Years ago, Mickey Knight, Diacoustic Lab, purveyor of styli, lacquer blanks, and Gear created this list of laws applicable to Audio Engineers. The list was then distributed at an AES convention in the 1970s when many of the persons on this list were the goto guys in their respective games

Grundman's Law - Bernie Grundman, Mastering Engineer & Educator

• Under the most carefully controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, humidity and other variables, the system will perform as it damn well pleases

Knight's Law - Mickey Knight, creator of this list

• A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants

Hidley's Law - Tom Hidley, Studio designer, Westlake Audio

• Nothing is impossible for a man who doesn't have to do the work

Duncan's Law - Kent Duncan, Kendun Recorders. Recording and Mastering Facility

• When in doubt, mumble

Evan's Law

• Every man has a scheme that will not work. See also O'Donnell's Law

Hulko's Law - Lee Hulko, mastering engineer, Sterling Sound, one of the original owners

• A theory is better than its explanation

Storyk's Law - John Storyk, Studio Designer

• The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount of time spent in the office

Woram's Law - John Woram, Engineer and Author. Propounded by Sci-Fi writer, Arthur C. Clarke, 1962 

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Nordahl's Law - Tore Nordahl, Studer & Neve. Now a consultant

• Everything goes wrong at once

Emmerman's Law - Mack Emmerman, Criteria Studios, Miami FL

• In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action, people tend to choose the worst possible course

Tarsia's Law - Joe Tarsia, Sigma Sound, Philadelphia

• The obvious answer is always overlooked

Tarsia's 2nd Law - Mike Tarsia, Sigma Sound, Philadelphia (2009)

• When booking recording studios, pick any 2 out of 3: Fast | Cheap | Good 

  • You can get your product fast and cheap... but it isn't going to sound good 

  • You can get it cheap and good... but it won't be done fast 

  • You can get it good and fast... but it won't be cheap

Also applies to many other time/cost/quality decisions

Previn's variant of Tarsia's 2nd Law - Andre Previn, Classical and film composer. Submitted by Tim Whittaker (2014)

• Do you want it good, or do you want it Thursday?

Snoddy's Law - Glenn Snoddy, recording engineer. Discoverer of Fuzz as an effect. Fuzztone Origin

• It works better if you plug it in

Harrison's Law - Dave Harrison, Harrison consoles, inventor of inline console topology

• There is always an easy answer to every problem - neat, plausible and wrong

Meadow's Law - Glenn Meadows, Masterfonics 

• It won't work

Westlake's Law - Westlake Audio, purveyor of Gear and studio systems. Likely attributable to Tom Hidley, who was the owner of the company

• The first 90 percent of the project takes 90 percent of the time, and the last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent

Harned's Law - Jeep Harned, founder of MCI

• Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a bigger can

Schnee's Law - Bill Schnee, Engineer and Producer

• Anything that begins well will end badly. (note: the converse of this law is not true)

Stone's Law - Chris Stone, founder and owner of the Record Plant. aka Farber's Fourth Law

• Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows

Golden's Law - John Golden, mastering engineer: Artisan Sound Recorders, Kendun, K-Disc, and John Golden Mastering (2009)

• A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. aka Segall's Law

Perry's Law - Ken Perry, Mastering Engineer (2009)

• If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of

Garay's Law - Val Garay, Engineer and Producer

• An object will fall so as to do the most damage

Kelsey's Law

• Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an expert

Lightner's Law - Bill Lightner, mastering engineer @ K-Disc (2009)

• If it happens, it must be possible

Steele's Law

• Social innovations tend to the level of minimum well being

Guy's Law

• The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability

Moyssiadis' Law - Dave Moyssiadis, mastering and recording engineer

• As soon as you mention something, if it's good, it goes away; if it's bad, it happens

Capps' Law - Capps makes disc recording styli

• If it can find a way to wear out faster, it will

Lippell's Law

• If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well

Neumann's Law - Georg Neumann, microphone God

• Whoever has the gold makes the rules (see also: Temmer's Law)

Calbi's Law - Greg Calbi, mastering engineer: The Cutting Room @ Record Plant NYC, Sterling Sound, Masterdisc. (2009)

