Since coming out as autistic, learning to unmask and attempt to be more authentic over the past few months, I’ve realised that trying to be someone I am not has eaten up a lot of my mental bandwidth over the years.

A platform like LinkedIn compounds that. I think it brings out the worst in people trying to promote themselves or their ideas, especially me. I’ve seen some howlers on my feed over the years. I thought about naming and shaming, but if you use the site you will have probably seen some god awful posts yourself. Have a look at the LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit if you fancy a cringe session.

I accept I’ve been a part of this toxic positivity game in the past. I’m often climbing cringe mountain myself. Though I feel I’m being more honest nowadays. We all have a filter when we present ourselves, don’t we? Otherwise my posts would have a lot more obscene vocabulary. Though I don’t think the occasional well placed swear word does any harm for punctuation.

As much as hustle culture sucks, we all have to eat, so I have to reach out to new people. People who interest me and people who play this game with me as much as I play it myself.

When I cold approach people, I’d used to “spray and pray” by writing an extremely long message, talk about all my credentials and what I’m capable of. I’d mostly be left on read, and then maybe 24 hours later, I’d probably have another go at the poor victim and send them another one, just to “touch base”

And as I get more of a “following” on that platform, I get more people messaging me doing exactly the same. A wall of AI generated text and follow up messages. It’s made me realise why this strategy doesn’t really work.

Ultimately, I’d like to consider that I’m a fairly nice bloke who wants to help people, do good work and build a sustainable career doing the things that my soul is generally passionate about which is creating things.

And without spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on networking lunches and events all over the world to be in the same room as the people who I want to attract, LinkedIn is a good place to reach out to the professionals you want to mix with. That’s why I joined, and begrudgingly keep active on there.

But I don’t want to be a “thought leader”, nor look equally desperate on that place and beg for work.

Trying to navigate the creative media industries is increasingly awful (I’m looking at you TV industry), and some days it’s like shouting to an abandoned parking lot. My inbox is full of messages left on read by people I’ve reached out to… and yes sometimes I do the same back.

The ghosted messages and constant rejection is sad, but at the end of the day, nobody owes me their attention or work, let alone a response. But I do sometimes wonder why people accept connection requests just to ignore me. I really should look into the human psychology of it at some point.

The best connections I’ve made usually have some sort of pattern. They are human, short and to the point, rather than, “Hi, can I book you in for a free consulting call to show you how I can scale up your brand presence?” followed by a few chapters of text.

I’ve found stating my intentions, writing a quick human message and showing interest in what the person you’re talking to can go far.

I’d used to dance around my intention, and maybe it’s being British, but I felt impolite to actually say that I wanted to work with people. It was like some strange mating ritual. But as I’ve grown a bit more confident and faced the usual ghosting and rejection, at some point things changed for me.

Now I’m not afraid as much to say what I want.

I want to work with you, or at least connect with you and get to know you. I don’t feel guilty about that anymore. I mean, this is how our economy, business and networking works right? Whether I like it or not.

So if there is an actual point to this article, it’s to say don’t be afraid to reach out to connections you want to talk to. Don’t be afraid to state your intentions.

Don’t beat about the bush with lots of words to cover up what you’re trying to say. Get to the point. I appreciate it myself, and I’m sure others do.

Also, don’t harass people. There’s a very simple rule to follow, which I try to follow. It’s really easy for this kind of thing the rule is simply “Don’t Be A Dick”.

Authenticity and intentions go a long way, and as I grow, I’m trying to be better at it.

Anyway, I’m going to state my intentions and do a shameless plug now. As a sound mixer, I’m looking to work on new projects for film and TV. I’ve got a lot of experience, good ears, a big list of credits, and I really care about making your project sound the best it can be.

We don’t have to “leverage synergies” or touch base, but if you’re interested in the work I do, check out my website at

www.tomedwardssound.com

I’m sitting here with Ableton Live in front of me, which for those who aren’t nerds is a digital audio workstation, which is software that people make music on.

As I write this, I’m about to start a Master’s in music production. I’m going back to school. My long term ambition is to one day do a PhD. Maybe it’ll happen, probably not, but let me have a dream in these dark times.

And when I think about what I’m going to study, what is going to be the future of sound, well many in the sector point to the term “immersive audio”. You may know it as spacial audio on your fancy airpods, dolby atmos or simply the term “surround sound”

I’m going to let you into a secret. I find immersive audio and surround sound cool, of course. But what, for some reason, what currently gets my juices going more is making something really crap in mono.

Apparently, for one of my masters modules I have to create 20 minutes of music, and while I don’t have all the details of what that entails yet, part of me is thinking about recording that EP I’ve had in my head for about 24 years. Most of it is an acoustic guitar, some bad singing and instruments I can’t play.

So I’ve dabbled around in Ableton, so I can get to grips with it. Typically, it’s used for electronic music like house, drum n bass and happy hardcore. I myself am a fan of instrumental hip hop. I was quite inspired by acts like DJ Shadow and other unknown beat makers I’d find on myspace and Limewire back in the day. I often listen to a lot of lo-fi hip hop radio when I’m studying, or put it on for my students when they study.

So my thinking, is well I’m really crap at playing music (or I’m a perfectionist), but I can play a riff and get away with it, so why don’t I loop it, and then find ways to humanise it, and then mess it up a bit?

Ableton has some great effects to dirty up your music .I can give it an old school vibe, make it lo-fi, distorted and ugly. Partly to disguise some of the bad musicianship from me, but also to add some authenticity. Hell, maybe I’ll even bust out my dusty four track recorder and run it through cassette while I’m at it.

But if I’m going to that great length, why don’t I go a little further? Forget all this immersive tech, let’s step back. I want my music to sound good anywhere. Let’s go old school. Let’s go pre digital. Let’s make music in mono.

Stereo music, where you listen in two speakers, became a more prominent and popular choice for mixing music in the mid to late 60s. Go and listen to some of your favourite Beatles albums in stereo when they first started experimenting with it. It’s a car crash when you think about it. Drums panned one side, bass in the other. The educated experienced audio engineer in me cannot fathom it.

As you fast forward a bit to more modern music, things became standardised and instruments found their own place in the stereo field to give a more balanced listening experience.

But go back in time again, and listen to some of Phil Spector’s productions. Recorded in mono, with a massive wall of sound, which was lots of instruments layered and had placed in a big echo chamber. You get that really thick and creamy mix. You can’t even really identify which instrument is which because it’s all blended together. Much of the thinking then was that it was good for AM radio. This was known as the “Wall of Sound”

Go back to the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. We had music where it was about capturing the performance in one go. No multitrack recorders, no luxury of doing more takes. You got it right, and your average listener would be listening on a mono speaker or gramophone with a big horn if you go back far enough.

But the beautiful part of that era was that a recording studio was about experimenting. The pioneers like Spector, George Martin and my favourite, Joe Meek, were pushing boundaries, whether it was inspired by be sound technology, drugs or the occult.

But anyway, then came surround formats like quadrophonic used for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon and the more modern ones that we have today. Personally, I associate surround sound with film and TV more than music, as that’s where I dabble in mixing it. The idea is to immerse the viewer in to your production. My favourite example I break the ice with is when I went to see one of the Planet of the Apes films and I could hear all of the apes moving about in a forest It sounded great on the cinema speakers.

But for a bit of fun, I want to hit pause on this boundary pushing and advanced algorithms which can pipe my audio to 150 odd different speakers and just get it right in one.

Maybe something of a tribute to to that past, but with a modern feel. Something that will play well in a shop, a prison tannoy system or your nan’s kitchen radio.

I think many can get caught up in the excitement of having all the bells and whistles to push these boundaries and make all this stuff sound amazing in multiple high end situations, but let’s be honest, your average listener doesn’t really give a shit.

In this context, I’m thinking of the 15 year-old metal fan who’s sharing one of my earbuds with my mate on the bus. And if the mix is in stereo, there is a good chance I’m not getting the entire experience.

So is it better to get your mix sounding good in mono first before you start playing with the surround panner?

Yeah, why not.

I hit 300 subscribers last week, which means alot to me.. I mean 300+ people out there who voluntary subscribed to read my waffle, or can’t be bothered to push the unsubscribe button. Thank you!

It’s a strange feeling as I get older. When I first entered the TV industry, green behind the ears, making it up as I go along (still do that, by the way), there were seniors everywhere who knew much more than I ever did. Proper veterans. People who could walk into a room, and everyone would shut up because they were probably worth listening to. I really miss some of those people, and that era of my life.

There is one director who I worked with who was fairly well known in the industry and who I owe a great deal to for seeing something in me that I don’t think many people did, certainly myself. They could command the room, they were approachable and naturally funny, but could become stern and protective when it came to the craft. When they were on set, they were laser focused, and in the cutting room they knew exactly what they wanted and why, and knew when to make hard decisions.

There was an editor who took me under his wing. He was incredibly kind and trusted me way before I deserved to have been and, even dare I say, drilled a bit of discipline into me, which still holds today somehow…… just.

I used to think he was a bit stubborn because he stuck to his guns with a lot of things. But he could have that Cassandra complex sometimes. People would ignore his warnings and three weeks later a project would unravel and someone else would have to step in.

Then there was a very kind dubbing mixer, who became a friend and mentor. He has done it all, and just getting the opportunity to sit in his studio and watch him at work taught me a lot of things that no YouTube tutorial or book can. I always enjoy his stories, and he put up with my endless questions. Those nuggets of experience have helped me shape where I was going with my career in sound.

Now, as I get older, sadly these mentors and others I haven’t mentioned have retired or are no longer with us.

While this industry is evolving, along with whatever my career is anymore, I’m sad because it is quieter without these people in it.

And now I’m starting to think I’m becoming the old guy. When I work with younger people, it makes me pity that a lot of these people who showed me their ways are not active. They would have benefited so much as I did.

And then I realise that now I’m becoming an old grumpy sod. There are, of course, plenty of people with more wisdom than I could ever share, but if I somehow make it another 20 years, then the cycle will be complete. Slightly terrifying when I think about it.

But the biggest difference for me now compared to when I started out is distance. Remote workflows….. isolation, perhaps. The people that I learned from were in person. I sat in edit suites with them or the same rooms. They could see my mistakes in real time and see where I went wrong.

And I do love working remotely, and I’m very happy, given where I am in the world, that technology allows us to achieve this type of collaboration. But I feel that you lose some magic when your mentors are on a Zoom call or email chain.

Some of the best lessons in my career have happened when I’ve been in person working with others, being able to reach out for advice, criticism or validation. Getting to go in depth into someone’s workflow and under the hood of their thinking.

These moments are hard to schedule. They just happen organically. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying teaching a bit, because it’s an opportunity to pass some of these skills on.

Many students that I have met are bright and switched on, far more than people give them credit for. I hope that they manage to enter a world that will give them better opportunities than I had, but sadly I feel this may not be the case.

When I started, there were more entry level opportunities where you would have someone experienced to take you under their wing and keep an eye on you. More productions and money flowing, more time, more chances to make mistakes.

The media industry today is leaner and tighter. AI is changing workflows and freelancers are the norm. Companies want experienced people to hit the ground running, but this experience can’t be bought, it’s nurtured.

And I worry this experience will be lost to history. I don’t feel I carry the wisdom that my predecessors had, even though I do try my best. Maybe none of us ever feel we do.

But the goal isn’t to replace those who taught us, but to make sure when someone reaches out to us, we have the life experience to help. It is important to take the time to answer their questions.

Because one day they may be looking around, realising they’re now old sods with this wisdom, wondering where my generation have gone.

Thanks for everyone who supports my work. Find out more about the work I do at my website www.tomedwardssound.com

When I was a humble music technology student many moons ago, my classmates and I felt like mastering was a dark art performed by a secret society. I felt that during my time as a student, nobody really ever explained what mastering was. With the internet now more prominent than back in my day, there is a lot more information out there, but much of it is conflicting.

Mixing can be stressful enough if you follow the rules. Don’t clip any audio, use effects, leave headroom. Keep it neat and tidy. Then, once you’ve pumped out your bounced WAV file, it would go through the mastering process, which would sprinkle some fairy dust on it, making your track ready for commercial radio or whatever.

Once I produced an album, I got all the mixes together and listened from the beginning to the end. I adjusted a few things on the mix bus, tweaked a few knobs, balanced the loudness between the tracks so it sounded coherent, and thought to myself that it didn’t sound too bad. That was basically an example of my approach to mastering. Was it mastering in the traditional sense? Probably not, but it was a final polish before releasing it to the wider world.

So What Actually Is Mastering?

To put it simply, mastering is the final stage before your music is released. It’s where the finished mix is prepared for its destination, be it Spotify, Apple Music, CD, vinyl, or even broadcast. I don’t feel that a mastering engineer is there to fix a bad mix, but rather their role is to make a good mix translate across different playback systems, from a TV speaker to your expensive car stereo. I feel that the mastering process is there to ensure your tracks sit together as a body of work, and I truly believe that, for it to earn the title of being mastered, it needs to be handled with the care that only an experienced ear can provide.

I don’t think mastering is about fixing or changing your mix. If there’s something wrong with it, it should have been addressed much earlier in the production stage.

My Approach to Mastering Is Probably Boring

My belief in how to approach mastering comes down to two fundamental questions.

1. Is there a budget for a proper mastering engineer?

If there is, then that’s great. Hire one. A proper one.

You’re not just paying somebody to put a brickwall limiter at the end of your mix. You are paying for someone who should have decades of experience, an incredibly well treated listening environment, and monitoring systems that are worth more than all of my organs combined.

Also, they will listen objectively rather than emotionally. After spending days or weeks working on your project, you are too attached to it. A mastering engineer probably won’t be, and that is valuable. They come in with no bias.

Although I don’t really do much music these days, if I was in a position to hire a mastering engineer for a tune I mixed, I’d happily pay for the full experience. Listening to my work in a beautiful mastering studio with racks full of very expensive equipment and perfected acoustics, all led by someone ideally in their 50s or 60s who has mastered many records already, has ears you can trust, and enough stories to keep you there long after your session.

