Bringing Mixers Together Behind the Boom

Philadelphia, PA (March 25, 2025)—Producer/sound mixer Juan Ortiz recently founded Behind the Boom, a community project aimed at helping location sound professionals network as well as welcoming and educating newcomers to the profession.

Having started out as a music engineer working with local hip-hop artists in New Jersey and looking to expand his capabilities as he formed his own production company, Redd Pen Media, Ortiz quickly recognized a need for reliable information and training. “There wasn’t a lot of opportunity or information out there for people with my background when I first started doing this,” he explains. “There’s a community around the profession, but I wasn’t exposed to a lot of that coming up, so it required a lot of research and learning to ask the right questions to get my chops together.”

Some of Behind the Boom’s content features Ortiz onsite with his Sound Devices 833 mixer-recorder, which he uses with a MixPre 10T MKII, demonstrating tips and tricks of the trade that he’s learned throughout his many projects with clients including ESPN, Ubisoft, True Classic and Foot Locker. “The sound quality has always been amazing and they are incredibly easy to learn for how capable they are,” he says. “Once I started doing this work and seeing them in 75% of the sound bags I was encountering, it was reassuring; I knew I’d made the right decision.”

​Completely self-taught, mentorship became an important part of Ortiz’s professional journey: “I learned a lot from working with other guys in the field and using YouTube, but found a glass ceiling when it came to more advanced stuff like RF coordination. I realized there was an opportunity to gather this community together and share the knowledge in a more concrete way.”

Now boasting 4,700-plus followers online in a little over a year, including a robust group of regular contributors from around the world, Behind the Boom has rapidly grown. “Being exposed to this stuff early and developing the right mindset around the work is incredibly important—we want people to feel comfortable in aspiring and chasing their creative dreams,” Ortiz explains. “There’s so much talent in the generation coming up, but imposter syndrome is a real thing! Encouraging them to participate, ask questions, get a sense of the industry, and get comfortable learning from others is the real gift. That’s how you help someone build themselves into who they want to be.”