be anything from a means to a day job to a mass of instantly outdated knowledge I paid a lot of money for.  In any case, I'm ready for some hard work if it's worth it.

> What I really wish I had skill in is "selling".  I see many folks with slim technical skill who are good self-promoters and adequate managers making an OK living running studios.

I'm with you there as well.  That's part of the reason I'm considering making myself more hireable for salaried type positions.  I'm not great at selling, and I don't particularly enjoy doing it, as there's often a certain amount of BS involved.  There are those who do it with integrity, mind you, but I haven't met that many of 'em.

> OHM'S LAW. Not as an abstract thing: you should be able to glance at a small circuit and "instantly" know...

This is good advice.  How does one get to that point?  I'm guessing by crunching the numbers on a bunch of circuits a bunch of times.  As a starting reference use Art of Electronics?  Or is there a better place to go?  I've gotten the basics from several different electronics texts so I'm not 100% in the dark but I certainly don't know this stuff backwards and forwards.

> Don't get stuck in one town. TC is a fairly good area, but it could turn sour.

There's truth to that.  I'm in the Fargo (ND)/Moorhead (MN) area now and my wife's family is all within about 50 miles, so Minneapolis is a good sort of compromise for us, at least for now.  Decent sized city/music scene, but not so far away that we can't easily drive to see the in-laws.  That said, if there was a good enough opportunity I'm sure we could swing a bigger move.

In any case, I very much appreciate the input, the more the better.  Lots to think about.

Ben
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bahrens said:

> Seriously? An EE is very hard work. In fact "hard work" may be its main virtue; the field is so broad and evolves so fast that you won't be good for much when you get out.

I certainly read you loud and clear on the "hard work" bit.  I was looking through course requirements for a few programs today and they're daunting, to say the least.  It's not just to learn about electronics, but also to provide me with a skill more likely to land me a salaried position than "audio engineer."  If I can get by doing audio work that's awesome, but the wife and I would like to have kids and feed 'em too, and as long as I can do a little music on the side (if not as my main profession) I'll be a happy fella.  The EE thing could be anything from a means to a day job to a mass of instantly outdated knowledge I paid a lot of money for.  In any case, I'm ready for some hard work if it's worth it.

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You will not suffer lack of employment opportunities with a BSEE, that's for sure.  There are very, very few Americans who are making it through EE programs.  Once you've graduated, you'll have proven whatever you need to about your abilities.  Don't worry about the "technologies" you learn about becoming outdated, because you really won't learn many.  A BSEE is about fundamentals, and there are a lot of them.  With a BSEE, you'll be prepared for a lifetime career doing whatever you want.

If it's audio you're looking for, the masters of that subject aren't necessarily qualified EE's.  They're specialists in the exact circuits they're working with.  They probably wouldn't be able to get a job anywhere else in EE.  However, if you have an EE degree, you can go into audio if you want.  You'll just be overqualified in the subjects that don't have much to do with audio, and underqualified when it comes to audio.  But that wont' be a problem, because you'll have the background to pick it up fast.

About the EE: What PRR said. I've learned very little practical EE stuff in my Masters courses (and even less in my PhD studies). The definite advantage of a BSEE or an MEE is that you get a piece of paper showing that you put in the effort, and that's not a bad investment.

bahrens said:

I'm guessing by crunching the numbers on a bunch of circuits a bunch of times.  As a starting reference use Art of Electronics?  Or is there a better place to go?

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That would be a very good start. Read the AoE, read it again, and again. Read the various appnotes from NatSemi, TI and Analog Design. Read Self and Jung. Read the various circuit analysis threads here. Do go over a bunch of existing circuits, try to figure out what makes them work. Try to make small modifications, like figuring out what you need to change a discrete circuit's bias points so it runs on a lower/higher supply voltage. Stay away from simulators until you have a good feeling for the underlying principles. SPICE has its place, but it will lie to you, and you need to be able to do a sanity check on its output.

Tinker. 100$ will buy you 500 2N4401s, 500 2N4403s, an assortment of resistors and capacitors and a handful of op-amps. Use a cheap PC as a poor man's audio generator/analyzer.

