What is the difference between a sound designer, sound editor, audio engineer, and mixing engineer?
In: 7095
In reverse order: Mixing Engineer complains about the acoustics, Audio Engineer complains about the noisy signal, Sound Editor complains about the digital file quality and the Sound Designer says ‘hey I ordered this with no pickles, what gives?” and then realizes he ordered the wrong sandwich.
What about Mastering? What the hell is that?
Not an answer, since other users have done good job, I just want to suggest documentary *Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sounds* by Midge Costin.
Design….
Edit…
Engineer…
Mixing…
I’ll be honest with you buddy, the answer to your question was right in front of you the whole time.
As other professionals have chimed in: Most post production audio engineers can do any of these roles. these are not so much specializations as much as divisions of labor. It’s hard to focus on designing a space shop sound of you have to engineer foley sessions all week. All these jobs have to get done and it’s easier for each member of the team to have clearly distinct responsibilities from other memebers of the team.
Edit: obviously engineers are going to excel in one role or another. A really creative designer might be a messy mixer for example
I’ll use baking as an analogy
Sound design: Create/compile and plan music and sounds.
Create a recipe/decide what to make
Audio Engineer: Use equipment to capture and record or broadcast music and sounds.
Gather and prepare all baking ingredients
Audio Editor: Fixes/cleans tracks. Removed unwanted noise, fix timing, reduce the number of individual files
Clean the kitchen/dishes and pre-heat the oven
Mix Engineer: Take recorded sounds and make changes/add effects to get desired product.
Mix all your baking ingredients together and bake the cake
Mastering Engineer: Prepare the final mix for distribution/consumption
Decorate the cake and make it look yummy
I agree with most things here but in a big budget TV show, a sound designer will work with the composer to have incidental sounds, fit with the musical direction.
Eg in “stranger things” the composer will have created the theme music – the sound designer will look at ways to populate the sound effects with references to the ambience of the story. Like all great technical professionals – if you notice their work they have failed. Their job is to make the storytelling more compelling.
i have been all these titles, and its more complicated than any answer i see here. lol Also, these things are different depending on the industry. my music days, these terms meant different things than my post production days. Also, in production, these mean different things.
so the real answer is, more info is needed in order to answer these questions
Latest Answers