Sup everyone,I am going to be a senior in high school and I plan on studying some type of engineering in college. I am interested in audio/acoustical engineering. I have heard those terms been thrown around but I have not been able to find an accurate description of these careers or anything. If someone could explain in some detail what a person in this field does and how much they make I would appreciate it. Thanks!!!
What are you wanting to do? I've heard it used two ways.
The first, and more common, is the guy that assists an architect in design of sound halls, churches, etc. I don't think that's a real engineering degree, and I don't think it pays much. I don't know much about it.
The second is in the area of noise control in the area of mechanical systems, lumped in with vibration. I worked with a Noise Control expert during my time designing naval ships. They analyze the noise generated by a system (in this case, rotating equipment) and helped us to design a mounting system to reduce it. It was incredibly interesting, and I considered going that way for a while.
The true engineering side of acoustical engineering would (I think) tend to fall in the wheelhouse of mechanical engineering. If you're interested, some of the big name mechanical schools (Purdue, GT, VT, etc.) have advanced degrees that focus on this area. Be prepared to get an advanced degree, the one I worked with was a PhD, and all his colleagues were as well.
As far as salary, it's probably like everything else and based on location/responsibility/etc. I can definitively say that a PhD Noise Control Engineer for one of the big defense contractors located in Washington, DC was making $180K 2 years post-doc in 2007. Even taking into account that he was in DC, that was considerably more than I was making having gotten our undergrad degrees at the same time.
