Although a musician won't always be involved in the engineering side of things, it is good to be aware of what an engineer's work is, and what it entails.

Editing audio is essentially the first step to mixing audio. Although it isn't always the most time consuming part, it is fair to say that it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to complete. This process might involve: a) removing tracks not being used, b) trimming tracks at the beginning or end, c) trimming tracks with silent parts, or d) other. It is not uncommon for a vocalist to have little breaks between lyrics, and these breaks are sometimes trimmed or cut off completely. Obviously this depends a lot on the direction the producer and engineer have decided upon.

This process is sometimes called "cleaning up a mix". For an engineer, it is much easier to look at a screen with fewer tracks, thereby getting rid of some of the distractions. If there are any excess tracks that are not being used in the final mix, sometimes they will "delete" them in order to clean up their workspace. This doesn't necessarily mean that data is being lost, however, as the tracks that have already been recorded will remain on the hard drive.