Take into account factors like if I was going to release my music on vinyl. It has its own physical limitations and quirks, and it’s definitely one area where I’d absolutely want an experienced mastering engineer involved.

2. No budget? Then improve the mix instead.

I feel that this is where my background in audio post is probably influential in how I work. In TV and film, we don’t generally have a dedicated mastering stage. We mix the show, deliver it, and move on to the next one. I’ve been conditioned to get the mix sounding as good as possible, and as technically correct as possible, before I hit export.

This approach spills over when I am working in music because I genuinely like to master as I’m mixing. I’m usually adding things to the final mix bus as I go along, like a bit of tape saturation, a compressor doing very little, and a bit of gentle EQ. I’ll put a brickwall limiter at the end to help adjust loudness to taste. That’s usually about it.

I think it’s important to show restraint. It’s easy to keep pushing the limiter because louder usually sounds better until everything is pumping way too much and you realise it’s flat and exhausting to listen to. Hell, sometimes that’s exactly the effect you’re after. In dance music it’s often the effect you’re aiming for. But if you’re mastering an acoustic singer-songwriter album, you probably want something a little less heavy on compression and more dynamic. As with everything in this art, it’s subjective.

What About AI Mastering?

The new kid on the block is these AI mastering plugins and online services. I’ve done a bit of comparison with my own workflow, and personally I still prefer my own masters. I’m not saying they’re crap, I just know what I want and how to get there.

With the abundance of all this software and these services, you have a lot of choice. The thing I’d personally be wary of is the internet experts who offer “professional” mastering for 20 quid that you saw on a Facebook advert.

You send them your WAV file and they send you an MP3 back which has been through the process of loading your audio through one of these services, waiting thirty seconds, and sending you the result while implying that decades of engineering experience were involved.

If that’s all you’re doing, you might as well run the AI software yourself and focus on getting the mix right. If you’re mixing the track yourself, you have all the basic mastering tools in your DAW anyway. Or revert to option one and put the 20 quid towards paying a proper mastering engineer rather than an internet shyster.

Anyway, here are some simple mastering fundamentals that have worked for me and can hopefully work for you too.

• Get the mix right first.

• Compare your track against commercially released music in a similar style. Use a WAV file from a CD, preferably, in the DAW.

• Use subtle EQ. Tiny changes.

• Use compression to glue the mix together. Just use it sparingly.

• Saturation and tape effects can be used to enhance the sound. Again, use them sparingly.

• Use a brickwall limiter to stop peaks and clipping right at the end of the mix chain. Don’t keep pushing it just to make the waveform bigger. Trust your ears, and use a loudness meter too.

• Listen on several different systems, from your mum’s Bluetooth speaker from 2012 to the car and your KRK studio monitors.

• Rest your ears, listen fresh, and listen objectively.

The Truth About Mastering

I don’t feel that mastering is a magic button or process. I feel it’s invisible, really. The better your mix is before you reach that stage, the less work needs doing.

Thanks so much for subscribing, more about who I am and my work here

Not too long ago, I finally had an opportunity to work for a dream client that I had wanted to work with for a very long time. I threw myself into it and I’m very content that I gave it my best with the time and resources that I had available.

But sadly, by the end of it I couldn’t meet their expectations, and that’s really hard to admit publicly.

For the first few days, I was really down, and I blamed myself more than anything. Perhaps I wasn’t fast enough, or I’ve lost my edge. Maybe it’s a sign that it’s time to hang up the headphones and put myself out to pasture. But as time moves on, I do appreciate that I gave it my all. I showed up early and stayed late. I just could not reach the limitations that were in place for the job, nor did the client, sadly, want to find a way to continue working together.

A situation like this usually makes me reflect. Being autistic, I’m quite a reflective thinker anyway, and having spent 12 years working on staff for a production company, and seven more as a freelancer, I think it’s long enough to have the judgement of how the industry has reinvented itself several times, usually to the point where the conclusion is that it expects more from less. I think, as I hit 40 in a couple of weeks, I’m entering my “I’m tired, boss” era. It’s not because I don’t enjoy working in television, but because I’m starting to question what it asks in return.

Many of us who work in this industry have been told, or instinctively feel, that we are very lucky to have a place in it. Many people are not privileged enough to spend their working lives being creative and working with other talented people.

But I think there comes a point where just being lucky is an excuse. It can’t be an excuse for impossible schedules, shrinking budgets, and expecting people to give more simply because they’re passionate about working in this industry.

If you work, or have started your career as a runner or assistant on a shoot, you probably have a schedule that looks like setting an alarm clock for 5am, moving kit out before 6, working flat out all day, lunch (if you’re fortunate), and then staying on later than you anticipated because that day will always overrun and always being the last one to finish. Rinse and repeat.

When you’re 21, you may have the energy and can wear it as a badge of honour, surviving on coffee and adrenaline, with the belief that it’s all worth it and it will pay off. I’ve held on to that mindset in my working life quite a lot.

But I think as you get older, reality says hi and starts asking questions. How do you balance your career with a family and look after your health? How can you justify giving every ounce of yourself to a job that is, frankly, becoming less secure every year?

The price of essentially everything has gone through the roof. Freelance work in this game just gets more unpredictable, with everyone having to tighten budgets, and tools like AI reshaping this industry. As I said before, the conclusion is to do more with less. The less is usually less people.

I don’t like to lay blame on companies and businesses working in TV, although of course there are some shady practices by many. I’m more of a hate the game than the player type of person.

Companies have their own clients they need to satisfy, with deadlines to hit and many commercial pressures of their own. The cycle, from my experience, seems to be that post production is squeezed by production, which is squeezed by budget, which is squeezed by advertising revenue, or whatever’s funding it. And don’t forget audience attention, which, in a roundabout way, I have blamed myself for the collapse of the TV industry.

And though it’s probably like this in any industry, the expectation becomes normalised. Work faster, do more, fix everything, don’t complain, be grateful, and repeat.

I feel that TV production has become very good at blurring the lines between resilience and sustainability. They are not the same thing though. Being able to survive a system doesn’t mean that the system really works.

Mental health is often more prominent than it used to be in this industry, and we can all be aware of it. But unfortunately, practising wellness for five minutes doesn’t magically create another three hours in the day or shift a deadline, does it? It doesn’t increase budgets.

Then let’s talk about representation. Until recently, I was a member of the UK’s TV and entertainment union, BECTU, for a number of years. But I cancelled my direct debit. I couldn’t see the point. I’m a member of another union in another industry, and I feel the difference is night and day compared to unionising in entertainment. I personally think it comes down to the fact that working conditions in TV only have a finite amount of room to be improved because it is a buyer’s market right now. There is a constant stream of talented people willing to work incredibly hard for less because who doesn’t want their chance to work in this game?

While many argue that TV is dying, people still want stories and fundamentally like to watch them on a screen in some way. But of course, the industry is undeniably changing, with companies closing, teams getting smaller, and freelancers competing for fewer opportunities while also demonstrating that they are indispensable, myself included.

Many people who I see exiting this industry are experienced and have spent years solving the complex issues that it brings. Many have done it because environmental factors have forced them, and some have also decided that they would like a life as well. Maybe they’ve proved they can do the impossible and have started to believe they shouldn’t have to, and have found fulfilling roles in other careers.

For many years, I assumed that success in TV meant sacrificing more than other people by working harder, staying later, always saying yes, and eventually you make it. But how long can “jam tomorrow” last?

The recent setback that I mentioned at the start of the article has really stung, but having a bit more time back in my life has started to give me perspective. Along with my other work, it has made me realise that having one foot outside of this industry is something I don’t feel guilty about. I still love the craft and working on exciting projects and bringing my skills to create a better product. I’ll always have that job satisfaction. But I’m really starting to wonder, am I sacrificing too much to stay in the game?

Probably a combination of age and what little wisdom I have, but I have to ask myself, if giving absolutely everything still isn’t enough, is the problem just me, or the system I operate in? It’s a difficult thing I’ve been asking myself, but liberating at the same time.

A little update

Over the last month, I’ve been experimenting with paid articles. It’s been a useful test, and it’s helped me clarify where I think Substack fits into my wider work.

For now, I’m going back to making all of my articles free. I want as many people as possible to read, share and benefit from them.

Paid subscriptions will remain as a way to support my work, so I can dedicate more time to honing this publication. So if you can spare a few bucks I’m very greatful!

I’m also developing other educational resources that I look forward to sharing in the future.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading along. I’m looking forward to what’s next…

Last time, I took you through my early studios which included my bedroom setups, hijacking my dad’s studio, recording bands at questionable hours, and building a garage room that sounded like somebody had trapped a snare drum inside a plasterboard box. Back then, I thought I was heading towards a career in music production. I spent countless hours recording guitars, programming drums, and generally annoying anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot.

What I didn’t realise was that my career was moving in a different direction. By the early 2010s, I was becoming less interested in making music and far more interested in post production. Not that I knew it at the time; like most career changes, it happened so gradually that I barely noticed.

The Outbuilding Upgrade

At the television production company, I managed to expand. This sounds much grander than it was.. essentially, I moved into another room and inherited an entire outbuilding to myself. To me, this was enormous. Until then, I had been working with some rather large Spendor studio monitors. Lovely speakers, but they occupied a significant portion of the available real estate. When your speakers are bigger than your desk, you start to question your priorities.

After some careful lobbying, and what I suspect was a degree of persistence that eventually wore them down, I convinced management to let me get a pair of Genelec 8020s. For anyone unfamiliar with Genelec, they’re one of the most respected manufacturers of studio monitors in professional audio. The 8020s were compact, accurate, and took up far less room. They also looked considerably more modern than the speakers they replaced.

I upgraded from the trusty iMac to a souped up Mac Mini, paired with the ever-faithful Digidesign 003 interface, which by that point had become less of a piece of equipment and more of a long term colleague. Pro Tools had also undergone some major changes. For years, Avid had tightly coupled Pro Tools software to their hardware; if you wanted the software, you bought the hardware, and if you wanted the hardware, you bought the software. Then reality arrived.

The rest of the industry was moving towards flexibility, and Avid eventually followed. Pro Tools 10 was a massive step forward. It introduced clip gain, which completely changed dialogue editing workflows. It improved file handling, offered better automation features, and generally felt far more modern than previous versions. For somebody spending most of their day editing dialogue and mixing television, it was a huge upgrade.

The World’s Most Basic Voice Booth

Next door was my old room. Rather than leave it unused, we converted it into a voice booth. “Converted” may be slightly generous, as it was essentially plasterboard, carpet tiles and optimism. Still, it worked, and sometimes that’s all you need.

I used an HDMI splitter to duplicate the output from a Blackmagic video card, allowing the talent in the booth to see the picture while recording voice-over. For post-production, this is incredibly important; timing, pacing and performance all benefit when the presenter can actually see what they’re talking about. The microphone at the time was a Rode NT1. For the money, it remains one of the best large diaphragm condenser microphones around quiet, reliable and perfectly capable of producing professional voice-over recordings. Most importantly, clients never complained, which is usually a good sign.

For several years, this was largely my setup. At home, I had moved house and had no real desire to build another studio. My obsession with music production was fading, not because I stopped loving music, but because I simply found myself becoming increasingly busier with work.

Then came a turning point. In 2015, my friend, mentor and all round maestro Paul Roberts began winding things down. Paul had mixed numerous Rick Stein series over the years and had built up an incredible body of work. The next series, Rick Stein’s Long Weekends, was coming up and I was going to be mixing it. No pressure then.

We also needed to record the voice over, which meant the booth needed an upgrade. Fortunately, Paul generously donated materials from his own studio. We travelled to his place, dismantled his old booth, and transported the materials back. It felt slightly like stealing a small building. The booth was rebuilt properly using RW45 acoustic insulation and a much more substantial structure. For the first time, it felt like a genuinely professional recording environment.

Meanwhile, the 003 was still hanging on barely. By this stage, it was beginning to show its age. It still worked, but there was a definite feeling that every session might be its last, like an ageing rock star insisting they’re absolutely fine before immediately needing a sit down.

More toys

After recording Rick Stein, I finally managed to upgrade. The Digidesign 003 retired after years of loyal service, replaced by a Focusrite interface and a Slate Raven touchscreen controller. This felt like stepping into the future. The Slate Raven was essentially a giant touchscreen running Pro Tools, where instead of using traditional faders and controls, you interacted directly with the software. It looked incredibly futuristic. It also meant visitors would walk into the room and immediately assume I knew what I was doing.

The microphone was upgraded too. I bought an Aston Origin, and I still think Aston microphones are some of the best value microphones available. There’s something about the lower mid range response that I really like, particularly for spoken word. Voice over recordings just seem to sit nicely without needing much persuasion.

Suddenly There Were Actual Famous People

One of the strange things about building a studio is that eventually people start using it. I know: madness. While working on a series about Korea with John Torode, he came down to record voice over. At some point, I realised that what had started as a slightly improvised setup was now attracting genuine broadcast work.

We began marketing the studio more actively, which led to projects for other production companies, more voice-over work, more ADR sessions, and more opportunities. Over time, we recorded voice over with people such as Dawn French, and we recorded ADR for productions including Sex Education. There was a session with Emilia Fox for an ITV drama, all while I was still doing the bread and butter work.

I continued recording Rick Stein and mixing series including Road to Mexico and Secret France, both of which were mixed entirely on the Slate Raven setup. At the same time, I was increasingly being hired to work in larger facilities. Suddenly, I was encountering equipment that lived in an entirely different league Avid S6 control surfaces, Pro Tools HD systems and purpose built rooms. They were the sort of places I’d have drooled over as a teenager.

Looking Back

When I look at these studio photos now, what strikes me isn’t the equipment; it’s how the goal changed. Back in the early 2000s, I thought music production was the destination. Everything pointed in that direction the studios, the gear, the projects and the ambitions. Yet, somewhere along the way, I discovered that what I really loved was post production: dialogue, storytelling, mixing, and the process of shaping a programme until everything felt invisible.

None of that was planned. If you’d shown eighteen year old me a picture of what I’d eventually be doing, he probably would have looked confused and asked where the drum machines were. That’s the funny thing about careers: you don’t always end up where you intended. Sometimes you simply follow the bit you enjoy most and eventually discover it has taken you somewhere entirely different.

