Maybe you’ve heard the term, maybe you haven’t, but what is signal flow? Signal flow is the term used for the path an audio signal takes from its source (a mic) to its output (a speaker). This is important because understanding the direction and stages our audio travels through helps us diagnose problems and make informed creative choices.
You see, before computers, signal paths were made using physical cables or “copper to copper” connections. Engineers had to connect every piece of gear with an actual cable to get from the source to the output. This could be extremely tedious but it forced an engineer to visualize the path of audio as it’s routed to achieve the desired result.
Nowadays we’ve shed this lengthy process for endless routing options available at the click of a button. But sometimes that lack of physical contact makes it difficult to conceptualize the path of audio.
Whether you’re working with digital or analogue formats, we must think of our audio as a progressive path from, to, and through each stage of processing. Thinking of our signal as a series of physical copper to copper connections will make sure we don’t act blindly when navigating our recording platform.
Here’s an activity to try, take an audio path you already work with, maybe from your guitar through your pedal board to an amp or your mic through your interface to your headphones and with a real live pen and paper draw out the path of audio from source to output. This may be a very simple or complicated signal flow but the goal is to get comfortable visualizing the path of audio from start to finish. You can pause here and go through those worksheets if you feel a bit confused or take the time after this video to dig in and strengthen your understanding before moving on.
Now that we understand how to visualize our signal flow I want to bring this back full circle And think of signal flow as one of the aspects that is part of our production performance. Just like you might choose to play a note, every part of your signal flow has an impact on your final performance.
Aside from being able to diagnose the problem, changing your signal flow can be a powerful tool. Think of changing the order of plugins as choosing to play a note hard vs soft or swapping a chord for its relative minor. Putting a compressor before an EQ will affect your sound differently from putting it after. Crowding a track to a bus track with the reverb on it will have a different sound than putting the reverb on the track itself. Will get into the specifics of these things a little later on but the point I want to make is that these are all choices we can make in the performance of our production and it’s not so much about what’s the right choice as knowing why we’re making that choice.
Signal Flow is the map of your sound as it travels through your gear. You don’t need to look at it constantly and you can wander and experiment as much as you like, but when you need to take a step back and figure out where you are in your production process, being able to read that map is valuable and important. Take a moment to go through the exercises and quiz that are part of this lesson before moving onto the next video and feel free to come back and watch this video again if at any point you feel confused about anything related to signal flow. This concept can take a second to wrap your head around especially when you’re working in a DAW where the path of audio it’s not so obvious so be kind yourself and don’t worry we’ll revisit this as it’s applicable throughout the entire course but for now I’ll see you in the next video where i’ll bring an Andrew to talk about the second most important and fundamental aspect of capturing sound, gain staging.
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