Terminology
Terms such as "audio technician", "sound technician", "audio engineer", "audio technologist", "sound mixer" and "sound engineer" can be ambiguous; depending on the context they may be synonymous, or they may refer to slightly different roles in audio production. Such terms can refer to a person working in sound and music production, as well as to technicians who design professional equipment for these tasks. Certain jurisdictions specifically prohibit the use of the title engineer to any individual not a registered member of a professional engineering licensing body.
Individuals who design acoustical simulations of rooms, shaping algorithms for digital signal processing and computer music problems, perform institutional research on sound, and other advanced fields of audio engineering are most often graduates of an accredited college or university, or have passed a difficult civil qualification test.
Other languages, such as German and Italian, have different words to refer to these activities. For instance, in German, the Tontechniker (audio technician) is the one who operates the audio equipment and the Tonmeister (sound master) is a person who creates recordings or broadcasts of music who is both deeply musically trained (in 'classical' and non-classical genres) and who also has a detailed theoretical and practical knowledge of virtually all aspects of sound, whereas the Toningenieur (audio engineer) is the one who designs, builds and repairs it.
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