Anyway, because I enjoy dragging stories out, I’ll save the next chapter for Part 3. That one involves Covid, more studio changes, and where I find myself today, which somehow still doesn’t feel like 2026.

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I mess up on an almost hourly basis professionally, personally, spiritually and technologically. Half my career in sound has basically been me opening sessions and discovering new and inventive ways to break things that worked perfectly yesterday. Yet, somehow, we’ve built this culture where the second someone takes a risk and it goes wrong, people line up to laugh at them like it’s a public hanging sponsored by LinkedIn comments.

Now, I’m not coming at this like some bloke with a £700 course telling you failure is a “growth mindset opportunity” while standing in front of a rented Lamborghini. Those people should be launched into the sea. But failure is a teacher. An irritating one, admittedly like a PE teacher who smells faintly of damp squash courts and disappointment. Still a teacher, though.

The Wisdom of Yogi Bear

The ridiculous thing is that I was reminded of this while watching 2010’s feature Yogi Bear the other day, which is not a sentence I expected to write at this stage of my life. There I was, sat on the sofa questioning every decision that led me to voluntarily spend ninety minutes watching a CGI bear commit light administrative fraud, when suddenly the film accidentally stumbled into wisdom.

Ranger Smith has basically lost Jellystone Park. Everything’s gone to shit, morale’s in the bin, careers are collapsing, and everyone’s doing that thing humans do where they stare into the middle distance pretending they’re fine. Then Yogi Bear, a creature whose main life skill is organised picnic theft, comes out with the line: “You can’t fail if you don’t quit.” That’s the line, straight from a children’s film about a bear in a hat.

And annoyingly, the stupid cartoon bear articulated failure better than half the business influencers on the internet. Somewhere there’s a bloke on LinkedIn posting “RISE. GRIND. DOMINATE.” over a black and white photo of himself looking at a helicopter, while Yogi Bear quietly solved resilience between joke sounds and animated forestry management. Honestly, there’s something deeply humbling about receiving emotional clarity from a fictional bear who spends most of his life stealing sandwiches.

Learning Through Catastrophe

I taught a class the other day and one student asked me, “But what if I fail?” So I told them, “Well, you try again.”

Failure will teach you more than I can, more than your college can, and more than any teacher can. Real failure burns lessons into your brain permanently, because your nervous system remembers embarrassment with frightening efficiency. I encourage my students to learn through my failures because most of my useful knowledge comes directly from catastrophe.

Books help with this too, which is lucky because they’re cheaper than therapy. Books are basically thousands of years of archived human failure. That’s all history really is: people making awful decisions and someone writing them down afterwards. You get access to millions of mistakes without having to personally ruin your own life first. That’s data.

Adapting to Mistakes

Take my Substack for example. I noticed the technical articles weren’t landing as much as the ones where I was complaining about something ridiculous or exposing some personal failing. It turns out people prefer honesty over another dry tutorial about signal chains. So I adapted, which technically means I failed first.

It was the same with my driving test: I failed it six times. At that point, the examiner starts recognising you like a recurring sitcom character, and by the final attempt, I think we both just wanted closure. I failed my 11 plus as well. I even failed at getting to the dentist on time once and lost access to an NHS dentist, which in modern Britain is basically like losing a winning lottery ticket. You don’t recover from that emotionally, and I’ll never miss an appointment again if I can help it, assuming I ever locate another NHS dentist before civilisation collapses entirely.

Every one of those failures taught me something useful, mostly regarding stress management, scheduling, humility, and how to absorb public embarrassment without dissolving into dust.

The British Attitude to Risk

Meanwhile, Britain still treats failure like a moral weakness. We love dragging people back down the second they stumble. There’s this bitterness baked into the culture where people would rather sneer at someone trying than admit they’re too scared to attempt anything themselves. Not everyone of course.

Google literally throws parties when they kill off failed products. Imagine that here: “Good effort everyone, the thing collapsed horribly but we learned loads.” In Britain, someone would immediately ask how much taxpayer money it cost and then write an angry column about it next to an advert for stairlifts. America has its own problems obviously, mainly involving healthcare bills and motivational podcasts, but they do seem better at letting people start again after disaster. Over here, we practically tattoo your mistakes onto your forehead.

Our lives are supposed to be messy. Your brain, your career, and your identity are all unfinished. You’re meant to get things wrong while you figure it out. I don’t have all the answers, and you don’t either. If you’re reading this, though, at least you’re curious and trying to learn something even if it’s just confirmation that I’m a self righteous idiot who desperately needs an editor.

If that’s what you think, then fair enough. I’ve probably failed you. And honestly, good. That means I’m still trying things.

I also failed at thinking of a smooth segue into a call to action, so look: if you want more rambling about sound, storytelling, creativity, and professional humiliation, check out more on my substack

and traditional media feels fragile. Every week there’s another article, a deep dive video or user comment telling us our way of life is under threat.

Meanwhile, people argue endlessly about capitalism versus socialism, governments versus markets, utopia versus dystopia, as though one perfect answer is waiting around the corner if we all shout loudly enough.

Personally, I think we’re asking the wrong question. I don’t think this is really about left versus right anymore; I think we’re living through something much bigger. We are witnessing the end of one economic era and the beginning of another. Whether my interpretation of history turns out to be exactly right isn’t really the point. The important thing is this: the world many of us grew up in and later built our careers in is changing. And if that’s true, then we need to stop preparing for yesterday’s opportunities and start preparing for tomorrow’s. That might sound frightening, but I think if you can find a way to frame it like this, it’s actually hopeful.

Every Generation Thinks the World Is Ending

History has always moved in chapters. After the Second World War, governments rebuilt nations, meaning infrastructure, healthcare, housing and public services became national priorities. It was an age of reconstruction. Then came globalisation, privatisation and the internet. Markets expanded, technology exploded, and the creative industries benefited enormously from cheaper equipment, digital tools and global audiences.

Now we’re entering another transition. Supply chains feel fragile, technology is advancing at breakneck speed, artificial intelligence is changing how creative work is produced, and media business models are evolving. Nothing feels quite as stable as it once did. The important thing to remember is that nobody living through a transition realises they’re living through one. It simply feels like uncertainty. The Industrial Revolution felt uncertain, the arrival of television felt uncertain, and the internet certainly felt uncertain. Yet, every one of those changes created entirely new industries that nobody could have predicted beforehand. Creative people have always adapted because we’ve had to.

The Biggest Mistake You Can Make

The biggest mistake I see people making is preparing for a world that no longer exists. They wait for permission, wait for the perfect job, wait for someone to discover them, wait until they’re good enough, or wait until the market improves. Meanwhile, somebody else is already making things, publishing, experimenting, learning and building relationships. One thing I’ve learnt over twenty years is that creative careers rarely arrive fully formed. They’re built one project, one conversation, and one mistake at a time.

Stop Chasing Job Titles

When I was younger, I wanted one thing: I wanted to become a sound engineer. In many ways, I achieved that, but here’s what nobody tells you: the job title isn’t really the career. Over the years I’ve become a Dubbing Mixer, Re-Recroding Mixer, Supervising Sound editor, a dialogue editor, a podcast producer, a teacher, a computer technician, a filmmaker, a writer and a consultant. Now I’m building a Substack so maybe I’m a writer?.

None of those things were part of the original plan; each one simply grew out of the previous one. For years I thought I was drifting, but looking back, I was diversifying. That’s an important distinction. The future probably won’t reward people who only know how to do one thing; it will reward people who combine skills.

Build a Skill Stack

One of the best pieces of career advice I can give is this: don’t just become good at one thing. Become useful in lots of connected ways. If you’re a sound engineer, learn editing, learn a little video, learn storytelling, understand computers, learn how to communicate with clients, learn how to write, understand AI tools instead of fearing them, and learn basic business. You don’t have to master everything, but every new skill multiplies the value of the others. When opportunities appear, they rarely arrive labelled, “We’re looking for somebody who only knows Pro Tools.” They’re much more likely to say, “We need somebody who can solve this problem.” Become that person.

Your Greatest Advantage Isn’t Technology

Whenever people talk about AI, the conversation usually becomes strangely pessimistic. We ask, “What if it replaces us?” Perhaps it will replace some tasks; history suggests every technological revolution has done exactly that. But technology also creates something incredibly valuable: scarcity. If everyone has access to the same tools, what becomes rare? Judgement, taste, experience, empathy, trust, reliability, the ability to tell a story, and knowing when to stop.

Those qualities become more valuable, not less. Clients don’t hire me because I know where the compressor is; they hire me because they trust my judgement. That’s taken decades to build, and no software shortcut exists for that.

Learn From Other Generations

One thing I admire about younger creatives is that many of them don’t wait for permission. They build YouTube channels, start podcasts, launch businesses, create communities, experiment and publish. They don’t wait until someone gives them a job; they start creating. That’s a mindset worth borrowing. Likewise, younger creatives can benefit enormously from experience. Older generations have lived through technological revolutions before. They know how industries change, and they know which rules matter and which ones are worth breaking. Energy and experience aren’t competitors; they’re teammates.

Your Network Is More Valuable Than Your CV

Creative industries have always been built on relationships. Not in a cynical way, but in a human way. People hire people they trust, people recommend people they’ve enjoyed working with, and people remember generosity, curiosity, reliability and kindness. Talent gets you noticed, but character gets you invited back. So, stop thinking only about networking and think about community instead. Help people, collaborate, and be interested in other people’s work. Those relationships often become opportunities years later.

Publish Before You’re Ready

Twenty years ago, if you wanted people to hear your work, someone had to let you in, whether that was a broadcaster, a publisher, a record label or a magazine. Today, you can publish almost anything yourself. That doesn’t mean success is guaranteed, but it does mean permission is no longer the barrier it once was. Make things, share them, learn publicly and improve publicly. Your portfolio isn’t something you create after you’ve become successful; it’s how you become successful.

Train Yourself to Notice Opportunity

People often talk about manifestation, but I’m more interested in the science behind it than the cosmic parts. Your brain filters an extraordinary amount of information every second. One of the systems involved in deciding what deserves your attention is called the Reticular Activating System. It’s why, after buying a particular car, you suddenly notice that model everywhere. The cars were always there; your brain simply decided they mattered.

Creative opportunities work in much the same way. If you’re constantly looking for collaborations, projects, problems to solve and people to help, your brain becomes better at recognising possibilities that other people overlook. You’re not magically creating opportunities; you’re becoming better at seeing them. That’s a skill, and like any skill, it improves with practice.

Don’t Lose Your Humanity

For all the conversations about AI, automation and technology, I think we’ve overlooked something. The future won’t simply reward people who know how to use software; it will reward people who know how to work with other human beings. It will reward those who can tell stories, inspire trust, think critically, adapt, lead and collaborate. Technology changes remarkably quickly, but human nature changes much more slowly. That’s reassuring, because those human qualities can be developed.

There Is Hope

I know this period feels uncertain; I feel it too and think about it far too much. I’ve watched industries change, business models disappear, and technology transform almost every part of my working life. However, I’ve also watched entirely new opportunities emerge that simply didn’t exist when I started. If you’d told the younger version of me that one day I’d be editing television, teaching students, writing books and publishing essays online for readers around the world, I’d have thought you were mad. None of it was planned. Almost all of it came from saying yes to opportunities I couldn’t see at the beginning.

That’s why I’m optimistic. It is not because I think the future will be easy, because it won’t be, but because I think creative people have always been remarkably good at adapting. We’re problem solvers, storytellers and experimenters. We’re comfortable making something from nothing. Those qualities have survived every technological revolution in history, and I don’t see any reason this one should be different.

Final Thoughts

The creative industries aren’t disappearing; they’re evolving. The people who thrive won’t necessarily be the ones with the most qualifications or the fanciest equipment. I suspect they’ll be the people who remain curious, keep learning, build relationships, and develop broad, transferable skills. They will be the ones who embrace new tools without surrendering their judgement, and who continue making things when everyone else is waiting for certainty.

Most of all, I think they’ll be the people who remain deeply human. Because while technology may change how we create, it hasn’t changed why we create. People will always need stories in many forms be it, music, films, ideas, laughter and connection. That’s what creativity has always been about. So, if you’re wondering whether there’s still a place for you in this changing world, my answer is yes. There probably always will be. It just might not look exactly the way you imagined. And that’s okay. Mine didn’t either.

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Whenever I post photos of old setups, they seem to get a fair bit of attention. I suspect that’s because people aren’t really looking at the gear; they’re looking for clues. How did this person work? What did they make? What did they start with? Well that’s what I do… So, I thought I’d indulge myself this week and take a trip through some of my studios from the 2000s and early 2010s. The interesting thing is that none of them were particularly impressive. At the time, I thought I was heading towards a career as a music engineer and producer, if I was lucky I would one day get to scrub toilets at Abbey Road Studio, but life took me into a different direction into working in audio post production.

I had never heard the term re-recording mixer, and I certainly didn’t know that one day I’d end up supervising sound and mixing television programmes and films for a living. All I knew was that I loved sound and spent an unhealthy amount of time messing about with it.

Studio Number One: The Bedroom Years

My earliest “studio” was created when I was around seventeen or eighteen, and it lived in my bedroom. This was the first PC I built myself; it was an AMD Thunderbird machine with what I think was about half a gigabyte of RAM. By modern standards, that’s roughly enough processing power to operate an electric toothbrush. I do remember one thing very clearly, though: Windows XP seemed to require reinstalling every few months.

My entrance into the world of proper DAWs came via Cubase. I had a pair of Wharfedale Diamond speakers, a Sound Blaster soundcard, and an Evolution MIDI keyboard. To me, it felt like a million pound studio. In reality, it was a teenager’s bedroom with wires everywhere and enough dust behind the computer to start a small agricultural project.

I made all sorts of rubbish, including terrible dance tracks, terrible rock tracks, and terrible attempts at every other type of music I could think of. The important thing was that I was making things. More importantly, I was learning. Every terrible mix taught me something, every failed recording taught me something, and every evening spent fiddling with compressors instead of speaking to actual human beings taught me something. Those were the foundations.

