Making it a business
Becoming a professional audio engineer means you have to figure out how to set up a financially stable business.The first number you need to face is how much does it cost you to run your business.
Depending on which path you chose the numbers can look very different.
For instance establishing yourself as a Live Sound Engineer is a whole lot cheaper than as a Spatial Sound engineer.
According to Mathew Jonson, the only starting material you need as a Live Sound Engineer is a sharpie and some paper, and even that will be already present at most venues.
Given that you also work on location and thus don't need a studio of your own, chances are you are ready - at no further cost to you - right now while you're reading this blog.
While as a Spatial Sound Engineer you need at an absolute minimum a DAW that's capable of spatial sound, a capable computer and a set of good headphones. (Sutton, 2025b)
You will in addition also need to gain access to a fully equiped spatial sound studio. And while you may take the suggestion of Andrew Rahman and utilize the studio of his non-profit Verein-Spatial Media Lab e.V. - chances are high that one way or another you will have to pay for this sort of access.
Building your own studio should thus be kept in mind as an option for as soon as you have a steady stream of clients.
Building and maintaining your own studio or always renting studio space will of course come with an associated cost, that needs to be off-set by income.
Weighing these considerations it is clear that it is much easier to start out as a Live Sound Engineer than a Spatial Sound Engineer.
Looking on the other side of the equation might change that outlook a bit though.
Looking at common rates of people starting out as Live Sound Engineers it becomes quite clear that this is not a highly paid profession in general. While sure, the very experienced and well connected Live Sound Engineers working for a successful band or a very profitable venue in a striving city, might take home 50-60 000€/year, but engineers just starting out will not even get close to this much and will rather be paid with a fixed rate per gig (no matter how many hours it actually lasts) that on an hourly rate barely goes above minimum wage. (CareerExplorer, 2017)
AND as Mathew Jonson pointed out, working for free is very common for a Live Sound Engineer just starting out.
Also in consideration should be what Mathew Jonson responded to my question if he feels that the Live Sound Engineer market is saturated or wide open. He said that it's neither, but that you can make your way if you work hard and keep at it (presumambly through a certain period of unpaid work)
When you contrast this with the responses that Andrew Rahman gave me to the same questions, where he was very self confident in stating that: "No one should ever work for free" and in regards to market saturation stated. "It is absolutely not saturated at all. There’s a lot of folks that still don’t really “believe” in it.
It paints a picture of a niche field that is still growing and has lots of opportunities for new entrants to the market and that he believes should get you paid from your first client on.
(Those are personal opinions of professional people in the fields, they may be well founded, but they are still only one data point - before you build your career on those opinions you might want to find a few more sources giving you a more balanced picture)
Looking up rates on soundbetter.com for DolbyAtmos mixing give a wide range of prices, but rarely do they dip below 25€/h and go as high as 80€/h.
If you calculate your expected income even with the lower number as your beginner rate would give you for full time work (40h/week) a similar amount as a well established senior Live Sound engineer does.
(Dolby Atmos & Immersive Audio Mixing & Mastering Engineers | SoundBetter, n.d.)
But as a freelance audio engineer, you will as they say "wear many different hats", and that is even more true for engineers just starting out. You will likely not have as many contacts as you need starting out to find enough Live Sound gigs as you need to get by. You also won't (at least in the beginning) find enough Spatial Sound mixing gigs to work full time in this field, so mixing your income streams with jobs in both of these very different fields and increasing your experience in both will over the long run probably give you the best chance to be at the right time in the right place to come across the right offer that will finally remake your whole career.