What is sound processing? By simple definition, sound processing is the recording and manipulation of sound. Without sound processing, much of the pleasures that society is granted to in daily life would not be available; movies could have the most technologically advanced visual effects, but we would still be stuck in the silent movie era. Recorded music would not be available to us, and neither would be the radio or television.
In fact, the several aspects and methods concerning processing sound are so complicated that there are professional engineers hired for different tasks. A sound engineer for a movie, for example, handles the amplitudes and panning of every single sound. If a scene involved a character coming from behind the camera, it is the sound engineer's job to pan the voice so that it only comes out from the rear speakers of the theatre, otherwise it would not make to be a realistic film. A sound engineer for music has a slightly similar task, however it is his job to make sure that every single instrument has the proper volume on the track so the end result will be music pleasurable to the ears.
With the ever-so-changing development of technology at present time, more advanced equipment dedicated to processing sounds are being released. The focus of these equipments is to offer the best quality type of sounds for users. For example, take a $5 gooseneck microphone that comes with most computers and compare it to a more expensive model such as the $3,205 Blue Cactus tube microphone. There is no question that the Blue Cactus tube microphone offers better sound quality; it is more able to capture the warmth of the voice, has less visible hiss on the recordings (if any at all), and a much better frequency range than the gooseneck microphone.
But with much of the focus on the quality of the sound recorded in sound processing equipment, most people seem to forget that the most important issue of recording music is not the recording itself, but instead it is the music itself.