The Studio I More or Less Stole

Fortunately for me, my dad had a much better studio. Unfortunately for him, I discovered where it was. His setup revolved around Cubase SX3 and an M-Audio Delta 1010 interface. For those who weren’t around at the time, the Delta 1010 was one of the most popular affordable multitrack interfaces available. It gave you multiple inputs and outputs, making recording proper sessions feel achievable without needing a commercial facility. There was also a Phonic mixer handling channel routing and monitoring duties.

Looking back, this was where I really began learning signal flow. At the time, I didn’t think of it that way; I was mostly plugging things into other things until sound came out. There were racks containing Joe Meek compressors, a Behringer Tube Composer, and various power distribution units. The Joe Meek gear was famous for having a character all of its own. Some people loved it, some people hated it, and most people agreed it looked like something stolen from a Cold War submarine.

There was also a vocal booth, and that vocal booth was absolute gold. The microphone of choice was an Oktava condenser microphone. Oktava microphones were built in Russia and gained a reputation for sounding far more expensive than they actually were. I recorded countless vocals in there, as well as plenty of guitar amplifiers. Friends would turn up with Roland Cubes and whatever guitars they happened to own. One memorable occasion involved a Mesa Boogie valve amp and cabinet. Being young and not possessing what most people would call common sense, we recorded it at full volume at about one in the morning. Thankfully, the vocal booth did a decent job of containing the noise because the neighbours never complained… or perhaps they did and I simply couldn’t hear them over the amplifier.

I recorded drums in the studio too. By this point, I was studying sound at college, and everything I learnt during the day immediately got tested in the studio at night. That combination was invaluable.

Discovering Pro Tools

Then something happened that felt genuinely exciting: Pro Tools M-Powered arrived. Up until then, Pro Tools was largely tied to Digidesign hardware. If you wanted the proper experience, you needed expensive HD systems or hardware such as the 002 and 003 interfaces. I spent a lot of time dreaming about those. The Mbox existed, of course, but I needed more inputs than that.

M-Powered changed things because it allowed people using M-Audio interfaces to access Pro Tools. Granted, it was somewhat limited, and my version topped out at a mighty 32 audio tracks. Today, that sounds faintly ridiculous, but at the time, it felt like I’d been handed the keys to the kingdom. More importantly, learning Pro Tools early gave me a head start that would become incredibly useful later. I didn’t know it then, but many of the skills I’d eventually use in television post-production were already beginning to form.

My First Professional Setup

When I started working at a television production company, everything changed. Suddenly, I had access to an iMac setup running a Digidesign 003 controller and interface. For someone coming from budget home studios, this felt incredibly serious. This was where I began learning the craft of audio post-production properly.

I mixed television shows here, learnt how deadlines worked, and learnt how clients worked. I quickly learnt that making something sound good was only part of the job; making it sound good by tomorrow morning was the other part. This was around 2008 or 2009, on the back of all the Apple iphone, ipod and mac euphoria. Eventually, I became a convert myself and bought an iMac with my wages. Naturally, it ended up in my dad’s studio because by this stage I had essentially annexed the building. I also bought a second hand Line 6 POD XT from eBay with the Metal Pack expansion. I was in heaven; suddenly, I could record guitar tones that actually sounded convincing without shaking the foundations of the house.

The Garage Studio

Eventually, I moved into my own house. Naturally, the next step was building a studio in the garage. Several sheets of plasterboard, a lot of insulation, and a considerable amount of help from my godfather later, I finally had my own dedicated workspace. I was absolutely chuffed with it.

I also had a Mackie Big Knob. For those unfamiliar, the Big Knob is a monitor controller whose primary selling point is that it has an enormous knob on the front. Audio engineers are simple creatures: we see a giant volume control and immediately assume professionalism has arrived. By this point, I’d discovered Reason. My workflow became Reason for creating music and Pro Tools for recording and editing. I had an Akai MPD controller, which allowed me to indulge my fantasy of being some sort of legendary sampler-based producer, despite possessing neither the talent nor the record sales.

I also bought an Mbox so I could run Pro Tools with picture. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford the DV Toolkit, which meant no timecode support at home. At work I had it; at home I did not. This was one of many occasions where my professional setup and personal setup had very different ideas about what constituted luxury.

Looking back, I do wish I’d invested more effort into acoustic treatment. The room was essentially plasterboard everywhere, and the result was a wonderfully boxy acoustic environment. If I clapped my hands, the room practically answered back. Still, it was mine, and that mattered.

What These Studios Actually Taught Me

When I look back at these photos now, I don’t really see the equipment. Most of it is obsolete, and some of it is probably considered vintage which is a slightly upsetting realisation because I still think of most of it as modern. What I see instead are the hours. Thousands and thousands of hours. There were hours spent recording, hours spent editing, hours spent mixing, hours spent making mistakes, and hours spent solving problems.

At the start, I thought I was becoming a music engineer; that was the goal. I had no idea that television post-production would eventually become my career, I didn’t know what a re-recording mixer was, and I didn’t know that such a job even existed. What I did know was that I loved working with sound.

That’s probably the biggest lesson from all these old studio photos. You don’t need the perfect room, you don’t need the perfect gear, and you don’t even need a perfectly clear plan. You just need somewhere to work, a willingness to learn, and the persistence to keep showing up. The gear changed, the studios changed, and the career changed, but the hours stayed the same. In the end, those hours were the thing that mattered most.

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The technology industry trained us to think that way. Every few years there would be another leap; we went from SD to HD, then HD to 4K. Storage became larger, processing became faster, and software became more demanding and FOMO kicked in. There was always a clear reason why your current machine suddenly looked like it belonged in a local history museum. Lately, though, I have started wondering whether something has changed, not because my workstation is struggling, but quite the opposite.

A few years ago, I built my current PC and deliberately overspecced it. The plan was simple: buy something powerful enough to last, then maybe do a motherboard and RAM upgrade a few years down the line. Job done, or so I thought. The first warning sign came when I wasn’t even looking at computers; I was looking at hard drives. This is not an exciting purchase; nobody has ever posted a photograph of a new storage drive on social media and been mobbed by admirers. It is about as thrilling as buying a new extension lead.

Yet, even storage prices started making me raise an eyebrow, followed by RAM prices, graphics cards, and the growing realisation that the upgrade path I had always assumed would be available might not be quite so straightforward in the future. It got me wondering: have we reached a point where the traditional creative workstation upgrade cycle is starting to break down?

Maybe “Good Enough” Has Finally Arrived

For decades, we experienced enormous leaps in computing. The move from standard definition to HD was transformative, the jump to 4K was equally transformative, rendering times collapsed, and storage exploded. Machines that once struggled suddenly felt effortless. But what about today? Yes, new hardware is faster, of course it is. That is hardly a shock, as nobody is unveiling a new processor and proudly announcing it performs slightly worse than the last one.

But are those improvements changing the way creative professionals actually work? Many editors are still cutting professionally on machines that are several years old. Audio post professionals like me continue delivering broadcast quality mixes on systems that have been running reliably for ages, and colourists are often limited by storage, workflow, and delivery requirements rather than raw computing horsepower. Maybe we’ve reached a point where many creative tasks are simply good enough. It is not perfect, but it is just good enough that upgrading every few years no longer feels essential.

The Freelancer Problem

Creative industries have always relied on ownership. Editors buy workstations, mixers build studios, and composers somehow fill entire rooms with equipment while simultaneously claiming they are broke. The model has generally worked: you save, you buy the gear, you use it until it has paid for itself several times over, and then you replace it when necessary.

Increasingly, though, technology companies seem to prefer a different arrangement involving subscriptions, rental models, and cloud services - ongoing monthly payments that continue until the heat death of the universe. The argument is always the same: lower upfront costs, greater flexibility, and predictable spending. To be fair, there is some truth to that, but for freelancers, there is a significant difference between owning a tool and renting access to one. One is an asset, while the other is a monthly liability. Once you stop paying for rented infrastructure, it disappears. Nobody repossesses your old workstation because you skipped a payment to Adobe… at least not yet.

Are We Accidentally Recreating the 1980s?

The funny thing about technology is that it has an incredible ability to recycle old ideas and present them as revolutionary. Back in the days of mainframes, most people didn’t own powerful computers; the expensive hardware lived elsewhere. Users sat at terminals, which were essentially screens and keyboards connected to a central machine doing all the heavy lifting. Then personal computing arrived and changed everything. Processing power moved onto our desks, meaning we owned the hardware, controlled the files, and upgraded components when we wanted. Computing became truly personal.

Now look at where things seem to be heading: thin laptops, cloud rendering, virtual workstations, remote desktops, and browser based software. The more services move into the cloud, the more our local machines begin looking suspiciously like modern versions of those old terminals. The only real difference is that today’s terminals are beautifully engineered, have fantastic screens, and cost significantly more. In many ways, your laptop is becoming a window into somebody else’s computer.

For some workflows, that makes perfect sense. If you need more power, more storage, or more GPU performance, the good news is you can rent it all. The concern is what happens when ownership disappears entirely. Because once your creative workflow exists entirely inside somebody else’s infrastructure, your ability to work becomes dependent on their pricing, their policies, and their continued existence.

The Latency Problem

As an audio person, I keep coming back to one issue: latency. Nobody cares about latency until it ruins their day. Cloud workflows sound brilliant until you are trying to scrub dialogue frame by frame, automate a complex mix, or chase a sync issue that only appears for half a second before disappearing again. Creative work relies on immediate feedback… that tiny connection between your brain, your hand, and the result on screen.

The moment that starts lagging behind, even slightly, the process becomes harder. It is difficult enough finding the perfect edit point without waiting for a server farm on the other side of the country to have a think about it first. This is why I struggle to imagine local processing disappearing entirely. For high end creative work, responsiveness matters probably more than people realise.

Maybe Computers Become Like Cars

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether computers are becoming like cars. There was a time when people changed computers constantly, whereas today many people keep their vehicles for years. They maintain them, repair them, replace parts when necessary, and then carry on using them until they run into the ground. Perhaps workstations are heading in the same direction. Instead of replacing everything every few years, we will extend lifespans, upgrade selectively, repair what we can, and keep systems running for longer.

If that’s where we’re heading, then the right to repair suddenly becomes very important. This isn’t because it sounds good politically, but because it makes practical business sense. The longer equipment remains useful, the more valuable repairability becomes, particularly for freelancers and small facilities where every pound spent on hardware is a pound that can’t be spent elsewhere.

A Different Economic Future

There are wider conversations happening around economic models as well. Ideas such as circular economies and Doughnut Economics are built around the notion that endless consumption may not be the only route forward. Without turning this into a lecture, there is a practical point worth considering. An industry built entirely around constant replacement eventually runs into limits, whether those limits are financial, environmental, or simply common sense.

The future may involve keeping equipment longer, repairing rather than replacing, and buying fewer things while expecting them to last. This sounds suspiciously like what our grandparents did before technology convinced us all that a three year old imac was a relic from the past.

The Bottom Line

I am not predicting the end of local workstations, nor do I think we’re all about to edit films from glorified web browsers connected to giant server farms in the countryside. The future will probably be a hybrid of local processing, cloud resources, ownership, and subscriptions.

But standing there recently, comparing the price of what should have been a very boring hard drive purchase, I found myself asking a question I never really considered before: what if we’ve already got enough computing power? What if the next decade isn’t defined by bigger and faster machines, but by making the machines we already own last longer? If that’s where we’re heading, I suspect many creative professionals will adapt just fine. My bank account certainly seems enthusiastic about the idea.

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It’s not exciting. Nobody wins awards for recording it. Nobody puts “captured excellent room tone” on their CV. Yet it can be the difference between dialogue that sounds natural and dialogue that sounds like it was edited with a chainsaw.

What Is Room Tone?

Room tone is the natural sound of a space when nobody is speaking. That might be the faint hum of an air conditioning unit, distant traffic outside a window, a computer fan quietly whirring away, or just the subtle ambience that exists in any environment.

The important thing is that it isn’t silence. In fact, true silence is surprisingly rare. Unless you’re recording inside a padded vault somewhere deep underground, every location has its own sonic fingerprint.

Back in the days of tape, editors quickly realised that dialogue cuts sounded obvious if they jumped from one piece of audio to another with nothing underneath. Recording a few moments of the room’s natural ambience became standard practice, and it’s still one of the most useful habits you can develop.

Why It Matters

When you’re editing dialogue - particularly podcasts, YouTube videos or interviews, you’re constantly removing things. Mistakes. Pauses. Coughs. The bit where someone completely forgets what they’re talking about halfway through a sentence.

The problem is that every edit creates a tiny gap. Leave enough of those gaps exposed and the listener starts noticing the edit rather than the content. They may not know why it sounds strange, but they’ll feel it.

Room tone acts like glue. It fills those tiny spaces and tricks the brain into believing everything happened naturally in one continuous performance. The listener doesn’t hear the room tone itself. What they hear is consistency or rather, they don’t hear inconsistency. Which is exactly what you want.

My Approach

I keep a large library of ambience recordings and sound effects that I regularly dip into. Sometimes it’s a simple living room with absolutely nothing happening. Sometimes it’s a room with an extractor fan running. Sometimes it’s just a gentle background wash that gives the dialogue somewhere to live.

If I’m working outdoors, I’ll often use what production crews would call a wild track: a bit of distant traffic, some wind, or a few birds doing whatever it is birds spend their days doing.

The goal isn’t realism down to the last detail. The goal is creating a believable bed of sound underneath the dialogue. Once that’s in place, you can chop dialogue around far more aggressively and get away with murder (editorially speaking, obviously). The audience remains focused on the conversation instead of noticing every cut.

Why The Brain Loves It

Human hearing is constantly looking for patterns. When the background ambience suddenly disappears between edits, the brain immediately notices something has changed. It’s a bit like watching a film where the wallpaper changes colour every time the camera cuts—you might not consciously register it at first, but eventually you’ll start wondering if you’re having some sort of episode.

Room tone creates continuity. It tells the listener that they’re still in the same place, at the same time, in the same environment. The dialogue feels connected because the world around it feels connected.