Play with small circuits in your head. Do this regularly, the same way you would play (or sing) scales. A composer friend of mine thinks up musical themes in the shower, I tweak discrete op-amp designs.

All this requires a lot of time and discipline, and Life can get in the way. This is one advantage of a 'proper' BSEE, as it is mentally more of a full time commitment.

One more thing about the EE: if you take it at a research(ish) university, there are usually plenty of research groups desperate for undergrad grunts to design/build/mod circuitry for use in research projects. While most of this will not be directly audio related, it will give you hands-on experience and course credits, plus you get to work with reasonable test/measurement equipment.

JDB.

Once you've graduated, you'll have proven whatever you need to about your abilities

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Absolutely not a certainty.  I've worked with enough engineers to know that a large percentage rely on that piece of paper more than their actual abilities.  Passing tests and being able to do the work are two different things entirely.

I worked with a new EE graduate from Ga Tech a number of years ago.  He had an ego on him like you couldn't imagine.  EVERYTHING was beneath him.  All he wanted to do was theory and math but yet didn't have a handle on what he was actually doing.  We quickly caught on that he couldn't do "regular" engineering work but instead attempted to dazzle with bullshit.  His diploma got him the job but his inability to produce and his attitude got him released from the job.

I've also worked with "engineers" that never graduated or had diplomas in unrelated fields that had an honest love for the work and a true understanding of working fundamentals.  If I were a manager again and had to hire people, I would certainly give those folks a chance, the same as anyone with an expensive diploma.  It's who gets the job done, not who says they can get it done.

As for me, I can honestly say that I have learned much much more useful information through being mentored by other engineers in various fields than I ever learned in schools but again, I'm not doing theory, I'm engineering for products which is an entirely different set of skills.  Heck, I didn't even know where to start in audio when I found this forum even though I had been doing other things for some time.  It takes a while to feel comfortable with something new although it's all the same physics.  Strange but true.

So in closing, yes a diploma in EE will get you in the door but please don't count on it teaching you everything you need to know.

I'll also second PRR's opinion on Ohm's Law.  Learn it like you know your own name.  Learn resistor/cap in series/parallel.

Another thing that is invaluable: Learn how to troubleshoot quickly and efficiently.  Yes this is more technician related stuff but TRUST ME, you will become invaluable to an engineering team if you can identify issues before they arise.  Too many engineers can design on paper but simply cannot work in the real world with real parts.

Lots of good advice...

I submit that PRR got to be PRR not by study, but from doing. You get an intuitive sense about ohms law, mostly from doing it wrong on the bench. Releasing the smoke from a few resistors or burning off your fingerprints on hot parts, will give you a better sense of power dissipation than a chapter full of calculations.

I will second PRR's suggestion about selling chops. Whether we admit it or not, we are constantly marketing ourselves to get a job, or get promoted in that job. Communication skills are important and often given scant attention. I read in an article over the weekend about some student wondering why he didn't get into the college of his choice, despite misspelling two words on his application.  :-[

I have managed engineering groups before and a degree only insures some minimum familiarity with math and basic electronic relationships, while it does suggest a discipline I sorely lacked. In the real world of design engineering there is an almost passion for understanding how things work, and making them work better that exists in outstanding engineers. I get a little irritated by some people on boards like this who stop their pursuit, once somebody hands them a workable solution. "Don't bother me with the details".    There is also a place for by the numbers, connect the dots, glorified technicians, but where's the fun in that? Anything worth pursuing is worth doing well, not just adequately. The real test of an engineer is doing it better for less.

In the long term a degree is worth having as it will be considered in hiring and advancement decisions for the rest of your life, especially in larger organizations. Small companies are more influenced by individual performance.   

JR

PRR said:

If I were doing more general audio-for-hire, it would have been good to spend time in Calif and Memphis and Toronto and St Louis.

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Audio engineering hot-spots I've found in the US and Canada are:

Los Angeles and surrounding areas (recording and live sound companies)
San Francisco (recording and live sound companies)
Toronto (Broadcast mostly)
Montreal (Broadcast mostly)
Seattle, Vancouver area

those are the main hotspots that I get called out to visit accounts at for Pro Audio (Recording, Broadcast, Live)
Home Theater type accounts are dotted all over the place.

