Radio 4EB Audio Engineer: Alex Nagl

G’day! My name is Alex Nagl       

I started at Radio 4EB as an audio engineer in the production studio but now work across many different aspects of the station.

I wanted to study to be an Audiologist, but I wasn’t studious enough, so I went with Audio Engineer. Less pay but way more free beers at gigs.

I originally got involved with Radio 4EB as part of my uni degree. I had to do internship hours to graduate. Luckily, a uni friend who was working at [the station] was looking to go elsewhere so I took over from him. Six years later and I am still here on staff at 4EB!

I would love to start a best of 4EB music show out of all the fantastic music I hear each week while editing pre-recorded programs.

Only problem is, I am so bloody awful at remembering lyrics! It sucks for when I want to belt out a song I am jamming to, but I think it’s actually a boon when it comes to audio engineer work. When I need to listen to a vocal track over and over again the vocals don’t get stuck in my head and I don’t go mad!

My down time is usually spent on woohoo! Sports ball! I love it when they do the thing with the scoring of the wickets and goals. Not a sports guy, sorry. Used to be big into eSports, but that’s fallen by the wayside. I must shamefully admit… Browsing second hand sites for cool deals eats up way too much of my downtime. Love a bargain hunt.

If I had one free ticket to anywhere in the world I’d replace the free ticket with a free hired campervan… I haven’t ever travelled outside of Australia, and I feel drawn to exploring and getting to know all of Australia first before venturing to the rest of the world.

Mind you, that reminds me of a dream I had that started as a bit of a nightmare. I was in a car driving with mates on the highway and it’s all fun and games, laughter and good times, till the driver starts to lose control and fly through the guard rail on a bridge. As the car is about to hit the water my perspective in the dream zooms out to show my mates and I playing a driving video game and we’ve just driven a car off the bridge. The relief was so palpable the dream version of me felt it. So…

In real life, I wished more people talked about media literacy. So many people don’t know how to research, even basic fact checking. In this day and age you can’t just read something and trust it is fact. You need to know how to ensure you’re reading something that is backed by evidence and truth. Knowing how to do those checks is a skill that needs to be talked about and taught more.

For a long time, my mantra was always: ‘Care Less’. As I grew older I found that not caring wasn’t the way to go and the mantra evolved to ‘Care Carefully’. Going through life you can’t fix or change or affect everything, so you need to choose what you let affect you, and what you can affect yourself, and let the rest go.