Signal Flow in Audio Production

Signal Flow is the journey of an audio signal from somewhere to somewhere and including all the cables, gear, processes and conversions along the way. (Examples below)

It’s good to know the signal flow of all your audio because it helps with identifying problems, understanding why the audio sounds like it does, and understanding that when you adjust the audio anywhere along the flow, that adjustment will affect all the subsequent processes that the signal flows to.

General examples:

• Microphone to a channel strip (which contains many processes) to an audio interface into your computer into your DAW software through a plugin and then recorded.
• In post-production, the recorded track can flow through many plugins (one after the other in a chosen order) and then combine with all the other tracks and then through the mastering processing and then rendered as a final episode.

Along the way there are many opportunities for the signal to be degraded, so it’s good to know your signal flow.

We will discuss more details about this in future posts.

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