The Gold Standard

If you have the luxury of working with a location sound recordist, ask them to capture room tone at the end of each setup. Just thirty seconds to a minute of the actual location can save hours of headaches later.

That recording will contain all the tiny details unique to that space: the exact air conditioning hum, the exact reverberation, and the exact distant noises filtering through walls and windows. Nothing from a sound effects library will ever match it quite as perfectly. It’s one of the easiest things to record (as long as everyone stays quiet) and one of the most valuable things you can have in the edit.

Conclusion

Room tone isn’t flashy. Nobody notices it when it’s there, but they absolutely notice when it’s missing. Whether you’re editing a podcast, a YouTube video, a documentary or a drama, a little ambience underneath your dialogue can hide countless edits and make everything feel smoother and more professional.

It’s the audio equivalent of good plumbing. Nobody talks about it, but when it goes wrong, everyone notices.

Thank you so much for subscribing to my Substack! Stay tuned for more Audio Production help along with insights into the creative and media industries! Find out more about my work here

Which feels slightly uncomfortable to say out loud because British people are genetically programmed to become deeply awkward the second money enters a conversation. We can discuss grief, war and bowel issues with surprising openness, but charging £5 for a newsletter suddenly turns us into Victorian chimney sweeps muttering apologies into a hat.

But truthfully, this article is more than me announcing turning on monetisation.

It’s about what happens when the creative industry you built your career around quietly stops functioning the way it used to.

Over not just the past few months, but the past few years, I’ve had a bit of an identity shift. Or an identity crisis. Depends how dramatic we’re feeling today.

I still love sound mixing and sound editing. I always will. There’s still something oddly magical about shaping emotion through sound and helping tell stories in ways most audiences never consciously notice. It’s a craft I care deeply about and one I’m proud to have built a career in.

But if I’m honest, the industry itself feels unrecognisable compared to even two or three years ago.

The ways of working that felt relatively normal in 2022 or 2023 already feel outdated. Work has slowed. Budgets have tightened. Entire sectors feel like they’re operating through a mixture of panic, denial and somebody in finance whispering “AI” every twelve minutes.

Freelancing in sound now often feels less like building a career and more like a competitive endurance sport where everyone’s refreshing their inbox while pretending they’re “keeping busy”.

Which is bleak, obviously.

But it also forced me to start thinking differently.

A couple of years ago I realised I needed to diversify creatively, not because I’d fallen out of love with sound, but because relying on one shrinking corner of one unstable industry suddenly felt like a terrible long term plan. Like building a retirement strategy around scratch cards and emotional resilience.

So I moved into education.

I started out in management and, if I’m honest, I found the transition difficult. Having industry experience is one thing. Learning how to apply it effectively in education is something else entirely.

But what I did enjoy was the student engagement, the enrichment opportunities and the teaching itself when I had to cover classes.

I love bringing real industry experience into academic spaces and showing students the things that often become blind spots in traditional education. The practical realities. The emotional realities. The parts nobody tells you about working in film and television.

At the same time, teaching has sharpened me too.

It’s forced me to articulate instincts I’d built over years of working in sound and post production. It’s made me better at communicating ideas, analysing process and understanding creativity in a deeper way. I’ve genuinely enjoyed developing those skills and engaging with students who are entering an industry that looks wildly different to the one many of us stepped into.

Other doors started opening too.

I began working on immersive 360 dome films, which has become one of the most creatively exciting spaces I’ve worked in for years. It’s a format and a community that feels refreshingly open, collaborative and experimental. People share knowledge instead of guarding workflows like they’re protecting state secrets.

There’s a freedom to it that I’d honestly forgotten existed.

At the same time, I’ve been developing a couple of more traditional film projects of my own and slowly leaning further into creating work independently rather than waiting endlessly for permission.

And then earlier this year I finally did something I’d wanted to do for a long time.

I started this Substack.

Not because I wanted thousands of subscribers purely for vanity metrics or to become one of those people who uses the phrase “creator economy” but because I wanted to write.

I wanted to talk honestly about sound, storytelling, filmmaking, post production and creativity with people who care about the craft behind the work.

And honestly, the people I’ve met on here have been brilliant.

It feels like a community of people on similar journeys, creatives trying to figure out how to build meaningful, sustainable work in industries that increasingly feel unstable, oversaturated and held together with electrical tape.

Substack also introduced me more deeply to the Nonde movement and the wider world of independent filmmaking communities. The idea that maybe creatives stop waiting for permission all the time. That maybe we can build our own audiences, our own communities and our own projects outside the traditional gatekeeper system.

Not anti industry necessarily.

Just less dependent on it for survival.

And somewhere in the background from the beginning was the thought that one day I’d monetise this publication.

The question was always how?

Because if people are going to part with their money, even a small amount, I think there has to be genuine value there. Nobody needs another creator shouting vague motivational nonsense into the void while selling “exclusive insights” that could’ve been a tweet.

So here’s where I’ve landed.

The weekly article which I sned out Thursday’s will always remain free.

That’s important to me.

This newsletter is my public space. My calling card. Occasionally my therapy session disguised as industry commentary.

But for those who’d like to go a little deeper, I’m introducing a paid subscription at £5 per month.

For that, you’ll receive at least two additional articles every month alongside the regular free newsletter along with some other perks including Q and A’s, monthly Zoom calls and early previews of other materials I’m working on which include Videos and Courses.

These won’t be filler content or shorter versions of free articles hidden behind a paywall. They’ll be deeper dives into sound mixing, post production, storytelling, filmmaking and the realities of working in the creative industries.

I’ll be sharing more detailed breakdowns of projects and workflows, lessons learned from my years industry, thoughts on creative development, and honest reflections on navigating an industry that’s being rebuilt in real time.

Paid subscribers will also be able to submit questions for regular Q&A and FAQ posts.

Whether it’s sound mixing, editing, post-production, filmmaking, freelancing, education, career development or creative problem solving, I’ll answer as openly and honestly as I can.

In short, you’ll get more access to the things I spend most of my time thinking about anyway.

Less polished mythology.

More reality.

Because I think people are craving that now.

Not the fantasy version of creative careers where everybody’s thriving and effortlessly networking on rooftops in Soho.

The real version.

The version where people adapt. Learn new skills. Diversify. Build communities. Create independently. Try things. Fail occasionally. Continue anyway.

So yes, this is technically an announcement that I’m monetising the Substack.

But really it’s an extension of the same journey I’ve been on for the past few years, figuring out how to build a sustainable creative life in an industry that no longer works the way many of us were told it would.

If that resonates with you, I’d love you to come aboard.

For £5 a month you’ll be supporting the writing, helping me continue building this community and getting additional articles, deeper insights and the opportunity to shape future discussions through your questions.

Either way, thank you for reading.

Even reaching the end of an article on the internet deserves some sort of medal.

Or at the very least a biscuit.

Sign up here

I’m offering paid subscribers a first look at this video before releasing it publicly.

The following is a transcript from the presentation:

Today, I want to talk about a topic that might sound a bit dramatic, but it is a reality we cannot ignore: Who killed the TV industry? The entire media landscape has undergone a rapid, radical change over the past few years. As someone who has worked in television production for 20 years, I wanted to dissect what is happening and offer an honest perspective on a very sensitive subject.

This discussion is based on an article I wrote titled, Who Do I Blame for the TV Industry Crisis? It is a frank look at the forces behind the collapse of linear television and the uncomfortable truth about who is responsible. When I published that article, I received an overwhelming response. Many people wrote to me sharing heartbreaking stories about their livelihoods, some agreed with my stance, and others challenged my views. Getting that broad perspective has been invaluable.

The Golden Era and the Water Cooler Monoculture

To understand how we got here, we have to look back at the past. For decades, broadcast television was the dominant force in media and a central pillar of our shared monoculture. If you worked in the industry back then, there was stable commissioning and a constant stream of shows. I had friends who could write an idea on the back of a cigarette pack, pitch it, and get a commission just like that.

Viewing was scheduled, meaning everyone watched the same programs at the same time. Depending on the era you look at in the UK, there were only a couple of channels, which later expanded to include ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. Some households eventually got Sky, but there was no on-demand viewing, no Netflix, and no streaming. While videotape technology arrived in the 1980s allowing people to record programs, you generally still had to be present at a specific time to experience a show.

Because of this, television created a thriving, shared ecosystem. The next morning, everyone would walk into the office and gather to talk about what they watched the night before. This is exactly where the term “water cooler moment” comes from. I remember experiencing this as a kid in school when absolutely everyone was watching Red Dwarf, South Park, or The Simpsons.

The industry itself was also structured very differently. It was heavily unionized. In the 1970s and 1980s, if you wanted a job in TV, you had to go through the union. Over time, the landscape shifted toward freelance labor. I used to hold a full-time, salaried staff position at a production company, but after that company dissolved, I became a freelancer. Today, that is the reality for most people in the business. The vast majority of television work is project-based, and secure payroll positions are incredibly hard to find. The robust industry infrastructure of the past has diminished, leaving behind a shadow of its former self.

The Slow Onset of Friction and Elitism

When I first entered television production two years ago, local television was already disappearing as networks shifted their focus toward competing for national commissions. Securing a greenlight for a show required an incredibly thick skin. Production teams would endlessly churn out program ideas, advance through multiple rounds of network meetings, and then see the project evaporate because an executive left the network or the funding fell through. Even then, the signs of decline were visible, and advertisers were beginning to pull back.

Around 15 years ago, a mentor of mine who was retiring in his 60s gave me some advice. He noted that while his generation would always watch television the traditional way, tuning into the standard broadcast channels in the evening, younger audiences were already migrating to different formats. At that point, Netflix was on the rise, and platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and live streaming were emerging.

At the time, many traditional television executives dismissed online media as “just internet stuff” that was not mainstream. To be fair, 15 years ago, the technology was not as seamless. Smart TVs and devices like Apple TV existed, but they were not yet ubiquitous. If my friends wanted to watch YouTube on a television screen, they had to physically plug their laptop into the monitor with a cable. There was still technical friction.

Because of that friction, a certain level of elitism persisted within traditional TV companies. The prevailing attitude was, “We make what the viewer actually watches; we define the culture.” That sense of authority has steadily evaporated. Younger generations now expect everything to be online, on-demand, and fragmented. Audiences watch exactly what they want, when they want, and how they want.

The Algorithmic Shift and Dopamine on Demand

This structural shift moved us rapidly from scheduled broadcasts to an era of hyper-abundant streaming. Audiences now stack subscriptions across Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and HBO, alongside massive consumption of YouTube.

However, the most significant shift in recent years is the role of the algorithm. A few years ago, data tracking was less granular. Today, algorithms understand your viewing history and preferences better than you do, constantly serving up personalized recommendations.

On short-form video platforms like TikTok, audiences receive dopamine on demand. The algorithm measures how fast you swipe to instantly calculate what you like and dislike, building a completely bespoke feed. Instead of human executives curating content for a mass audience, software curates content for the individual.

This algorithmic curation is a double-edged sword. On the positive side, you can access highly niche, relevant content instantly. On the negative side, it creates echo chambers, particularly around current affairs and politics, and strips away our shared cultural experiences.

The Collapse of the Traditional Business Model

Excluding public broadcasters like the BBC for a moment, the traditional television business model depended entirely on mass audiences and advertising revenue. Historically, companies paid top dollar for prime-time commercial slots. Local television was funded heavily by local businesses.

As personalized algorithms developed, advertisers realized that digital platforms offered much better targeting. If a company wants to sell toothpaste formulated for sensitive teeth to an older demographic, a traditional television commercial acts like a “spray and pray” method, expensive airtime broadcast to a mass audience in the hope of hitting the right demographic. Digital advertising allows companies to push that budget directly through a marketing funnel to the exact consumer who needs the product.

As advertising budgets migrated to digital platforms, funding for traditional programming began to dry up. This is a critical loss because those commercial revenues directly fund high-end dramas, daily news broadcasts, and industry jobs.

Furthermore, audience attention spans have fragmented. Viewers routinely hit the skip button, swipe away from ads, or split their focus across multiple devices. When you watch a screen today, you might simultaneously be looking at your phone, playing a game, or listening to a podcast. Capturing full attention for a sustained period is increasingly difficult.

Public models face their own crises. In the UK, the BBC is funded by the TV license fee, which is legally required to watch any live broadcast television. However, growing numbers of viewers are moving strictly to on-demand streaming platforms where the license fee does not apply, leading to a drop in funding. Coupled with inflation, production costs have soared while resources have dwindled. To survive, networks are forced to scale back, cutting series orders from 12 episodes down to six, or canceling shows entirely just to keep operations running.

The Pandemic Pendulum: From Feast to Famine

The industry then encountered a massive destabilization during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the start of the lockdowns, production went completely blank. The company I was working for was scheduled to shoot a show in Italy, but the very day the research team was set to fly out, Italy initiated its national lockdown.

The initial shutdown killed many businesses, including the production company where I worked. At the time, I was working in a studio as an audio mixer and managing post-production. In the early days, there was an immense amount of fear surrounding basic operations like recording voiceovers, which required putting people into small, confined booths.

As a result, a massive amount of traditional work was canceled. Production quality took a backseat to safety, and broadcast television became dominated by low-resolution Zoom calls.

By the summer of 2021 and into 2022, regulations began to lift, and networks found ways to get crews back on location safely using strict production bubbles and dedicated COVID safety officers. Because audiences had spent over a year at home consuming every available piece of content on television, networks faced an immediate shortage of material. The industry entered an unprecedented boom period.

By 2022, production exploded. I was turning down work for the first time in my career because the demand for freelancers was overwhelming. I worked on series where I was one of the only available specialists in the country because everyone was at full capacity. Production companies could not find enough edit suites, camera operators, or post-production staff. Broadcasters were buying everything they could get their hands on.

Unfortunately, this boom created a bubble. By 2023 and 2024, macro-economic factors like inflation and global instability caused advertising budgets to contract again. Broadcasters realized they had commissioned a massive backlog of content that was still sitting on the shelf ready to go.

The industry swung violently from famine to feast, and back to famine. Because networks had enough accumulated content to sustain their schedules, commissioning ground to a sudden halt. Freelancers suddenly found themselves facing a severe drought of work.