/R

I have an computer engineering degree which is most of an EE degree (missing about four courses), plus about a dozen computing science courses. Most work out there isn't going to be audio. I DIY a lot of audio gear - including some rather aggressive projects as you might have noticed. My day job is designing engine control systems. In the coming century, I would expect power management and distribution, alternative energies, and water/sewage treatment to be hot fields. You may have noticed Obama's 'infrastructure' make-work (the New New Deal?) programs, and that infrastructure includes updating the electrical grid of the USA to be more efficient and modern as you find in much of Europe. A noble and worthwhile goal.

PRR said:

...What I really wish I had skill in is "selling". I've never made $1K "on my own"...

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i think you should find a editor, extract your postings from here and elsewhere and write/publish about tube audio, specials about vari mu etc.
i learned from a lot of people here, but reading your posts always gives me answers, arises my curiosity to go deeper into the subject, and is never boring.

-max

p.s. thank you!

bahrens said:

I would really like to record music for a living, but I'm also very into building my own gear. 

I would really like to work in some capacity as an audio equipment designer/tech, whether as a studio tech or engineer/tech, or as a product designer/troubleshooter at a company big or small or whatever. 

My point is that I want to know the gear inside and out, and be able to understand it in terms of how it sounds, why it sounds that way, and how to make it sound different, though the degree to which that skill would be used in my job is up in the air for now. 

I actually wouldn't mind doing non-audio-related EE work and just do my audio stuff on the side.

Click to expand...

I hope you do not mind me breaking it all down. I lectured in modelmaking and product design for about two and a half years and that is how I used to help my students to find their way.

I get the impression that you want to be an all rounder. You would like to record music, work as an audio equipment designer and not mind working in non-audio related work.

You will already be getting your formal qualification in music production. Now, to stay in this line of business as also a techie, you do not have to do an EE degree. That is like cracking a walnut with a sledge hammer. A smaller course would do fine. Here we have NC (National Certificate), HNC (Higher National Certificate), HND (Higher National Diploma). Higher than these there is the degree course, master and phd. I am sure you have equivalent courses to these. I just want to give you an example of what you should go for. These type of non-degree courses will give you sufficient foundation in electrics and electronics.

Now, working in non-audio industry and keeping the audio on the side line bit is contradictory. If you really want to record music for a living then this is not for you. However, you might be thinking that if the recording industry doesn't work out, then you have something to fall back on to. Nothing wrong with that. In which case go for full EE degree course but also consider specialising in the fields that have more employment opportunities. Such as RF, DSP and microelectronics. Being a middle of the road EE is not particularly an advantage these days. 


If I may give a bit of my background which I hope may be of some help.

I don't have a degree, my qualifications are HND level in EE. I did one year MSC in Computer Integrated Manufacturing about fifteen years ago and chucked it. I don't exactly remember the reason why I did not do a degree, but probably becuase I had too many interests going on when I was younger. Still the same though.  However,  I have a solid background in EE because it is a family tradition. My father was an electrician. We are four brothers (and three sisters) and we all grew up in my father's business. I learned the fundamental electric laws when I was in primary school. My eldest brother did not have a formal EE education but he is a master of his craft. My elder brother has two EE degrees and my younger brother has an associate degree in EE.

Finally, you learn the fundamentals in formal education. But crafting the subject happens in the industry, like knowing the gear inside out that you mentioned. There is no substitute to working beside master engineers. And being among some of them in this forum is a bonus.

