In filmmaking, ambience (also known as atmosphere, atmos, or background) consists of the sounds of a given location or space. It is the opposite of "silence". Ambience is similar to presence, but is distinguished by the existence of explicit background noise in ambience recordings, as opposed to the perceived "silence" of presence recordings. Ambience is normally recorded in stereo by the sound department during the production stage of filmmaking. It is used to provide a movie location with sonic space and normally occupies a separate track in the sound edit.