Semantics

I keep seeing posts on internet message boards from production companies looking to fill positions for hire, and they list everything from 'Audio Directors' to 'Sound Designers' to 'Sound Specialists' to 'Audio Engineers'. Aside of the more obvious kind of confusion dealing with the actual responsibilities of each position, like expecting a "sound designer" to handle music composing as well, the words 'audio' and 'sound' keep being used as interchangeable terms, when they really are not.

Some dictionaries define 'audio' as 'sound within the acoustic range available to humans'. This is a flawed definition, given that natural hearing range varies from person to person. So, by this definition, what is 'audio' to a 10-year old may just be 'sound' to an 80-year old person. Most people can't hear the full spectrum of 20 Hz to 20 kHz, which was established a long while back as the range of human hearing – way before massive headache-inducing traffic jams, loud club music and noisy home renovations made it into our daily lives, which made most of us a bit deaf by lowering substantially the upper frequency threshold.

Someone once mentioned a very interesting and seemingly valid difference, which makes a lot of sense to me. Sound is the movement of air molecules compressing and expanding as waves that reach your ears. Audio is an electrical, digital and/or graphical representation of sound. Once sound energy reaches a microphone's diaphragm, it gets converted into audio in electrical form, which gets sent over to a converter and turned into audio in digital form, which in turn gets represented in graphical form on your computer screen. And later, it gets reconverted into electricity, and finally, back into sound coming out of speakers.

So, by that definition, I always picture a 'sound engineer' as someone with a great ear - more of an 'artist', who freely experiments with sound, like a painter does with colour and textures - whereas I think of an 'audio engineer' as someone who knows more about the details of the gear and tools and who has a vast knowledge of engineering, but not necessarily great artistic taste. So, sound would be more 'right-side of the brain' stuff, more intuitive and creative, and audio would be more 'left-side of the brain', more technical and driven by logic and facts. Which is not to say someone has to be professionally either on one or the other side, but a balance of each.

Who knows. That definition may be totally wrong, but I like it because it makes sense to me. Then again, putting cream cheese and raspberry jelly together doesn't make sense, but i like it too, so there you go.