Hindsight is 20/20...If only I had asked this same question on the boards last year at this time. I was in a similar situation as bahrens and have since taken a job with a sound company QC'ing rental gear because I have to pay those student loan bills. 
I have been mulling over taking some supplemental classes to my Music Recording BA to boost my Physics 110 and 112 and my Intro to Electronics 110 course understanding.  My logic for taking classes was the same as bahrens', "...but I think formal training would eliminate a lot of wasted time stumbling about trying to understand things." I have stumbled upon some of the wise men's advice on my own by burning up a few hundred dollars and tripping a few breakers, but those lessons were better learned than many lessons from my formal education.  This is not to say that I won't consider taking more classes, but I am not aware of any courses like the HND, HNC and NC in the US, and I can already tell that advanced circuit design won't help me as much as breathing V=IR.
Anyway, I didn't mean to take this post away from bahrens.  I don't know what point in your life you are and you seem more mature than I (you are married while I'm just engaged), but starting my career really put things into perspective for me.  I learned that I didn't want to make audio gear for a living since it is my hobby.  I mostly enjoy what I do at work (especially when I get to work on shows), but I love what I do at home and I didn't want to change that.  If I had not realized this I would've been enrolled in an EE program right now and probably been miserable.

Sorry for the rant, my $0.02

Again, thanks to everyone who has put in their $.02.  Let me say that while the audio/gear thing is definitely a passion, I wouldn't consider the EE (and possible resulting non-audio/gear job) thing if I didn't think it could provide for an interesting and enjoyable career.  It's going to be a tough decision.  In any case, I've got Art of Electronics and the student manual at the top of my Christmas list and a few other books not to far down. 

For those of you who didn't go the EE route, where are you mathematically?  Or to say it another way, how much calc, diff eq., etc might I want if I never went for formal training?

I use regular old algebra more than anything actually.

I think the higher math would suit much better if I were doing more theory though.  One of the other RF engineers I work with uses some Diff-eqs on the rare occasion but he is more of the theory type, (MS in Physics..) and I am more of the 'take his theory and make it work' kinda guy.  Together we make a hell of a team.

I do have the impression that a lot of the higher math is more geared towards teaching you how to solve problems abstractly and in certain ways, rather than just getting answers, if you get my drift.

> I have a solid background in EE because it is a family tradition.

That has an influence. My father designed computers. My grandfather built airplanes. Before that, before 20th-century gizmos, wood-worker and brass-worker.

> passion for understanding how things work, and making them work better

That seems to be my forefathers. Grandpa failed a bunch of times, but also got awards for improved production processes. (Improved production won't stop massive technology shift, or stop a larger competitor from eating your company.) Dad had some great ideas for a company doomed to fall under IBM's might. If I may guess what John is saying, that company has done very well, in part by doing the electronics well. (Also doing marketing and product niche well; "passion" in other parts of the company.)

> you do not have to do an EE degree. That is like cracking a walnut with a sledge hammer. A smaller course would do fine. Here we have NC...

That's a great point. In the US, most Community Colleges offer a 2-year Associate's Degree in Electronics Technician. You may get more in-your-face Ohm's Law, you will learn to read a meter, and how to skim a maintenance/repair manual. You don't get into the far-out math needed to invent next decade's radio modulation schemes. You become fairly employable; as Svart implies, most engineers couldn't fix a clothes-dryer, smoke-stained technicians get the darn things working. The pay is lower but a lot of places who never need a design engineer need their shorts fixed and relays replaced.

> I submit that PRR got to be PRR not by study, but from ... doing it wrong on the bench. Releasing the smoke from a few resistors....

That's an essential experience which EE programs are shy on.

I've made smoke. The big smoke wasn't educational. I do recall when a low-cost CK722 cost more than a tank of gasoline. I was braver when transistors fell to the price of a beer, but you don't waste beer. Nevertheless, stuff happens, stuff smokes. And when you are poor, you have more time than beer or transistors, so you can THINK about "why that happened".

It's not always power dissipation. My favorite tale is the silent death of a MOSFET line-driver. Worked great for sine or square waves in resistor or small capacitor. Needed a looong line, so added 10,000pFd. Sine fine, square no go, now sine no go. You old silicon abusers can guess why, but let the young guys ponder.

> How does one get to that point?

I took my time. "Play with small circuits in your head. Do this regularly, the same way you would play (or sing) scales." says it well. (And hanging with musicians, I know many of them don't run their scales near as much as they should.)

> crunching the numbers on a bunch of circuits a bunch of times.

