Professional traineeship - Sound Engineer at KosaBuenaStudio

During my time at Kosa Buena Studio — a professional recording studio specialising in recording, mixing and mastering — I gained hands-on experience across every stage of the audio production chain, from the moment a microphone is placed to the final master. My responsibilities covered a wide range of tasks. I was in charge of microphone preparation and placement before each session — selecting the right mic for the source, positioning it correctly, and ensuring everything was ready before the artist walked in. Working with Pro Tools as the primary DAW, I managed session setup, recording workflows, and maintained clean, organised project structures throughout every session. Beyond the studio itself, I assisted on location recordings outside the controlled environment — including sessions held at the orchestra hall at the Academy of Music in Katowice. These experiences taught me how to adapt quickly, work with complex multi-source setups, and maintain professional standards in unpredictable acoustic environments. I was also responsible for maintaining the studio itself — keeping the space organised, preserving proper signal flow at all times, and ensuring that all hardware and cabling was correctly connected and functioning. Understanding signal flow at a deep level became second nature: from microphone to preamp, through the interface, into the DAW, and back out through monitoring — every link in the chain matters. On the technical side, my time at Kosa Buena gave me a thorough grounding in the full mixing and mastering process. I learned how the quality of a mix is determined long before you open a plugin — it starts with microphone technique, the choice of mic and preamp for a given source, room acoustics, and clean gain staging from the very first step. I deepened my understanding of hardware integration, outboard gear, and how analogue and digital elements interact in a professional signal chain.