You've no doubt seen images of individuals sitting at the huge mixing boards adjacent to recording studios, adjusting the knobs and slides that dictate how the separate tracks of the music sound. These mastering audio engineers are responsible for knowing how to take raw recordings on-the-go and turn them into songs where all the parts sound great in concord. While they are not necessarily the ones producing the original sounds with their voices or playing techniques, they have a huge creative say in deciding how things turn out.

Sound engineers aren't all working solely for other artists however, as many of them are tasked with the difficult charge of making sounds and audio environments from scratch. They take their pick from a wide library of sounds and combine and edit them with effects in order to create entirely new ones. There is no video game or film that doesn't bear the mark of such audio professionals, whether in the music score or sound effects.

Performance audio professionals are concerned with the replication of sound at places like concerts, and there are some who get to plan entire scores for commercials and short films. Product engineering audio professionals create new speakers, headphones and capture technology. Audio professionals are needed wherever sound recording, editing, mixing or mastering is occurring, making their possible paths seem endless.