You know how they "Make US Marines"? EXERCISE!! If I were to teach a degree, it would start the same way, with thousands of very basic electric exercises instead of pushups and wall-climbs. Sore brains instead of sore arms, but then when you have to jump in a trench and move all your EQ centers before the Talent gets back from smoke-break, you aren't standing there "duh...." There's plenty of tricky-stuff, the easy stuff must get EASY.

> Stay away from simulators until

AGREE. Just because a CPU can do the V=I*R exercises a million times faster is no reason to let it. If only because I can sketch and rough-up (1-digit accuracy) a plan 100 times faster than I can feed it to the PC. Which means I can reject 99 plans before the PC can reject one. When I put a plan to PC, I'm already mighty sure it will "work", and what the right answers are. I say 9-some volts, SPICE sez 8.76543V, it may be right.

I did last night hit a problem where SPICE was righter than me. It did lie. It found a static starting condition and then showed the dynamic wiggle I was trying for. But I knew the plan was tricky. I turned off the initial static run, let it apply B+ to a cold circuit. Voltage comes up, oscillator starts... but the oscillation stops the ramp-up at 22V, where needs to be 36V. I'm not shamed; I knew it was tricky. Took SPICE over a minute to do the run. I diddled something and ran it again but as it was running I saw why it just wasn't going to work as hoped. (What I really need is a 500V quad op-amp for $5. For $15, a tube is cheaper.)

> Stay away from simulators until

Click to expand...

I'd say don't rely on sims until...

Spice is here to stay, like it or not.  Pretty much all businesses require engineers to be proficient in spice.  The earlier you learn it, the better you'll be, just like any other skill.  But it's just that, a skill, and like any other skill it's only a piece of the puzzle.  If you rely on spice to do the work for you, sooner or later you'll get to a place where you'll need to do something without it and you'll be stuck.

And again like PRR always says, spice LIES.

I needed to model a CFB opamp the other day..  Orcad Spice told me the circuit was working, the prototype showed me that it wasn't.  I later determined that Spice was modeling the CFB in exactly the same way as a VFB.  Sheesh.  Since time was wasting, I just grabbed a DMM, an Oscope and a Spec-an and built the circuit like they did in the old days, with a little intuition and a lot of cursing.

It works though.

jdbakker said:

Tinker. 100$ will buy you 500 2N4401s, 500 2N4403s, an assortment of resistors and capacitors and a handful of op-amps. Use a cheap PC as a poor man's audio generator/analyzer.

JDB.

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I forgot to mention that. It is great to allocate a budget for tinkering but there is cheaper ways to go too.

Rubbish dumps. Yes, rubbish dumps. Now the appliances are always put aside for recycling. The other day I wen to the tip to dump some wood stuff. All the PCs and home appliances were on the side. Raked through the hi-fis and got two fantastic, late 70s - early 80s silver face hi-fi units. Potentiometer knobs were all machined aluminium and a quick clean up with cif made them shining brand new and man they are beautiful. Now inside, I had two fantastic  multi secondary power transformers and they are of good quality. Majority of the boards are all discrete and some opamps too. Switches etc. All free.

So, tinkering is definitely part of the development. Also invest into a library. E-bay is godsent for this. I have been watching for it for a very long time and finally got a copy of Troubleshooting Analog Circuits by Robert Pease for only 4 quid. Cheaper than a Burger King meal.

Svart said:

spice LIES.

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There are some categories, where SPICE LIES much.
- OP amp filters in A.C. analysis - A.C. analysis get result while circuit is unstable.
=> try to simulate filter with transient analysis with strong signal input (with zero signal SPICE
does not look for unstability)

-Spice is based on parasitics. Try to simulate simple "behavioral logic" sequential circuit
and You will get error report instead of result.
=> add simple small RC integrator into !digital! signal path and SPICE then converges up.

Spice also Lies in noise simulation via nonrespecting 1/f noises.


For nontrivial circuit SPICE simulation is not valid and sample must be builded. But SPICE can
help while debugging of real circuit, if its malfunction is fatal. But maybe for future - next
NON-SPICE simulator will be based on the graph theory rather than network matrices and
will be much better. Remember: SPICE is program from 1970-ies!!!




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