The Current State and the Rise of AI

As of mid-2026, the television industry remains in a difficult position. The recent Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes halted numerous major dramas and caused widespread concern over long-term livelihoods. While those disputes reached resolutions, the prolonged production halts created a severe knock-on effect across global supply chains.

Today, commissioning is drastically reduced, budgets are tight, and crews are expected to do much more for less money. Many established production companies have closed their doors because the traditional financial model is no longer sustainable without mass audiences and massive linear budgets.

This contraction has deeply impacted the freelance community across both production and post-production. Award-winning directors and highly skilled technicians are facing extended periods of unemployment, with many forced to leave the business entirely. It is heartbreaking to see an industry change so rapidly.

The Uncomfortable Truth: Who is Responsible?

When asking who killed traditional television, the uncomfortable answer is: we did. The audience killed it.

Audiences walked away from broadcast television not necessarily because the quality dropped, but because alternative platforms offered unprecedented convenience, choice, and authenticity. Personally, I find myself deeply entertained by niche content on YouTube, whether it is an independent creator reviewing historic military rations in his kitchen, or creators discussing gaming and politics.

All you need today to create television is a smartphone and an internet connection. The television screen in the corner of the room has largely been relegated to a background display for cooking or casual viewing, while primary attention has shifted to short-form media, podcasts, and gaming.

As media professionals, we can complain about the decline of the traditional ecosystem, but we must acknowledge that our own changing habits as consumers helped drive this transition.

Looking to the Future

Despite these challenges, there is cause for hope. Audiences will always crave exceptional storytelling, high-quality production, and factual documentaries. The market for great content will persist, even if the traditional distribution models change.

While the classic golden era of linear television has passed, we have entered a new era where anyone can create authentic content, bypass traditional gatekeepers, and connect directly with a global audience.

The next major technological shift is the integration of artificial intelligence. However, even in an automated age, audiences will continue to seek out authentic, human-to-human creativity and connection.

The media industry is not disappearing; it is evolving. Technology has permanently altered how content is produced, distributed, and discovered through algorithms. Audiences have changed, and viewing habits will not revert to the past. Adaptation is mandatory. While it is natural to feel nostalgic for the structure of the old industry, the future open ecosystem offers incredible opportunities to tell stories and communicate in entirely new ways.

I don’t know whether I wear it like a badge. I don’t know whether it changes me as a person. I’m still me. I still obsess over random stuff and sound. I still overanalyse conversations from six years ago at 2am. I still panic slightly when somebody sends a message saying “Can we have a quick chat?” as though they’ve summoned me to a disciplinary meeting. Nothing magically transformed overnight.

But I do feel relieved. Not because the diagnosis changed anything, but because it explained things.

The Unwritten Rulebook

I’d spent years wondering why certain things seemed effortless for other people and exhausting for me. Why I could spend twelve hours in a studio focused on a mix without noticing time passing, yet twenty minutes of small talk at an industry event felt like I’d just completed an Ironman carrying a piano. I assumed that was a personal failing. I assumed everybody else had simply figured out a rulebook I’d somehow misplaced.

The diagnosis didn’t suddenly make networking enjoyable. It didn’t make crowded rooms less overwhelming. It didn’t make me love office politics or group discussions thank God for that. But it did replace years of self criticism with something much more useful: an explanation.

Looking back, so much of my life suddenly makes sense. I was never what you’d call normal. Not that anybody really is, despite LinkedIn trying its hardest to convince us otherwise. At school I was the quiet one. Never particularly cool. Occasionally bullied. Always feeling slightly out of sync with everyone else. I wasn’t the kid organising parties. I wasn’t the centre of attention. I wasn’t naturally good at navigating the social world. I just thought everybody found it difficult and somehow managed to hide it better than I did.

The Power of Hyperfixation

Then there were the hyperfixations, special interests, apparently. Guess what mine was. Sound. Specifically sound production, recording, music, DAWs, studios, microphones, mixing consoles, plugins, acoustics, film sound, music production... anything remotely connected to audio. While other people were out developing social skills, I was indoors learning Pro Tools and convincing myself that owning seven slightly different compressor plugins was a completely rational life decision. Which, to be fair, turned into a career.

Looking back it’s almost funny that I ended up in sound, because sound is detail. It’s spending twenty minutes deciding whether a footstep is slightly too loud. It’s noticing a hum nobody else has heard. It’s hearing a tiny click in a dialogue track and becoming physically incapable of ignoring it. It’s recognising that a scene feels wrong long before you can explain why. Most people would describe that as obsessive, the industry calls it professional.

The reality is that sound work suited my brain perfectly. I could disappear into it for hours, days sometimes. The outside world would disappear and there would only be the work: a scene, a mix, a problem to solve, a frequency that wasn’t behaving itself.

I realise now that what felt natural to me wasn’t necessarily natural to everybody else. Over the years directors, producers and colleagues would sometimes ask how I’d noticed something such as a dialogue issue, a sync problem, a strange resonance, a sound that felt emotionally wrong. I never really knew how to answer. I just heard it. I assumed everybody else heard it too and simply wasn’t listening properly. Which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the most diplomatic conclusion.

The truth is I don’t think I would be as good at what I do if I wasn’t autistic. That intense focus, that determination, that need to understand every tiny detail, that tendency to become completely absorbed by a subject, in hindsight it absolutely helped build my career. The problem is I also built my entire identity around it, and that probably did me more damage than the autism ever did.

The Extroversion Trap

Working in television and the arts isn’t always a brilliant environment for autistic people. At least not the glamorous side of it. The industry rewards extroversion constantly: networking, self promotion, walking into rooms full of strangers and somehow making them remember you. You are expected to project confidence even when you’re running entirely on caffeine, anxiety and a vague sense of professional panic.

Meanwhile, I’d have been perfectly happy being left alone in an edit suite with a cup of black coffee and a mixing session. There is a reason post production attracts certain personalities. You can spend hours hyperfocused on tiny details in a controlled environment without somebody asking you to participate in team building exercises or explain your personal brand. If I’m honest, I’m better in the machine room, better in the edit suite, better left to my own devices to create things.

That doesn’t mean I can’t communicate. It doesn’t mean we can’t lead. But it often means I have to learn those skills consciously rather than instinctively.

People often describe me as confident now. If you’d met me twenty years ago you’d have laughed. I wasn’t confident; I was terrified. I had to build those communication skills piece by piece because I quickly realised talent alone wasn’t enough. You still have to explain your ideas. You still have to deal with people. You still have to survive meetings. But being content with myself is a way to get through these things.

The Exhaustion of Masking

Then I started reading about masking. That was the part that hit me hardest, the idea that you spend so long constructing a version of yourself for other people that eventually you forget where the performance ends.

Looking back, I think I spent years treating social interaction like another job. Learn the script. Learn the expected response. Smile at the right moment. Make eye contact, not too much eye contact, apparently there’s a sweet spot. Pretend you’re comfortable. Pretend you understand the unwritten rules. Pretend you’re not exhausted. Nobody hands you the manual, you’re just expected to know.

The result is that you become very good at appearing fine, even when you’re not. I became a people pleaser. I took things personally. I overthought everything. I tied my self worth to my career because achievement became proof that I had value. When opportunities passed me by, I took it incredibly hard. Because when you’ve spent your life feeling slightly outside the group, success starts feeling like the thing that will finally earn your place within it. You tell yourself that if you work hard enough people will eventually understand your worth.

Changing the Frequency

The good news is that things are changing. I think if I’d written this fifteen years ago it would have sounded much more controversial, or people would simply have labelled me strange and moved on. Now there’s a far greater understanding of neurodiversity and mental health. There’s an acceptance that people experience the world differently.

And creative industries are full of people who probably think differently. The arts attracts obsessives. It attracts people who don’t quite fit elsewhere, people who overthink, people who hyperfocus, people who disappear into craft because sometimes craft feels safer than people. And that’s not a weakness. If anything, I believe that it’s often where the work comes from.

So no, I don’t know whether I’ll wear autism like a badge. I don’t know whether it changes me. I don’t think it does. What it changes is how I understand myself.

Because the more I learn about it, the more I realise autism didn’t ruin my career. It didn’t hold me back. It didn’t stop me succeeding. If anything, many of the qualities that made me successful came directly from it. The thing that caused the damage was spending years trying to convince myself I wasn’t autistic. Trying to be normal. Trying to fit into spaces that were never designed for people like me. Trying to become somebody else. After nearly two decades of doing that.

If the media industry wants to keep attracting talented people, especially as it continues to shrink and reinvent itself, then it needs to become a place where those people don’t feel they have to spend half their energy pretending to be somebody they’re not. Because there are probably a lot of incredibly talented creatives out there convinced they’re broken, when actually they’re just wired differently. And sometimes being wired differently is exactly the reason the work is any good in the first place.

I’ve been here on substack for 6 months now, and enjoying every minute. Read more of my work here at tesound.substack.com

No, I didn’t make it up. And before any editors start drafting strongly worded emails, I’m joking. Mostly.

But like all good industry jokes, it exists because there’s a tiny grain of truth hiding inside it. And every now and then, usually around six o’clock on a Friday when everyone wants to go home, that grain of truth lands squarely on my desk.

Ever Had To Fix Something You Weren’t Allowed To Change?

One of the more frustrating jobs in sound is receiving a sequence where the music clearly isn’t quite working, but the edit itself is locked. The director likes the timing. The producer likes the timing. The editor likes the timing. Everyone likes the timing. Except the music. The music is having an absolute breakdown. It might start on the beat. It might finish on the beat. But somewhere in the middle there are awkward jumps, strange pauses, missing bars or edits that feel like somebody sneezed while holding a razor blade.

The obvious solution would be to move a shot by a few frames. But that’s often off the table. So now it’s my problem. I become the audio equivalent of Kevin from Harry Enfield, quietly sulking in the corner while trying to solve a puzzle nobody else can see. “THAT'S SO UNFAIR”

The challenge becomes finding a way to get the music back into some sort of natural rhythm without upsetting everything around it. Sometimes that means rebuilding sections from scratch. Sometimes it means finding loops. Sometimes it means stretching or shortening passages just enough that nobody notices. And occasionally it means staring at a waveform for ten minutes hoping inspiration arrives through sheer force of resentment.

Why Music Doesn’t Like Being Chopped Into Tiny Pieces

Music is surprisingly good at telling you when something is wrong. Most people can’t explain why an edit feels awkward, they just know it does. A lot of that comes down to rhythm and phrasing. Songs are built around patterns. Bars. Beats. Musical sentences that naturally resolve. When an edit ignores those structures, the audience often feels it before they consciously hear it. The result is that strange sensation where something feels slightly off but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

Editors can sometimes get a little enthusiastic with cuts. I understand the temptation. Modern editing systems make it incredibly easy to trim, move and rearrange footage at lightning speed. But every cut creates consequences elsewhere. If a music track gets sliced into fifty microscopic sections simply to accommodate visual changes, eventually you’re left with a soundtrack that resembles a ransom note. At that point I’m not really mixing music anymore. I’m conducting emergency surgery.

Modern Software Is Actually Quite Clever

One area where editing software has genuinely improved is music retiming. Applications such as Adobe Premiere Pro now include tools that can automatically adapt music to fit a required duration. Instead of manually cutting the track into pieces, the software analyses the music, identifies beats, phrases and structural elements, then creates a new arrangement designed to preserve the musical flow while matching the timing of the sequence.

When it works, it’s genuinely impressive. A three minute track can become two minutes and fifteen seconds. A ninety second track can become sixty. The software does in seconds what used to take editors considerably longer. And most of the time it does a surprisingly decent job. I have absolutely no issue with people using these tools. Quite the opposite. Anything that preserves musicality while saving time is a win in my book.

The Problem Isn’t The Tool

The problem is what happens afterwards. Recently I’ve seen several projects where these adaptive music tools have been used successfully in the edit. Everything sounded fine. Everyone approved it. The director signed off. The editor moved on. Then the project landed in audio post. And suddenly none of it made any sense.

Because somewhere between creating the edit and exporting the materials, the adapted version of the music wasn’t properly baked into the media. The edit referenced one version. The exported files contained another. The sequence expected one set of timings. The actual music contained completely different timings.

Which means when I begin tracklaying, nothing matches. Nothing lands where it’s supposed to. Transitions feel wrong. Sync points disappear. The emotional beats the director approved no longer exist. Naturally I then spend half an hour assuming I’ve made a mistake. Then another half hour proving I haven’t. Then comes the inevitable conversation: “It didn’t sound like that in the edit.” Correct. Because what I’m hearing isn’t what you heard.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

This isn’t just a minor technical annoyance. Every unnecessary problem introduced into post production has a cost. Sometimes it’s measured in hours. Sometimes it’s measured in money. Sometimes it’s measured in a sound mixer slowly losing the will to live.

When materials arrive correctly prepared, everyone can focus on creative decisions. When materials arrive broken, everyone focuses on detective work. Nobody enjoys detective work when a deadline is looming.

A Small Request From The Sound Department

So here’s my humble plea: If you’ve used any AI assisted music editing tools, adaptive audio features, remixed tracks, time stretching processes or anything else that modifies the music from its original state, make absolutely certain those changes are properly committed before export.

Render them. Bake them in. Check them. Then check them again. Make sure the files you’re delivering are the files everybody else will actually receive. Because if the director approved Version A but post receives Version B, somebody is going to spend their afternoon trying to reconcile two completely different realities. And statistically speaking, as usual that somebody is usually me.

Conclusion

The irony is that modern editing tools are better than they’ve ever been. They can save enormous amounts of time. They can produce genuinely impressive results. Used correctly, they’re fantastic. But clever technology doesn’t remove the need for good housekeeping.

The final export still matters. The deliverables still matter. And making sure everyone downstream receives exactly what you intended still matters. So yes, use the clever tools. Use all the AI wizardry you like. Just make sure it survives the journey out of your timeline. Because while I can usually fix the problem eventually, I’d much rather spend my time making things sound better than trying to work out why the music has suddenly forgotten what song it’s supposed to be.

