Well, I just graduated University with a BSc in Anthropology (don't ask), and now I want to do something actually interesting and practical. Sound engineering sounds really very interesting. Does anyone have suggestions as to where to start? I am assuming that this will begin with a 1-2 year diploma program somewhere... any school suggestions in Western Canada preferably? Salary expectations?

Any Canadian sound engineers out there?

I will be attending University of Miami this fall, studying Audio Engineering. It is a very unique program, and the university is fairly well known for it. The curriculum is very tough Electrical Engineering based (being more specific, the degree is a BS in Electical Engineering, w/ Audio Option).

This may not be what you are looking for though. There are also Recording Engineering Science type degrees around everywhere it seems, sometimes 2 yr, sometimes 4. These students are not studying hardcore engineering usually (there ARE exceptions) and you do not graduate with an Engineering degree as such, the curriculums are more technical field based. I do not know which direction you want to take it, but this entire field topic is very interesting, broad, and the depth is amazing.

I know 2 people who graduated in this field and they both droppped out of it after 1-2 years.

Most of their work consisted of recording crappy local bands, mostly hip-hop yo-yo's and shitty pop...hours upon hours, day after day. Imagine how it must be trying to record music you can't stand or music that is just plain bad (not to mention a lot of the hiphop bands/rappers have attitude coming out of their ass as if they were the next Eminem or something and are quite hard to deal with on a personal level from what they told me).

2 years later of this they both had enough and switched jobs. So...be warned

my advice is electroengineering where you specialize yourself in audiorelated courses, best startpoint there is. after that you may seek some appropriate studio to walk with someone who has the actual profession

Get your own smaller studio, experiment as you learn. Learn to listen to what's relevant, again, this along with engineering studies is a great way to do it
Buy the book om Bob Katz, it's a great complement and guide.

Just understand that studio recording is on completely the opposite spectrum of where I am taking this. There is so much more to music and sound than that. You can engineer speakers, hearing aides, create new cell phone audio codecs and technology, write audio compression software, design acoustics, design PA systems, research, etc. There are TONS of ways you can specialize in the field of sound, maybe limiting yourself to recording might not be the best way to hit this. Like MTRH said, I think the EE path is the best (and safest) route.

Going the EE path they won't teach you anything of the artistic part of recording, or sound techniques to make good recordings, you'll have to learn them by yourself, as MTRH said.

Amen!!!

I graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering. They teach you a lot of really neat and cool stuff. However, they don't teach you jack about audio engineering. If you are very successful as an EE student, you could build all your own equipment yourself, rather than paying for it. You could probably design hardware versions of Lame and Ogg (if you were REALLY good), but you won't learn how to be an audio engineer.

I understand Fourier transforms and was studying other forms of signal processing before I graduated. But I'm one of the last people you'd ever want to setup an Eq, or even try to explain the benefits of different mediums used to record.

To give an analogy. This is like studying Mechanical Engineering so that you can become a mechanic. It can be helpful, but it's not the be all/end all of education there.

My advice would be to find a studio if you can, but maybe a club or even a band, and see if you can't get either an internship or part-time job or be someone's assistant. Learn to mix sounds and help set up equipment and gain some experience.

Thanks fellas...

The thought of going back for an engineering degree quite frankly horrifies me. I'm sort of a self-learner anyhow, so my question is then: do you NEED an EE degree to get jobs? or would a 1 or 2 year practical diploma program do it?

Depending on what you want to do, you really don't need a degree at all. Audio Engineering is a field where experience is FAR more important than education.

It's far more impressive to say, "I mixed Bob Dylan's last concert," than I earned a master's in AE. (Bob Dylan is apparently a royal pain to mix live, because he likes to break from the schedule a lot).

All that said, if you think audio compression means to sit on a CD, then maybe it wouldn't hurt to get a practical degree.

Well, it depends. I studied something similar to what mmortal is going to study, and it had a part devoted specifically to audio.

Edit:

However, at least where I live, just studying that you won't get a recording engineer job. In my country, most recording engineers are not real engineers, just people that learned the job and are good at it.

It's the same in this country and I suspect it's the same in Canada too.

Hence, the reason I suggest getting gigs as a roadie/techie.

Any recent BSEE graduates here having a hard time finding a job? I only know 3(out of maybe a thousand) people personally who got a job offer this year.