Audio engineer

Audio engineers work on the "technical aspect of recording—the placing of microphones, pre-amp knobs, the setting of levels.

[citation needed] The listed subdisciplines are based on PACS (Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme) coding used by the Acoustical Society of America with some revision.

Alternatively, the algorithms might perform echo cancellation, or identify and categorize audio content through music information retrieval or acoustic fingerprint.

[13] For audio engineers, architectural acoustics can be about achieving good speech intelligibility in a stadium or enhancing the quality of music in a theatre.

[10] Electroacoustics is concerned with the design of headphones, microphones, loudspeakers, sound reproduction systems and recording technologies.

[8] Examples of electroacoustic design include portable electronic devices (e.g. mobile phones, portable media players, and tablet computers), sound systems in architectural acoustics, surround sound and wave field synthesis in movie theater and vehicle audio.

For instance, they must understand how audio signals travel, which equipment to use and when, how to mic different instruments and amplifiers, which microphones to use and how to position them to get the best quality recordings.

[20] The UK "Music Producers' Guild says less than 4% of its members are women" and at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, "only 6% of the students enrolled on its sound technology course are female.

[21] Notable recording projects include the Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet, Angelique Kidjo (2014 Grammy winner), author Salman Rushdie, the Academy Award-nominated soundtrack to "Dirty Wars",[22] Van-Ahn Vo (NPR's top 50 albums of 2013), Grammy-nominated St. Lawrence Quartet, and world music artists Tanya Tagaq and Wu Man.

[25] Gail Davies was the first female producer in country music, delivering a string of Top 10 hits in the 1970s and 1980s including "Someone Is Looking for Someone Like You", "Blue Heartache" and "I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me)".

[26] When she moved to Nashville in 1976, men "didn't want to work for a woman" and she was told women in the city were "still barefoot, pregnant and [singing] in the vocal booth.

"[26] When Jonell Polansky arrived in Nashville in 1994, with a degree in electrical engineering and recording experience in the Bay Area, she was told "You're a woman, and we already had one"—a reference to Wendy Waldman.

[26] KK Proffitt, a studio "owner and chief engineer", states that men in Nashville do not want to have women in the recording booth.

At a meeting of the Audio Engineering Society, Proffitt was told to "shut up" by a male producer when she raised the issue of updating studio recording technologies.