Indeed, that saying does have a lot of truth to it but be careful because unintuitively, it can also apply to gaining “some deep understanding of the engineering aspects”! That seems wrong on the face of it, so what do I mean by this?
Take my case as an example, I’ve been a professional audio engineer for almost 30 years, for 6 of those years I was a senior lecturer and course leader in music/sound engineering at a UK university, so I know the subject well and have a deep understanding. However, I only have a deep understanding of some aspects, other aspects I may only have a relatively superficial understanding. For example, I know a fair amount about acoustics, I had to teach/explain Sabine’s formula, absorption coefficients, room modes, initial reflections, etc., but I’ve worked with professional acousticians, a couple of who were world class and compared to them, my knowledge/understanding is relatively superficial, not at all “deep”. Likewise your other points, I have a basic understanding of what convolution is, I’ve taught the specific use of convolution reverbs but I have very little understanding of the underlying programming, superficial at best. In all my years I’ve met and/or worked with numerous people who did have a deep understanding of these types of specialist areas of audio; acousticians, software developers, digital and analogue hardware designers, microphone and speaker designers, etc., and in my experience, the depth of their understanding in one specific audio area is virtually always inversely proportional to their understanding in others. So IMHO, it’s about identifying the important areas, prioritising and gaining a superficial or somewhat deeper understanding accordingly. Although of course, the prioritisation might vary somewhat from person to person.
There’s only only one or two people on this subforum who have more than superficial understanding of say the programming of convolution and even then, it’s probably not much more than a superficial understanding. So in some/many cases other, far more specialist forums would be better. Best way is probably to ask some specific questions and then we’ll let you know if the depth of understanding you’re after would require a more specialist forum.
G