Record, mix and repair sound for music, film, games and live shows. One year of training, then years of ears.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $68,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $44,000 at the lower end to about $95,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
1 to 3 years after high school, on the usual route.
$8,500 to $42,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$68,000
Lower end
$44,000
Upper end
$95,000
Job Bank's national median for audio and video recording technicians is $32.86 an hour, about $68,000 a year full time. The lower end ($21) and upper end ($45.46) are the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group. Staff jobs in broadcast, film post-production and game audio are the steadiest. Music studios are the hardest to get into.
$36.26 an hour
The median in British Columbia, about $75,000 a year, the highest in Canada
Ontario is next at $32.50. Newfoundland and Labrador is the lowest, at $27.74. Job Bank does not publish a starting rate, and live sound at venues and corporate events is the usual way to start earning.
83%
The share of people in this group who get at least one benefit on top of their wage
From Job Bank. Re-recording mixers, supervising sound editors and broadcast audio leads are the senior roles.
Roughly, all in
$8,500 to $42,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a two year Ontario college music or audio diploma plus a modest setup of an interface, monitors, microphones and software. The high end is a private audio school, for example the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology in London at about 35,950 dollars for eleven months, or Vancouver Film School's twelve month sound design program at about 28,950 dollars, plus better gear. The expensive schools buy you a one year credential, not a longer one. Employers hire on what you can do at a desk, not on where you trained.
Roughly $8,500 to $42,000 in all. Private audio schools are expensive for a one-year credential. College programs cost far less. Either way, employers hire on what you can do at a desk, not on the receipt.
Salary
Broadcasters, post-production houses, game studios and larger venues.
Day rate
Freelance film and television sound, corporate events, festivals.
Studio hourly
Music recording, usually billed with the room.
Touring
A weekly rate plus per diems while on the road. No home life.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short training, then a long apprenticeship in practice if not in name. Quebec has its own route: tap Quebec route to add it.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Music, physics and computer studies. Record your friends' bands. Run sound for the school play.
Audio program
1 to 2 years
A one-year private audio school, a one-year film sound program, or a two-year college music technology diploma.
Assist and run live sound
1 to 2 years
Bars, theatres, churches, conference centres. Hundreds of hours of fixing problems fast.
Specialize
Year 2 to 4
Music mixing, film post-production, game audio, live touring or broadcast. They stop overlapping quickly.
Lead the room
Year 4 and beyond
Mixing your own sessions, supervising a sound team, or running front of house for a touring act.
Music
You do not have to play well, but you have to hear well and know the vocabulary.
Physics
Sound is waves. Acoustics, phase and impedance are physics problems.
Computer studies
Every session is a computer session now.
Technology or shop
Soldering a cable at 6pm before doors open is a real skill.
There is no licence, no exam and no protected title. Nobody will check your credential. What people check is whether the last show you mixed sounded good and whether you got it done on time. Private audio schools market hard, so compare their cost against a college diploma before committing to a year at full price.
Quebec's 3 year college sound diploma is taught only in French, so English speakers usually go through a private college attestation or a university music program.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Music, physics and computing help. The college sound program has no specific high school course requirements.
Sound Technologies DEC (Diploma of College Studies, 551.B0)
3 years
A 3 year CEGEP (public college) program, 2,430 hours, at Cégep de Drummondville and Collège d'Alma. Studio recording, post-production, live sound and video game audio.
Or an AEC (Attestation of College Studies)
960 hours
Shorter college programs for adults. Collège Unica (Musitechnic), a private college in Westmount, runs a 960 hour Recording and Sound Design AEC in French or English, depending on the group.
Or university, in English
3 to 4 years
McGill's Schulich School of Music teaches sound recording and music technology within its Bachelor of Music.
Film and TV (television) sound
First years of work
Sound jobs on Quebec film and TV sets come under AQTIS 514 IATSE (the Quebec union of image and sound technicians). You start as a permittee and earn 1 credit per day worked.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Film and television post-production
Dialogue editing, sound effects, mixing. The steadiest branch.
Game audio
Implementing sound inside a game engine. Growing, and needs some programming.
Live and touring
Front of house and monitor engineers. Great money on the road, hard on relationships.
Music recording
The dream for most people entering the field, and the hardest branch to get into.
Electronics repair
Engineers who can fix a cable, a console channel or a wireless problem get called back.
Playing an instrument
Talking to musicians in their own language shortens every session.
A driver's licence
Gear, venues, and load-ins at 7am.
Hearing protection habits
Custom moulded plugs early. Your ears are the equipment and they do not heal.
Recording dialogue on a film set is its own trade: boom operator first, then sound mixer. It is union work on most professional productions, and it involves standing in a field holding a pole for twelve hours. It uses different gear and different instincts from studio work, so decide early which side you want.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
In post-production: in by 9, headphones on, cleaning dialogue frame by frame, cutting footsteps and room tone, then a playback with the director who wants the rain louder. In live sound: arrive mid-afternoon, unload, rig, run cable, soundcheck at 5, doors at 7, mix the show, tear down at midnight. Both versions involve solving an unexpected technical problem under time pressure, most days.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology packs more than 1,300 hours of hands-on and studio class time into 11 months, with one all-in fee of $35,950 that even covers custom fit hearing protection.
Canada had about 13,100 audio and video recording technicians in 2023. Job Bank rates prospects very limited in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. Only Alberta gets moderate.
Hearing loss caused by noise is permanent. Experienced engineers wear moulded protection at loud shows and mix at lower volumes than people expect.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Film, TV and music first, then the rest of the field. See every career in creative.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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