If you were in a band with a gig at the Vera Project in Seattle circa 2014, and a 16-year-old came up to you and introduced herself as your FOH engineer for the evening, you’d be forgiven for doing a double take, or even uttering, “excuse me?” (If, like one musician, you said, “I wish you were a guy,” you’d be a jerk.) But Sydney Huang was in fact, your professional, experienced engineer. “For the most part people would be taken aback and then get over it and be cool,” she says. “The flipside is I became good friends with several bands and still keep in touch.”
Eleven years later, audio engineering and other jobs related to the live event industry is all she’s done, and she’s looking build on her already considerable experience to do even more.
The Vera Project
Huang was raised in Seattle and grew up playing guitar and drums. As a teen, a DIY venue called the Vera Project caught her eye. The all-ages nonprofit inspires youth-driven engagement in music and art and “a safe space for radical self-expression.” “It’s pretty much all volunteer-based with two paid positions at any given show, the house manager and the FOH engineer,” she says. Here she found audio classes being offered, where she learned how to patch cables, then mix monitors, and she advanced to learning how to set up small PAs and run those (her classmates could be anything from five to 60 years old). She was 14 when she took her first class and quickly rose from volunteering regularly to getting one of those paid gigs at 16 at the 320-person venue. She also taught and worked there until she was 19.
She learned on a 32-channel Mackie Onyx, eventually moving up to digital mixing with a Midas M32. “I definitely think it was helpful to start with analog, because they are simpler than navigating specific software or interface. Everything is laid out in front of you and it’s a straightforward workflow. Then when you go to digital, you know the signal flow, and then it’s just learning how to program and figuring out where everything is located.”
In 2016, she went to the University of Washington in Seattle studying electrical engineering but wanted to keep mixing. She would graduate with an engineering degree, but when she was able to work bigger venues, she did. The Showbox (a 1,150-person venue) and Showbox SoDo (an 1,800-person venue) started hiring her, and she still sits behind their boards when she’s in town.
“When the pandemic was starting to lift in 2021, I started working for a local production company called Carlson Audio Systems,” Huang says. With them she was able to grow professionally, doing a wider variety of work from corporate events to summer festivals. “Originally, I was an A2, but more recently I was FOH for one of the stages at the Capitol Hill Block Party, an annual three-day festival. I’ll also cover monitors for local concert series.” She says it was great to work for Carlson and “do something completely different. There I was taking an entire system, setting it up completely from scratch and customizing it for the event,” she says. “Now I understand how a really big sound system comes together.”
On Tour
Her first tour opportunity was with Lime Cordiale, an Australian pop rock quintet. She had mixed them at Showbox and liked what she did for them. There was talk of possibly touring with them starting in February 2020… “but we know what happened, right?” She didn’t let it get her down. “It felt validating, that I was at the point that somebody would want me to tour with them.” Her real first tour would have to wait until 2023, when she went out as monitor engineer with The Gaslight Anthem, a New Jersey-based rock band, working with FOH engineer Tiffany Hendren. “It was a really nice tour — it was comfortable, paid well, had a good audio package, and a full crew — even single hotel rooms sometimes,” she laughs. “I thought at that point if I don’t like this, I don’t like touring.” She credits Ryan Murgatroyd, a Seattle-based audio engineer who mixed for Cold War Kids among many others, for mentoring her and being one of the ones her recommended her for this gig. (He passed away after a tragic accident in 2023). Other mentors to Huang along the way include Christina Moon, Josh Penner, Robin Kibble and Alejandro Irragori, all of which are supportive to her touring career.
Then it was out with another Australian band, Last Dinosaurs. She had mixed them at Showbox and became good friends of them. This run was short and “kind of slapdash and chaotic,” but she got to work NYC’s Central Park SummerStage in June 2024. “A lot of their songs are effects-heavy, so it was fun to play with all of that and work with delay throws — it was a very different style of mixing.” Then last July she did a West Coast run with the indie rock band Gossip. “That was really fun because we got to pass through the Showbox, so I got to do a home show there.” Other acts she’s done short runs with include Wisp and Panchiko. All this puts her on different consoles, sometimes a different one every night.