• Nothing is as easy as it looks

Marino's Law - George Marino, mastering engineer: The Cutting Room @ Record Plant NYC, Sterling Sound

• Everything takes longer than you think it will

Todrank's Law - Bob Todrank, purveyor of Gear

• There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who do not

Brosious' Law - Ham Brosious, then with Audiotechniques, Gear Purveyor. Now with Digibid, Gear Purveyor of the new Millennia n.b. Ebay ended up eating Digibid's lunch. They are now toast

• The components you have will expand to fill the available space

Ingoldsby's Law - Brian Inglodsby, MCA

• You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter

Merten's Law

• The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing

Sax's Law - Doug Sax, The Mastering Lab

• All laws are basically false

Zentz's Law - Alan Zentz, Mastering Engineer and studio owner

• Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out

Ludwig's Law - Bob Ludwig, Mastering Engineer

• The other line moves faster

Dozier's Law - LaMont Dozier, Producer & Songwriter

• Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results

Rettinger's Law - Michael Rettinger, Acoustician

• Nothing is ever a complete failure. It can always serve as a bad example

Ricker's Law - Stan Ricker, Mastering Engineer, half-speed mastering God

• Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail the same way

Boden's Law

• If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong experiment

Hansch's Law - Jo Hansch, mastering engineer: Festival Records-Australia, Kendun, Artisan Sound Recorders, K-Disc, Dinkum

• Work expands to fill the time available for its completion

Eberle's Laws

• Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse

• No matter what results are expected, someone is always willing to take it

• No matter what occurs, someone believes it happened according to his pet theory

• No matter what the result, someone is always eager to misinterpret it

  • See also: O'Donnell's Law

  • Appears to be part of Murphy's Laws

Fulginiti's Law - Greg Fulginiti, mastering engineer, Sterling Sound, Artisan Sound Recorders, Masterdisk

• In a heirarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion

Reese's Law - Mike Reese, mastering engineer: The Mastering Lab

• There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally involved, in which case there is only one

Leek's Law

• An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half your data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory

Cato's Law

• The merchandise you need the quickest will be shipped the slowest way

Gray's Law - Kevin Gray, mastering engineer

• In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors

  • Corrollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either

  • Corrollary 2: Any nagging intruder who stops by with unsought advice will spot it immediately

Simpson's Law

• There is a quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten

Berrra's Law / Mark's Law - Yogi Berra

• In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is

Anderson's Law - Jim Anderson, AES Past President

• Nothing takes 5 minutes

Karl's Law - Karl Johnson, Audio Engineer

• When time is of the essence, all fixes have failed, and the show must go on, then: one man's buzz is another man's line noise

Hufker's Law - Eugene Hufker, Contributed (2009) by his son, Barry, Hufker Recording St. Louis, MO

• If at first you don't succeed, you're using the wrong hammer

Stamler's First Law - Paul Stamler

• 80% of the problems in audio are caused by a bad connection someplace

Stuart's Law - John Stuart, recorder of more folksingers than you can shake a stick at

• The worse they are, the more verses they know

Temmer's Law - Stephen Temmer, Gotham Audio, importer of Neumann Microphones

• If I don't make or sell it, it isn't any good

Chinn's Law of Overkill - Rick Chinn, Uneeda Audio (and purveyor of this list)

• If it's worth doing, then it's worth overkilling

Wilcox' Law - Peter Wilcox, Wannabe dobro player (by his own admission)

• In any endeavor, two thirds of the work is done by one-third of the participants

Blasingame's First Law - Joe Blasingame, Blasingame Audio Productions St. Louis, MO

• When operating in the vacuum of a studio, time moves faster than anywhere else in the Universe

Blasingame's Second Law

• No matter how fast and effective an audio engineer works, to the paying client it's like molasses

Mortensen's First Law - Dan Mortensen, Dansound

• When using recorded music as a test source, the moment when you are finally ready to begin the test always coincides with the end of the song/CD

Simpson's Law - Keith Simpson (2010)