I actually do this stuff for a living, and would love to help on your project. Find out more about me and my work at www.tomedwardssound.com

Last week’s article about who I blame for the TV industry’s current mess seemed to resonate with quite a few people. One of the nicest things about writing this newsletter is when people take the time to send me a message or an email. Not because I’m fishing for compliments, but because I genuinely find other people’s perspectives interesting.

What stood out wasn’t so much what people thought about television. It was how many people were hurting.

I was going to write something a bit more cheerful this week. Something about sound. Something about filmmaking. But while the iron is hot, I thought I’d do a follow up.

I’ll try and keep it balanced rather than completely nihilistic. Again, no promises.

A lot of the feedback centered around mental health. That’s probably because I didn’t really touch on it much in the last article. Partly because I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Partly because it’s easier to talk about commissioning problems than what’s going on inside your own head.

People talked about struggling to find work. Feeling left behind. Feeling forgotten. And honestly, it’s heartbreaking.

Behind every carefully worded LinkedIn post about “exploring exciting new opportunities” there are real people wondering what the hell happened. People who gave years to this industry. People who missed birthdays. Missed anniversaries. Missed family events. I’ve even read stories from people who didn’t spend final moments with loved ones because they were terrified of leaving set.

And you think about that for a minute. You give all that time. All that energy. All those weekends. All those sacrifices. Then when times get tough, it can feel like the industry moves on without you remarkably quickly. That’s a difficult thing to process.

And before somebody accuses me of shouting at clouds, I know there are organisations trying to help. But the answer only ever seems to be another wellbeing webinar.

Maybe our union will save us. Mind you, I cancelled my standing order a while ago. Not out of principle. I just wanted somebody to fight for me and, with the greatest respect, the discounted Pontins holiday wasn’t moving the needle anymore. When your industry is collapsing around you, ten percent off a caravan in Skegness starts to feel a touch inadequate.

What people want isn’t another certificate. They want work. They want a healthy industry. They want to feel like the profession they’ve invested their lives into still has a future. And if I’m being honest, I understand that feeling.

When I wrote about losing my job and setting up my business afterwards, I skipped over a chapter. I didn’t tell you that between losing my job and building something new, there was a period during lockdown where I spent months in a suicidal state. Feeling worthless. Feeling like I’d never work in this industry again. Feeling like everything I’d spent years building had vanished overnight. The world seemed to be ending. The industry seemed to be ending. And I genuinely couldn’t see a future.

Looking back now, I realise what I was actually grieving wasn’t just the job. It was my identity. I’d spent so many years working in television that I started confusing what I did with who I was.

No work became no purpose. No purpose became no value. I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I genuinely believed I was worthless because television didn’t seem to want me anymore. That’s a dangerous place to end up. And I suspect I’m not the only one who’s been there.

Since discovering my autism diagnosis, a lot of that period makes more sense to me now. I like routine. I like stability. Apparently having your entire professional world collapse isn’t ideal if your brain enjoys predictability. Who knew?

But if there is one thing those years taught me, it’s this. You are bigger than the job. You are bigger than the production company. You are bigger than the last commission that landed in your inbox. At the time I couldn’t see that. Now I can… Well I try to least.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt. I’d still take my old job back tomorrow if somebody offered it to me. No hesitation. No inspirational speech about growth. No LinkedIn post about embracing change. I’d be back in that studio before they’d finished the sentence. Because I liked that life. I was happy.

I think we’re allowed to admit that sometimes. Not every setback needs to become a TED Talk. Sometimes the thing you lost was actually good.

One practical thing all of this has taught me though is the value of diversification. I’m not going to tell anybody to pivot because I’d rather staple my hand to a table than use that word seriously. But having a few extra skills doesn’t hurt.

For me that meant post production, IT, editing, running a business and eventually filmmaking. I still do all of those things now. My post production company. My own filmmaking projects. Teaching. Writing this newsletter. Whatever this Substack actually is.

The irony is that losing one path forced me to discover several others. That doesn’t make the original loss hurt any less. But it does mean there was life after it.

Now onto part two.

And if you thought part one was miserable, congratulations. This one is a double whammy.

A lot of people asked me where I think all of this is heading. The honest answer is exactly the same as everyone else’s. I haven’t got a clue. But there are a few people who have made some good forecasts.

I remember watching Richard Osman talking about how television hasn’t died, but traditional broadcast television has probably peaked and will look very different in the future. That feels right to me.

Personally, I think we can all see the direction of travel. Content delivered over the internet. Whether that’s streaming platforms, FAST channels or YouTube.

At this point YouTube isn’t competing with television. For a lot of people it is television. I spend more time watching YouTube than traditional broadcast channels myself. Which is slightly awkward considering my career. I can absolutely imagine a future where broadcasters stream directly onto platforms like YouTube and most viewers don’t even notice the difference.

But despite all that, I don’t think television dies. People still want sport. People still want news. And perhaps most importantly, people still want company.

Sometimes we don’t want another algorithm asking us to make a decision. Sometimes we don’t want choice. Sometimes we just want to put the telly on. The television becomes company.

When I was younger, I used to leave QVC on all night. Not because I had a burning desire to buy costume jewellery at three in the morning. It just felt like somebody else was awake. Looking back, that’s probably one of the stranger coping mechanisms I’ve developed. I suspect I’m not alone though.

Part of me wonders whether factual television might have a renaissance eventually. It’s relatively cheap to make compared to high end drama. People like real stories. People like seeing people like themselves. And while AI can generate endless amounts of slop, I’m not convinced it can replace genuine human experiences. At least not completely.

I also think brands increasingly become producers. Corporate documentaries. Sponsored projects. Branded content. Whether we like it or not, that’s where some of the money is.

As a re-recording mixer, my hope is simply that producers still see value in hiring skilled people. Good sound and editing craft still matters. Human judgement still matters. Despite what every AI evangelist on LinkedIn would like us to believe.

Further into the future, things get weird. You’ve got people talking about brain implants. Neural interfaces. Smart glasses feeding content directly into your eyeballs.

Personally, I struggle to remember where I left my keys most mornings. The idea of installing software updates directly into my brain doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. Maybe that’s where entertainment goes. Maybe it doesn’t. I honestly don’t know.

And I suppose that’s the point. I don’t know what television looks like in fifteen years. I don’t know what post production looks like. I don’t know what happens next.

What I do know is that you’re allowed to be excited about the future and grieve the past at the same time. Those things can coexist. I still miss my old job. I still miss that certainty. I still miss that version of my life. But I’ve finally realised that losing a job isn’t the same thing as losing your value. Trust me, I spent months believing otherwise.

So if the state of the industry is getting on top of you, take a break from the doom scrolling occasionally. Mute the Facebook groups where every post sounds like a eulogy. Support each other of course, Look after yourself. Find ways to adapt where you can. And remember that you are bigger than the job. Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Next week, something happier. Probably.

It doesn’t seem right to do a witty segway to my website on this one. But you can find out more about me here.

I want to say something pretty uncomfortable, because many of us, including me, have all sat there lamenting the death of commissioning, the drying up of budgets, the ghosted emails, and the fact that many companies are going out of business. Then we close the laptop and spend three hours watching YouTube videos titled “I Bought a Mystery Box From Temu And Regret Everything”. I know this because I’m one of them, which is awkward, considering television paid my mortgage for years.

I was happily tucked away as a dubbing mixer at a TV production company, hidden in my little studio, mixing sound, managing edit suites, and generally living what for me was the dream. I was working with good people, earning steady money, utilising my creativity every day, and dealing with the occasional panic attack about delivery deadlines. Then I got made redundant and the production company I worked for shut down. The industry collapsed into itself like a wet cardboard set wall and suddenly everyone started saying words like “pivot”.

I absolutely hate the word pivot. It sounds like something a management consultant says before making forty people redundant and booking their fifth holiday for the year.

I didn’t want reinvention, I wanted stability

People have been very kind over the last few years. They’ve said I adapted well, that I diversified, and that I turned a bad situation into an opportunity. And objectively, they’re probably right. I went freelance. I recorded loads of voice overs and ADR for films. I mixed projects all over the country. I started my own business. I made my own films. I started writing this newsletter. I teach new filmmakers… essentially I kept trying to stay in the game by any means necessary.

From the outside it probably looks inspiring. Inside my head it mostly felt like survival with invoices. Because the truth is, I was perfectly happy before all of this happened. That’s the bit I don’t think people understand when they romanticise reinvention. Sometimes people don’t secretly want to become entrepreneurs. Sometimes they just liked their job. I liked mine. A lot.

We all knew television was in trouble, we just ignored it

I remember a mentor telling a group of us maybe 12 or 15 years ago that TV was declining. At the time, you could argue it sounded a bit dramatic. This was back when Netflix was only just becoming a household name in the UK and YouTube mainly consisted of people unboxing things on 480p cameras. If you watched YouTube on your actual television back then, you were considered either technologically gifted or an outlier.

Nobody really thought it was competition. Television was television. YouTube was just... internet stuff.

Then slowly the shift happened. People stopped waiting for scheduled broadcasts. Advertising stopped working the same way. Attention spans detonated into dust. Suddenly audiences could watch exactly what they wanted, whenever they wanted, on platforms feeding them content like a Christmas goose being force fed dopamine. And traditional TV started looking vulnerable.

At the company I worked for, commissioning always felt difficult, even years ago. When local TV started dying off, production companies had to fight harder for the bigger series. Everybody could sense something changing. We just didn’t realise how brutal it would become.

COVID briefly convinced us everything was fine

Then came 2020, an absolutely cursed year for television. After the shutdowns, the industry came back in the weirdest possible way. Suddenly every programme was about people walking around Cornwall while drone shots floated over cliffs. Meanwhile, COVID officers were apparently earning more than minor royals.

Then 2021 and 2022 arrived and for a moment it felt like the glory days again. Freelancers were fully booked. People, including myself, were humblebragging on LinkedIn before it transformed into an AI generated slop wasteland where every post sounds like it was written by a sentient business seminar. Work was everywhere. Even I was turning jobs down occasionally, which for re-recording mixers is not exactly normal behaviour. It genuinely felt like the industry had bounced back.

Then the bubble burst almost overnight. Budgets vanished. Projects stalled. Emails stopped getting replies. And ever since then, it’s felt like the entire freelance TV world has existed in a permanent state of low level panic.

I became the problem

This is where the bitterness takes an unfortunate turn inward. Because who exactly killed traditional TV? People like me.

I barely watch broadcast television anymore. I’ve been glued to YouTube for years. I scroll on my phone while watching things. I spend stupid amounts of time on my screen doomscrolling. I play video games. I listen to podcasts and read books and audiobooks. And when I do sit down to watch something, half the time I’d genuinely rather watch some bloke from Virginia reviewing video games on his phone with a 5 dollar microphone in his bathroom or a guy eat army rations from the 1890’s.

Not because it’s objectively better, just because it appeals to me . That’s what audiences shifted towards: authenticity, or at least the illusion of it. And I’m not exempt from that shift just because I work in TV. I am the audience too, which makes it very difficult to sit here ranting about the collapse of an ecosystem I don’t massively participate in myself.

That’s the horrible irony of it all.

I’d still go back tomorrow

Now don’t misunderstand me. If someone offered me my old setup tomorrow (full time job, stable income, edit suites, mixing sound all day with good people) I’d accept before they finished the sentence. No hesitation.

I miss the rhythm of it. The routine. The craft. The feeling of belonging somewhere creatively without constantly worrying where the next invoice was coming from. Freelancing teaches you resilience, sure. It also teaches you how to check your bank account every few minutes.

But nostalgia’s dangerous too, because the world has changed whether I like it or not. Audiences changed. Technology changed. Viewing habits changed. And if you work in creative industries now, adaptation isn’t some inspirational LinkedIn slogan. It’s survival.

Conclusion

So who do I blame for the TV industry shift? Me.

Because while I was building a career in television, I was slowly becoming the exact viewer television was losing. And maybe that’s the real lesson. The industry has chipped away quietly by technology, convenience, choice, shorter attention spans, and audiences who no longer wanted to consume media the same way. Myself included.

Thank you to all the subscribers on this amazing community here. Check out my other work.

I understand if you would you rather walk on hot coal, broken glass and your kids lego than read this? But last week I had an existential crises and I really needed to get my thoughts into words.

I think that everywhere you look, somebody is either declaring AI the beginning of a glorious utopia or the final collapse of civilisation. I understand why people are losing their minds over it and in my crises, I’ve come to the position that I do not think this feels like another technology shift, but rather a cultural shift.

I have worked in television, film, and sound for nearly two decades now. Most of my career has been in audio post production, addressing all the invisible details audiences never consciously notice but absolutely feel… like editing the painfully human issues that make a take imperfect, such as the slight crack in somebody’s voice, the uncomfortable breath between words, or the presenter looking away from the microphone when doing a piece to camera.

Lately, I wake up wondering whether any of it actually matters anymore because, everywhere you look, the message increasingly seems to be: “Excellent work. Now can we remove the human from it?”

In my opinion, that is the bit people outside creative industries often misunderstand.

From the people I’ve spoken to in my network and community, I do not think that most filmmakers are actually anti AI. They are anti-bullshit. And unfortunately, modern culture now seems to run almost entirely on bullshit.

The real fear is not AI, it is what humanity becomes with it.

The Rise of Synthetic Slop

The funny thing is, I was already using AI years before ChatGPT turned the internet into an endless landfill of synthetic motivation and slop.

In audio post, AI has used machine learning tools for years for dialogue cleanup, noise reduction, repair tools, transcript sorting, and metadata organisation. Nobody chained themselves to the gates of Pinewood because an AI plugin removed mouth clicks from a presenter’s voiceover. - well, not that I know of. And I’m glad, because the alternative would involve me manually repairing audio until I lose my sanity.

Most filmmakers are completely fine with AI when it removes tedious technical labour. Sort paperwork? Lovely. Organise transcripts? Fantastic. Remove hum from terrible recordings captured in what sounds like an active dishwasher? Please, God, yes. I worked on a lot of cooking shows, filmed in very noisy kitchens with loud extractor fans.

