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Interesting posts in this thread.
Yes, you can learn engineering yourself (in fact you can theoretically teach anything to yourself with the right resources, but it's a shitload easier and faster to get relatively better at a given subject if you are taught it first.
I've looked (viewed and toured) at schools in London, Canada the USA, including:
UK - SAE several, Point Blank, university of Midx, Technics Academy.
Canada - Trebas, the Harris Institute, York, Recording Arts canada.
USA - Fullsail, Los Angeles Recording school (LARS), the Guitar Institute, SAE, UCLA.
I actually went to Harris Institute and it was, without doubt, THE GREATEST EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. PERIOD. I could honestly write pages about how good the Producing engineering progrm (PEP) is there, but won't bore you with it. It's also only about $9k (CAD) for a year. it was a minimum of 40 hours per week, covering 14 subjects at any one time, taught by some of the music/sound industry's major players, including seriously respected studio and live sound engineers, Acoustic consultants and even A+R executives and entertainment lawyers. This is especially great as you won;t just get an education in technical ability, but also the basics of how to prepare yourself for the sorts of jobs you're going to go for. They teach you basic electronics and soldering, as well as music theory and history of contemporary music. They make you do things like assist in a club as coursework (they set it up). Basically, when you come out of there you will have a great grounding on the industry as a whole, but also be a superb engineer - the technical aspects of the course are so intense and the learning so full on. Nothing I have seen or heard about from any of the dozen or so schools I seriously researched has come close. Graduates from there go on to very good things, partly because of the contacts made there (through the school, or through tutors or through canadian companies respecting it as a school).
Fullsail, is a joke IMO. It costs $40K (yes) for a full audio engineering diploma and even though they do have good facilities and a really fancy website, that's mainly where your tuition money is going. I know a lot of people who went there and really pissed because there are a lot of rich kid wannabe's, who don't actually give a shit about the course (it's just something cool for them to do for a while) and many of the tutors cater to this class mentality. Some people I know did get a good education from it but they said it was only because they really put a lot in to making sure they got their money's worth. Even then, I wouldn't say their knowledge was that great, having seen their class notes and supplied course work.
SAE, is generally crap. You get out what you put in, but again there are so many idiots there and my experience is that their tutors really aren't that qualified or experienced. They also, aren't that cheap and their courses are quite limited.
Trebas just looked a bit run down and not really passionate about teaching - more of a business transaction, but at least it wasn't expensive. Their brochure was just a photocopy!
Recording Arts Canada - seemed OK but looked like a copy of the model that Harris set up, so why bother?
LARS - amazing facility, excellent campus and good course but at $24k rather expensive for just 10 months, especially as living in LA is not cheap and there is no parking at the school, meaning at least about another $3k for the year just to park near the school. Their reputation is mixed but at least the have an internship program to place you in job during the course. You better be rich for this one because the class times are such that you won't be able to work and they change each month - at least they're upfront about it.
The Guitar institute - Ghetto. The most Ghetto school I saw. Old, beaten up facilities, and it really feels like the audio engineering course is just tacked on to the guitar school as a way to get more money. The school is also just full of steve vai wannbees, and probably absolulely useless for anyone in to edm.
The others (the universities listed) are more or less the same - they all do courses, but in my experience there is absolutely no need to do a 4 year degree in engineering as you can learn it in a year as long as the tuition is good, and a diploma from a decent audio school will serve you just as well as a degree of you want to work in the industry. All the jobs I've gone for don't care if it's a degree or a diploma, just as long as you have been taught well. Unless you want to get really techy like audio physics for industrial uses/civil engineering etc.
If you want to be serious about audio engineering go to THE HARRIS INSTITUTE. If you want more info, PM me (I'm not affiliated in any way apart from I am incredibly greatful for the education they gave me). Living in Toronto is wicked too.
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