• When you reach for the knob, the _____ player stops playing

  • (a corollary to Mortensen's first law)

Mortensen's Second Law - Dan Mortensen, Dansound

• Someone, out of your field of vision, always unknowingly chooses to drop or knock over an object, creating a very loud abrupt BANG!!! at the exact moment you plug or unplug a connector. Good luck figuring out what the hell it was

Chinn's variant to Mortensen's Second Law - Rick Chinn, Uneeda Audio

• When you're repairing someone's amp, and they're watching, they invariably blow a stream of smoke over the patient, which makes you wonder if some part just let out its magic smoke. This was more common in the 70s than now, since smoking has been banned in most public places (YAY)

Jaeger's Law - Rene Jaeger, Analog Design Engineer Loud Technologies

• The evaluation sample is always in the 99th percentile of the performance range

Welti's Law - Todd Welti, (2009) Staff Scientist Harman International

• If you've worked through the problem forwards and backwards, checked your math, consulted your intellectual superiors, and made invocations to the Gods, and still your hardware setup is giving the wrong result, you will find that it's a bad cable

von Recklinghausen's Law - Daniel von Recklinghausen (1925-2011) Technical Director, H.H. Scott and many other companies. Source: obituary, JAES, September 2011

• If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad. If it Measures bad and sounds good, you've measured the wrong thing

Molberg's Law - Keith Molberg, M. Mus. Professor of Recording Arts @ Briercrest College and Seminary - Submitted by Brendan Clace (2011)

• If it sounds good, it is good

Boden's Law of ProTools - Mike Boden, (2011) Recording Engineer

• Everything's easy, all the time

Pfaeffle's Law - Tom Pfaeffle, Late owner of The Tank Studios (RIP) (who was murdered in a bizarre incident) Submitted by Art Arzaga Jr. (2011)

• Digital audio does not exist unless it has been backed up 3 separate times on 3 separate drives

Olmstead's Law - Frederick Law Olmstead, (1822-1903) Journalist and Landscape Designer (did Central Park in NYC)

• After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done!

Trimble's Law - Tom Trimble, Director of Student Unions, University of Toledo. Submitted by Jeff Moss (2011)

• Anytime there is a button somewhere, some idiot will try to mess with it

Gaston's Law - Leslie Gaston, (2010) Assistant Professor of Recording Arts, University of Colorado

• If you can't figure out why you're not hearing anything, it's because one (and only ONE) button needs to be pushed. The angrier you become, the more obvious the button

Chinn's Corollary to Gaston's Law

• In any DAW or digital mixing surface, the button you can't find is on the menu you just visited (and going backwards in the UI is impossible)

Murphy's Monitor Law - Ralph Kaiser (2012) TD, University of Guadalajara

• The monitor levels decrease as soon as the show starts

Rubel's Law of Production - Mark Rubel, Instructor & Co-Director (2014) The Blackbird Academy

• Great music poorly recorded will always be great; crappy music wonderfully recorded will always be crap

Murphy's Law of Inanimate Reproduction - Tim Franquist (2014) Independent Live Sound Engineer

• If you take something apart and put it back together enough times, you will now have enough parts leftover to make another one, but neither one will work

Poole's Law (for monitor mix engineers) - Mikey Poole (2014) Independent Live Sound Engineer

• A positive movement of an eyebrow supersedes any movement of a fader or pot

Hawley's Law of Differences - Scott Hawley, PhD (2014) Teacher of acoustics and electronics for audio engineering students. Belmont University, Nashville

• Given any two arbitrarily similar sounds, there will always be at least one audio engineer who will claim to be able to hear the difference

O'Donnell's Law of Independent Behaviour - Casey O'Donnell (2014) House Engineer at Hard Rock Live, Orlando

• Everyone is entitled to their own wrong way of doing things

Phillips Law of Reverse Mixing - Mark Phillips Professor of Music, Ohio University

• Often the best fix for not being able to hear someone is to turn down something (or many somethings)... rather than turning up what you don't hear

Hogan's Law of Time - Teri Hogan President & CEO Sound Services, Inc. Past contributor to Live Sound International

• However much time you have is how long it will take