But the second AI moves from assisting creativity to replacing creativity entirely generating scripts, performances, and art while pretending the human being is now redundant, people become deeply uncomfortable.

I think that discomfort is completely rational because filmmaking and art was built on humanity: taste, instinct, mess, emotion, flaws, accidents, and experience. It is the irrational little choices that somehow make a scene emotionally devastating, despite technically making no sense whatsoever.

That is the thing people are protecting. Not just jobs, but meaning.

Optimised for Entropy

That is where the panic starts becoming bigger than AI itself, because culturally, something already feels broken. Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, was heckled recently the moment AI got mentioned during a graduation speech, and can you blame the students? Imagine training for years only to enter industries where executives, like the CEO of Standard Chartered bank, openly discuss getting rid of “low value human capital” as if human beings are faulty office printers clogging up productivity.

That phrase alone feels like something written by the villain in a science fiction film.

It seems that every week another corporation proudly unveils a future where fewer humans are required to produce more content for products people increasingly seem to hate using.

Which is maybe the bleakest part of all this: nothing feels built for humans anymore. Everything feels optimised instead. Optimised for engagement, for extraction, and for shareholders…. until every service, platform, and cultural product becomes spiritually hollow sludge.

The best word I have heard for this is “enshittification”, coined by writer Cory Doctorow. It is the gradual process where systems become progressively worse as corporations squeeze every possible ounce of value out of them until eventually nobody enjoys anything anymore, except management consultants and people who describe themselves as “growth strategists”.

The Loss of the Shared Moment

Even culture itself feels thinner now. I miss monoculture sometimes. Not because the past was perfect. The 2000s were hardly a golden intellectual age. We were all drinking luminous chemicals and watching reality television that probably violated several human rights laws.

But there was still a sense that society experienced things together: shared references, shared moments, and shared stupidity.

Now everything feels fragmented into personalised digital isolation chambers where algorithms feed us increasingly tailored content while slowly sanding down our ability to connect with anyone outside our own niche little bubble.

Everyone is hyperconnected, yet everyone is isolated, performing, and exhausted.

Maybe that is why AI discourse hits creatives particularly hard. Creative work is fundamentally human work. A machine can imitate style, predict structure, and statistically reconstruct patterns, but it does not know grief, loneliness, embarrassment, obsession, or failure.

It doesn’t know the feeling of sitting in an edit suite at 1 am wondering whether the thing you are making has any value whatsoever in a world increasingly designed to consume and discard things instantly.

Why Inefficiency Matters

Human creativity is built from lived experience, and lived experience is inefficient.

That inefficiency is the point. But modern systems increasingly treat humanity itself as an inefficiency because once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. The economy feels hollowed out, communities feel weaker, art feels disposable, and politics feels performative (actually to be fair hasn’t it always been?)

Everything increasingly resembles content generated to maintain engagement metrics rather than actual civilisation. We do not even consume culture anymore; we scroll through it absentmindedly while half watching something else and replying to messages we do not want to answer.

Perhaps that is why this entire moment feels so unsettling. It’s not because AI suddenly appeared, but because it arrived at exactly the same time many people were already beginning to suspect something about modern life felt spiritually wrong.

I think that AI simply became the face of that anxiety the visible symbol of a culture already drifting towards emotional detachment long before ChatGPT arrived.

Which is why creatives are reacting so emotionally. For many, out entire job revolves around preserving humanity inside systems increasingly incentivised to remove it.

And something hit me last week really deeply.

Part of me genuinely fears where this leads. I worry about younger creatives entering industries with collapsing stability and I worry that we are slowly turning culture itself into fast food.. cheap, instant, forgettable, and engineered for consumption rather than nourishment.

It is a sort of cultural second law of thermodynamics, where everything drifts toward disorder and entropy unless somebody actively fights to preserve meaning.

Presence Over Perfection

I know I sound like a drama queen, I know deep down we as humans will figure something out.

But I think many people can feel this now. It’s a strange sense that the world we grew up expecting no longer exists. The old post war idea of stability, careers, ownership, community, and gradual progress feels dead, and the jury is out for what will replace it.

That uncertainty is what many are afraid of.

As I said, I do still feel that we will figure it all out. People still crave stories made by people. People still want honesty. People still want connection even while systems increasingly isolate us from one another.

Perhaps that is the strange, hopeful part underneath all this. The more synthetic culture becomes, the more valuable human work may actually feel. Not because it is flawless, but because flaws are evidence that somebody real was there.

I started this Substack earlier this year and still figuring it out, but to know that more than 200 people have taken the effort to subscribe and read me waffle on a weekly basis on means so much to me. I’ve met such a great community on here. Thank you

Have a read of my other articles here.

Then about eighteen months ago I stumbled into something that really excited me.

Fulldome.

Or immersive production. Or XR. Or whatever term survives this week’s branding exercise. Personally I prefer immersive because at least it sounds like what it actually is rather than a rejected energy drink.

It’s completely rewired how I think about filmmaking.

Not in a “this changed my life” TED Talk sort of way. I’m still fundamentally a tired bloke staring at a screen for unreasonable amounts of time. But creatively, it felt like discovering a hidden backroom in a building I’d worked in for twenty years.

The first project we made for the dome was a film about the history of the town Devonport, where the dome itself is based. It was shown at a festival, got repeat screenings and the locals thankfully people seemed to genuinely connect with it.

After that we moved into animation. Then a video game project. Then another immersive film exploring the county of Cornwall’s minerals, natural resources and their impact through history and into the future.

That project ended up being entered into Dome Fest West in Colorado, which felt surreal enough already considering I spent a decent portion of my career mainly in dark rooms in the arse end of nowhere.

We decided to attend Domefest, and what struck me most about the fulldome world wasn’t even the technology.

It was the people.

The immersive community is probably the most welcoming creative community I’ve encountered in the creative industries. Which genuinely caught me off guard because film and television can sometimes feel quite cut throat and protective. Not everyone of course, but I think most who work in that industry would have encountered this at some point.

What’s funny is fulldome itself isn’t even remotely new.

It comes directly from planetarium culture. I went to planetariums as a kid. I also used to visit this brilliant dome as a kid which was called Cinema 180 where they projected roller coaster films onto a giant dome screen.

I remember being absolutely mesmerised while simultaneously feeling catastrophically motion sick.

But that sense of awe stayed with me. I just never connected it to filmmaking as a career path because traditional broadcast and cinema always felt like the default route. Rectangles everywhere. TVs. Cinema screens. Phones. Endless rectangles dictating how stories are framed.

Then suddenly you walk into a dome and realise you’re not framing the audience’s attention anymore.

You’re surrounding it.

And that changes everything.

What surprised me even more was how accessible immersive production actually is now. Yes, there’s technical work involved, and yes, you will eventually disappear into tutorial rabbit holes at three in the morning. That part remains consistent across all media production.

But the barrier to entry is far lower than people assume.

You can shoot immersive footage on cameras like the Insta360 or various GoPro setups. Drone technology is evolving rapidly too, with more 360 capable systems appearing all the time.

Which means audiences can now experience places in a completely different way, floating through environments rather than simply looking at them.

Provided, of course, you shoot at a high enough resolution.

Because nothing destroys cinematic wonder quite like projected pixel soup across a giant dome ceiling.

We’ve also been building environments in Unreal Engine, essentially constructing entire virtual worlds inside game engines before filming them virtually.

That’s a part of the process that really fascinates me because suddenly the line between filmmaking, gaming and interactive storytelling starts dissolving.

You stop thinking in terms of sets and locations.

You start thinking in terms of worlds.

There are definitely practical considerations.

Speed and motion matter massively. Camera movement behaves differently when the audience is essentially inside the image rather than viewing it traditionally. You can absolutely make people feel unwell if you overdo things.

Though interestingly, after watching a lot of other creators’ work, I realised audiences can tolerate far more movement and immersion than I initially expected.

You’re effectively placing viewers inside a giant VR environment above their heads, except communally, which changes the psychology of the experience completely.

But the technical side isn’t what stayed with me after Dome Fest West.

What stayed with me was the openness.

The willingness to share knowledge.

The seminars weren’t just people desperately protecting trade secrets while pretending collaboration matters. There were genuine conversations about business models, accessibility, audience growth and how immersive storytelling might evolve over the next decade.

And naturally I gravitated toward the sound discussions because regardless of format I will always end up obsessing over audio.

Most of the immersive soundtracks I’ve mixed are delivered in surround formats, but every dome venue tends to have its own calibrated system and acoustic quirks. There’s no universal setup. No magical preset that fixes everything.

Learning how to get the best out of a specific dome becomes part of the creative process itself. Sound suddenly behaves architecturally. You’re not just mixing for speakers anymore, you’re mixing for physical space.

And sitting inside the Fisk Planetarium in Colorado watching fulldome projects from around the world genuinely reminded me why I got into this industry in the first place.

There were huge graphical music spectaculars. Space exploration films. Family projects. Experimental work. Comedy. Abstract visual journeys that felt halfway between cinema and lucid dreaming.

All of projects felt creatively ambitious in a way that’s becoming increasingly rare in mainstream production.

Nobody seemed interested in chasing algorithms.

They were chasing experiences.

I left Colorado feeling inspired. Like a kid sitting in a dome cinema again, equal parts amazed and slightly nauseous.

If you’re already experimenting in immersive, fulldome or XR stuff, or even just curious about what’s possible. Check out the work of my production company Five29, and find out how we can help. Visit: www.five29.com

Let’s start with the obvious. Have you ever hit “post” on LinkedIn and immediately felt like you needed a shower, a lie down, and possibly a full personality transplant?

That’s Cringe Mountain.

I heard it the other week, looked it up, and thought, brilliant, someone has finally named the exact feeling of wanting to delete your entire online presence while also needing it to survive.

If you are freelance, or trying to be visible in any creative industry, you do not get to quietly be brilliant in a dark room anymore. You have to be seen. You have to post. You have to “engage”. You have to, and I hate this phrase, build a personal brand.

Which is unfortunate if, like me, you would rather chew on tinfoil than talk about yourself.

Before all this Substack and LinkedIn activity, I was quite happy letting the work speak for itself.

But now I post daily, and do Weekly articles/newsletters. Notes. Comments. Little bursts of “look at me but please don’t actually look at me”.

And I hate it to some degree, + in a low level, persistent wince. The kind where you reread your own post and think, who wrote this, and why do they sound like they’ve just discovered adjectives.

I am not a social media hustle merchant. I am not waking up at 5am to optimise my funnel or whatever it is they’re doing this week. I am not thrilled to announce anything. I am rarely even mildly pleased to announce anything.

I’m autistic, I’m an introvert, My social battery is laughably small. Some days even opening the app feels like a bad idea.

And yet, here we are climbing cringe mountain.

Because once I went freelance, the rules changed. Suddenly it was not enough to be good at the job. You have to remind people you exist. Repeatedly. In public and part of it is for me is on platforms that seem specifically designed to make my question why I’m even doing this.

So you set it all up. Website. Instagram. LinkedIn. Substack. You tell yourself it is an investment.

Then the algorithm taps you on the shoulder and says, lovely start, now do it again. And again. And again, but this time with more personality, more vulnerability, and ideally a mildly controversial take to boost engagement.

It is relentless.

And every time you think you have reached the summit, you look up and realise there is another ledge, another format, another expectation.

More cringe.

But here is the bit that surprised me.

1. Routine beats motivation, every single time
   I have never been consistent with newsletters. Ever. I have started them, abandoned them, resurrected them, ignored them again. A creative graveyard of good intentions.

Writing regularly now, whether it is a full article or a short post, has forced a rhythm. Not an inspired, lightning bolt of genius rhythm. A boring one.

Sit down. Write something. Put it out.

It turns out boring is exactly what I needed. Not glamorous, not exciting, but sustainable.

2. You can have a plan without becoming a robot
   Here is the bit that might annoy the “just be spontaneous” crowd.

I do have a plan.

I am not winging the bigger picture. My articles are thought through, mapped out, part of a longer thread of what I actually want to say and who I want to say it to.

But the daily posts, that is where I let things breathe.

Those I do in the moment. What is on my mind, what I have seen that day, what is happening in the industry. They are a bit rougher round the edges, a bit more immediate.

It is the balance that keeps me sane. Structure where it matters, flexibility where it counts.

3. Bad posts are part of the deal
   Not everything you write is going to land. Some of it will be a bit off. Some of it will be a full blown facepalm.

You will make a dodgy joke. You will have a take that, in hindsight, should have stayed in your notes app.

Fine.

The alternative is saying nothing, which is professionally safer and completely invisible.

Pick your poison.

4. It is less about shouting, more about finding your people
   The bit I was most wrong about was the idea that this was all transactional. Post, get leads, move on.

What has actually happened is far more human.

You start talking about your work, your process, your frustrations. Other people doing similar things recognise it. They reply. Conversations happen.

And despite being, by my own admission, a fairly miserable introvert, I quite like that.

Not the performative networking. The actual conversations with people who care about the craft.

That is the bit worth climbing for.

5. You are not as important as you think, which is oddly freeing
   Here is a comforting thought. Nobody is sitting there analysing your posts as deeply as you are… Even though it would be a mild boost to the ego, I at least hope that no one is staying up every night waiting for my latest take to drop.

Most people are scrolling. Half reading. Occasionally engaging.

The spotlight you think is on you is, in reality, more like a flickering desk lamp.

Which means you can relax slightly. Post the thing. The world will not end.

So yes, I am climbing Cringe Mountain with the enthusiasm of someone who would rather be doing literally anything else.

And I suspect I will never reach the top, because there probably is not one. Just more steps, more posts, more small moments of discomfort.

But if the climb means building a routine, sharing what I have learned, and meeting a few decent people along the way, then it is probably worth it.

If you are a freelancer, or trying to be seen without turning into a caricature of yourself, my deeply unqualified advice is this.

Swallow a bit of pride.

Have a bit of a plan where it matters, let go where it does not, and start climbing.

Do it your way, keep it honest, keep it useful, and accept that a certain level of cringe is not a failure, it is the cost of entry.

See you somewhere on the slope.

And with that let me do a cringe call to action. Find out more about me and the work I do here