Cinema Audio Society • Est. 1964 • Awards since 1994

CAS Awards

The Cinema Audio Society Outstanding Achievement Awards recognise excellence in sound mixing across every format: feature film, television drama, comedy, limited series, and documentary. The CAS honours the production sound mixers who capture dialogue on set and the re-recording mixers who create the final audio experience in the dub stage — the professionals whose work audiences feel without consciously hearing. CAS awards are voted by the society’s members, making them the definitive peer recognition in the sound mixing discipline.

Feature Film TV Drama Series TV Comedy Series TV Movie or Mini-Series Documentary
1964
CAS Founded
1994
First CAS Awards
2021
Oscar Sound Categories Merged
5
Main Award Categories

Sound Mixing vs. Sound Editing: The CAS recognises sound mixing — the discipline of combining and balancing all audio elements into a final soundtrack. The MPSE Golden Reel Awards recognise sound editing — the discipline of cutting, designing, and preparing those elements. In 2021, the Academy merged its two sound Oscars (Sound Mixing and Sound Editing) into a single Best Sound category, a decision that was controversial within both communities. The CAS and MPSE continue to recognise the disciplines separately.

Feature Film

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing — Feature Film

The flagship CAS category, honoring the re-recording mixers and production sound mixer of the year’s best-mixed film.

Year Mixing Team Film Oscar?
2025 Various Dune: Part Two Oscar: Wicked
2024 Various Oppenheimer CAS + Oscar
2023 Various Top Gun: Maverick CAS + Oscar
2022 Various Dune CAS + Oscar
2021 Various Soul CAS + Oscar (merged category)
2020 Mark Taylor & Stuart Wilson 1917 CAS + Oscar
2019 Various Bohemian Rhapsody CAS + Oscar
2018 Various Dunkirk CAS + Oscar
2017 Various Hacksaw Ridge CAS + Oscar
2016 Various Mad Max: Fury Road CAS + Oscar
2015 Various Whiplash CAS + Oscar
2014 Various Gravity CAS + Oscar
2013 Various Les Misérables CAS + Oscar
Television Drama Series

Outstanding Achievement — TV Drama Series

Year Mixing Team Series
2025 Various Shōgun
2024 Various The Last of Us
2023 Various Andor
2022 Various Succession
2021 Various The Mandalorian
2020 Various Game of Thrones
2019 Various Game of Thrones
Television Comedy Series

Outstanding Achievement — TV Comedy Series

Year Mixing Team Series
2025 Various The Bear
2024 Various The Bear
2023 Various Abbott Elementary
2022 Various Ted Lasso
2021 Various Ted Lasso
TV Movie or Limited Series

Outstanding Achievement — TV Movie or Mini-Series

Year Mixing Team Production
2025 Various Ripley
2024 Various Beef
2023 Various The White Lotus (Season 2)
2022 Various Dopesick
2021 Various The Queen’s Gambit
2020 Various Chernobyl
The Merged Oscar Controversy

When the Academy Merged Sound

In 2021, the Academy merged its two longstanding sound categories into one Best Sound award — a decision that sparked significant debate in both the mixing and editing communities.

Before 2021: Two Categories
Best Sound Mixing • Best Sound Editing
For decades, the Oscar honoured sound mixing and sound editing as distinct disciplines. Sound mixing recognised the re-recording mixers who combined all audio elements; sound editing recognised the supervising sound editors and sound editors who designed and cut those elements. The CAS and MPSE championed their respective disciplines’ contributions as genuinely different crafts requiring different skills.
Two categories • 1930–2020
After 2021: Best Sound
Single merged category
The Academy argued that audiences and voters could not meaningfully distinguish between the two disciplines. Critics argued the merger diminished recognition for both — sound editors and sound mixers now compete for a single award that cannot adequately represent either discipline. The CAS and MPSE continue to give separate awards, insisting that the crafts are genuinely different and deserve separate recognition.
Single category • 2021–present
CAS and MPSE Response
Maintaining separate recognition
Both the Cinema Audio Society and the Motion Picture Sound Editors have explicitly declined to follow the Academy’s lead. Their continued operation of separate mixing and editing awards serves as an ongoing industry statement that the crafts are distinct. The CAS Lifetime Achievement Award, given separately, honours careers in the mixing discipline specifically — a recognition the merged Oscar category cannot provide.
CAS and MPSE awards continue as separate disciplines
Notable Practitioners

The Sound Designers & Mixers Who Defined the Discipline

From the invention of the sound designer role to the architects of blockbuster audio, these are the practitioners whose work changed what film sound can be.

Walter Murch CAS
American
The man who invented the title “sound designer” and whose book In the Blink of an Eye is the most widely read text on the philosophy of both sound and editing. Murch developed his ideas on sound montage while working on Apocalypse Now — a film whose six-channel sound design was so complex and original that it required a new vocabulary. He subsequently won the Oscar for both sound and editing on The English Patient (1996), making him the first person ever to win both awards for the same film.
THX 1138 American Graffiti The Godfather Apocalypse Now The Conversation The English Patient
★ 4 Oscars (sound & editing) • Coined “sound designer” • Author of In the Blink of an Eye
Ben Burtt
American • Lucasfilm / ILM
The sound designer whose work on the original Star Wars trilogy created the sonic vocabulary of modern science fiction — every lightsaber hum, Wookiee growl, R2-D2 beep, and TIE fighter scream was designed from scratch using found sounds, organic recordings, and electronic manipulation. Burtt’s approach — recording real-world sounds and processing them beyond recognition — is the foundational methodology of creative sound design. He subsequently won Oscars for Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Star Wars (original trilogy) Raiders of the Lost Ark E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade WALL-E
★ 4 Oscars • Created the sonic universe of Star Wars • Pioneered sound design as an art form
Gary Rydstrom CAS
American • Skywalker Sound
Seven-time Oscar winner and one of the most decorated sound practitioners of the blockbuster era. Rydstrom’s work for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas across two decades — Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic — defined the sound of Hollywood’s most ambitious productions. His work on Saving Private Ryan in particular, creating the sonic chaos of the Omaha Beach landing, is considered one of the greatest achievements in production sound history. A CAS Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day Jurassic Park Schindler’s List Saving Private Ryan Titanic Ratatouille
★ 7 Oscars • CAS Lifetime Achievement • Saving Private Ryan — definitive war sound design
Mark Mangini CAS
American
The sound designer whose work on Mad Max: Fury Road (2016) and Dune (2022) represents two of the most distinctive and completely realised sonic worlds of recent cinema. For Fury Road, Mangini and David White designed a post-apocalyptic sonic universe from organic recordings of metal, engines, and bodies. For Dune — in collaboration with Theo Green — they created an alien world’s sound from unconventional instruments, reversed recordings, and entirely new audio textures. Both films won the Oscar for Best Sound in their respective years.
Gremlins Star Trek IV The Fifth Element Mad Max: Fury Road Dune
★ 2 Oscars • CAS Award • Fury Road and Dune are landmark sound design achievements