In April 2025, she worked monitors for 8TURN, a South Korean boy band. On that she’s mixed on a Yamaha CL5. She enjoyed it. “In a local club, you’re rushing to sound check a band and maybe you get 30 minutes, and then you probably never hear them again. So it’s nice to work with the same band every night.”
Now when back home, she’s doing some work with FM Systems, another regional production house.
Exploring New Roles
Along the way, she has filled in time working Merch, but she’s also done some production work as well. Earlier at Showbox, they asked a couple of the audio techs if they were willing to learn and do a few shows as a production manager. “Originally, I had no interest, but Production Manager Josh Wriggle convinced me to do it,” she says. It surprised her that she found it interesting. “It was kind of a step up because you see how all sides of a show work. I don’t think I’d ever just be a full-time production manager, but it’s a good skill to have.”
With that Last Dinosaurs tour, they didn’t have an official production manager with them, so she stepped in. “I ended up advancing all of the shows, so it would be my job to get the band to the venue and make sure everyone was going in time.”
Huang’s travels and wide variety of gigs has put her behind a wide variety of consoles, but she has developed a preference: “I really like the [DiGiCo] Quantum 225,” she says. “That’s my preferred console, not just because it is the [Showbox] house console. I really like the extra features built in, including the compressors, specifically the Mustard Processing channel strips and Spice Rack,” including the ability to use “nodal processing and provide everybody with individual EQ.”
She likes monitors and FOH — but not equally. “I know some people really hate mixing monitors, but I don’t mind it,” she says. “It’s nice to work with the artist. When it works well and they know they are supported and made comfortable to perform, that’s rewarding.” But at this point, she is more interested in mixing FOH “just because I haven’t had as much time on tour mixing FOH and still haven’t done a full tour with an audio package, just five or six show runs here and there.”
Her resume includes translating Spanish. During the pandemic, she became certified after a year-long course with Mexican Translators Organization to teach English as a second language. And with her unique combination of skill sets, she also worked with Goodhertz, an audio software company based in L.A., that needed help translating copy on their new plugins into Spanish. She continues to help whenever they release a new product. “It is unexpected but really cool, and I do enjoy it a lot.”
Looking ahead, she wants to continue up the ladder working bigger tours and learn those bigger systems on the road. “I’d like to bring my technical knowledge up to the next step and learn more how to dial my mix in and experiment and grow. And I would love someone to take me to Mexico and South America. And I’d love to tour Korea and China, too.” (She is at intermediate level on those languages as well.) Being in charge of a big venue is also appealing. More education is on the table as well. “I’ve thought about going back to school and getting a Masters’ in Acoustics and perhaps having a career working on audio equipment on the back end.”
Not a Side Hustle
Reflecting on her 13 years in this business, she says, “the whole industry feels a lot more inclusive than when I started, especially since coming back from the pandemic. It felt that many people were unfriendly [toward women and POCs] in 2012, and maybe they have since quit or got weeded out, but it’s better now.” She adds that this is not a business for the faint of heart. “You have to really love it, because we work really long hours. If you start touring, you are always leaving, always coming back, and it can take a toll.”
Her advice to someone just starting out? “Always be willing to admit what you don’t know and ask for help and always be willing to learn,” she says. “I think that goes a lot further than having technical knowledge.” Also, there is the most basic requirement — likability. “You could be the smartest person in the world technically, but if people don’t like working with you, they won’t. Even in a music venue of decent size, you’re working 12- to 16-hour days with each other, and when you’re on tour, you’re living with each other 24 hours a day. So it sounds small, but being a nice person to work with goes far.” Another skill that needs to be developed early and quickly is the ability to network. “Talk to people whenever, and keep in contact with everyone after a show ends. You don’t have to be aggressive, just seek people out.”
