As a sound engineer, my first audience, the one I most want to hear what they want to hear, is the band. They must hear each other in order to play well together. I put a great deal of effort and attention into getting the monitor mix right on stage, and that requires lots of interaction with the band during the sound check and sometimes into the first several tunes. Sometimes satisfying the band's need to hear each other and themselves requires multiple monitor mixes, though this tends to be more important with larger ensembles, particularly when they play instruments with very different intrinsic loudness (e.g., mandolin and accordion).

My second audience includes the people who are attending the event. I want everyone to hear each instrument on stage loud enough to be interesting and exciting, without making the music so loud that anyone's hearing is endangered. Another expression of my concern for people's hearing is my insistence that speakers should be placed as high above the floor as practical. Because sound is directed from speakers in somewhat the same way light is directed from a flashlight, this means that the loudest sounds are directed over the heads of the people directly in front of the speakers towards people in the back of the hall without being too loud for the people near the speakers. One of the key considerations with live sound reinforcement is that the sound engineer is reinforcing the acoustic sound coming directly from the instruments to the audience. This means that instruments that are inherently loud, like piano, trumpet, accordion, or some percussion, needs less amplification than inherently quiet instruments like flute, or mandolin. Quieter instruments must be amplified enough to be heard against the direct acoustic sound from louder instruments. This is true in both the monitor mix and in the front of house mix that the audience hears.