[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FROjEAMUo?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

Professional audio tech developers iZotope have unveiled a free new course of audio based games to improve listening and help producers fine-tune their ears for mixing and mastering.

PAE (Pro Audio Essentials) is a new online course from Izotope. The course is free and features a number of games that aim to help users improve their ear-training, something that can be incredibly important when working with music, especially as a producer.

The course offers a range of unique learning experiences that cover Equalisation, Compression, and Digital Audio Basics. With the EQ series you will learn how to improve mixes and masters through a series of videos under ‘Learn’ from where you can put your new skills to the test with ‘Explore’ and ‘Practice’ sections. From there you can move on to audio challenges where you can level up and win badges as your listening improves.

ear training audio

The Compression and Digital Audio Basics sections only feature ‘Learn’ and ‘Explore’ but still provide a deep learning experience so that your ears can perform alongside the top producers. The Compression series is fairly self explanatory, helping you to understand and modify compressor settings, whilst Digital Audio Basics covers three important topics: sample rate, bit depth, and lossy audio.

iZotope’s Grammy-nominated director of education, Jonathan Wyner was a major part of designing the course to empower and enhance the skills of those looking to work in the industry. He said: “We were eager to evolve the current landscape of audio education to help shift the balance from passive learning to active learning on foundational topics like EQ. We challenged ourselves to develop an online resource that’s both interactive and engaging, so our community can not only learn by doing, but genuinely enjoy themselves along the way.”

pro audio essentials iZotope

iZotope’s vice president of education and content marketing, Claire Harding Hollenback added: “For us, it’s all about helping music makers succeed, and we know that stronger skills lead to better sounding tracks. It’s a thrill to hear back from participants who feel they are improving, and that they’re eager to come back for more practice. We invite everyone to give us their feedback and comments, which will help us further develop Pro Audio Essentials as the go-to-tool for audio education.”

PAE comes a few weeks after the surprisingly similar SoundGym was launched and available to sign up to for free, with an optional paid tier for extended audio training.

You can go to iZotope’s website now and try Pro Audio Essentials for yourself, for free.