Sound editing vs. sound mixing: What’s the difference?
Sound editing is the vehicle that moves a project’s audio from the production to post-production stage. The main difference between sound editing vs. sound mixing is that editing focuses on the production, while mixing takes the edited product and hones it during post-production.
The majority of sound editing takes place during production. This covers all stages of production from shooting and recording on set to sound effects, foley and ADR. Any process that generates new audio content requires editing before it is ready for use in post-production, therefore it is all treated as editing. Likening this process to food production makes sound editing the harvesting of a fresh audio crop. The recordings are cut down to size, cleaned and shipped off for further assembly and packaging.
Sound mixing takes those raw elements and combines them to produce a cohesive, self-contained world made up of dialogue, footfalls, effects and music. In the scope of the previous analogy, this is that art of cooking, canning and packaging.
