---
title: Live Sound Engineering
description: Live sound engineering involves managing audio reinforcement for concerts, theater, and public events. Learners will understand how to set up PA systems, manage stage monitors, control feedback, and mix audio in real time for live audiences.
category: music-audio
subcategory: audio-engineering
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/live-sound-engineering
---

# Live Sound Engineering

Live sound engineering involves managing audio reinforcement for concerts, theater, and public events. Learners will understand how to set up PA systems, manage stage monitors, control feedback, and mix audio in real time for live audiences.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 3 Websites

## Websites

### 1. r/livesound Wiki

The subreddit's community-maintained wiki, covering gear recommendations, signal flow, gain staging, feedback control, and the career questions that come up repeatedly. Readers get working answers to common live-audio problems and a sense of what practitioners actually agree on.

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

**Link:** https://www.reddit.com/r/livesound/wiki/index/

**Tags:** live-sound, audio-engineering, sound-reinforcement, community-wiki

### 2. 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

### 3. prosoundweb.com

ProSoundWeb is a comprehensive online resource for professional audio engineers and live sound technicians, offering news, tutorials, features, and product reviews across live sound, recording, and studio gear.

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

**Link:** https://prosoundweb.com

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

## Podcasts

### 1. Sound Design Live

**Author:** Nathan Lively

Build your career as a sound engineer. 
The podcast for live audio professionals. Interviews with the leading innovators in concert, theatre, and corporate production. Submit your questions: http://buff.ly/Nwpsf0
Nathan Lively is a Career Coach for Audio Professionals, Podcast Consultant for Small Businesses, and Author.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-us | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.sounddesignlive.com/

**Tags:** live-sound, audio-engineering, system-tuning, audio-careers, interviews

## Books

### 1. The Sound Reinforcement Handbook

**Author:** Gary Davis, Ralph Jones

Yamaha's reference text on sound reinforcement, working from basic acoustics and electricity through microphones, mixers, amplifiers, speakers, and system interconnection. After it, a reader can reason about why a live rig behaves as it does rather than copying settings.

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

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881889008?tag=edmonddante07-20

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

### 2. Sound Systems: Design and Optimization

**Author:** Bob McCarthy

A manual for live sound system design: how loudspeaker coverage, arrays, and room acoustics interact, and how to align and tune a rig using measurement software. Readers learn to predict coverage on paper and verify it in the room.

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

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240521560?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** live-sound, sound-system-design, system-alignment, loudspeakers, audio-measurement

### 3. Live Sound Basics

**Author:** Ric Wallace

A short introduction to live sound written to accompany Production Institute classes, covering terminology, production paperwork, delay and reverb, mixing workflow, and feedback elimination on monitors and mains. Readers finish able to set up and run a small show.

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

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1475080476?tag=edmonddante07-20

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

---

*This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge*

*Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).*

View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/live-sound-engineering