---
title: Audio Fundamentals
description: Audio fundamentals cover the core principles of sound waves, signal flow, and digital audio representation. Learners will understand concepts like frequency, amplitude, sample rate, and bit depth, establishing a solid foundation for practical audio engineering work.
category: music-audio
subcategory: audio-engineering
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/audio-fundamentals
---

# Audio Fundamentals

Audio fundamentals cover the core principles of sound waves, signal flow, and digital audio representation. Learners will understand concepts like frequency, amplitude, sample rate, and bit depth, establishing a solid foundation for practical audio engineering work.

## Available Resources

2 Books • 1 Courses • 3 Websites

## Courses

### 1. Fundamentals of Audio and Music Engineering: Part 1 Musical Sound & Electronics

In this course students learn the basic concepts of acoustics and electronics and how they can applied to understand musical sound and make music with electronic instruments.  Topics include: sound waves, musical sound, basic electronics, and applications of these basic principles in amplifiers and speaker design.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/audio-engineering

## Websites

### 1. iZotope Production Expert

iZotope's tutorial library on digital audio basics, mixing, mastering, and audio repair, with articles explaining gain staging, EQ, compression, and metering. Useful for connecting theory to practical decisions, though many pieces demonstrate iZotope's own plugins.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.izotope.com/en/learn.html

**Tags:** audio-engineering, mixing, mastering, digital-audio, tutorials

### 2. Sound on Sound Mixing Guides

Sound On Sound magazine's archive of technique articles, including long-running mix clinics and engineer interviews on EQ, compression, reverb and balance, so learners can see how working professionals diagnose problems and make specific decisions on real mixes.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques

**Tags:** audio-mixing, mix-engineering, eq, compression, studio-techniques

### 3. soundonsound.com

Sound On Sound is a long-running audio recording magazine and website. It publishes in-depth tutorials, gear reviews, and practical how-to articles on recording, mixing, mastering, microphone technique, DAWs, plugins, and studio setup.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://soundonsound.com

**Tags:** websites, music-performing-arts, audio-engineering

## Books

### 1. Modern Recording Techniques

**Author:** David Miles Huber, Robert E. Runstein

Standard studio reference covering microphones, signal flow, consoles, digital audio, MIDI, monitoring, and mixdown. Readers come away able to set up a session, choose and place mics, and understand how each piece of a recording chain works.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240804562?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, music-performing-arts, audio-engineering

### 2. Audio Engineering 101

**Author:** Tim Dittmar

Plain-language introduction to studio work: what an audio engineer does, how sound and signal flow behave, microphone types and placement, gear basics, and session etiquette. Includes interviews with working engineers and enough grounding to assist on a real session.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240819152?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, music-performing-arts, audio-engineering

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