A soundscape is not automatically a recording of sound, a distribution of decibels or an ecological inventory of acoustic events. Mitchell and colleagues investigate the instability of the term across urban, ecological, underwater and other domains, taking ISO 12913’s emphasis on an acoustic environment as perceived by people in context as a central point of reference. Their operation is conceptual and classificatory: they compare incompatible definitions and examine the consequences of treating the same word as though it designated the same research object. That distinction makes a hidden methodological decision explicit. A microphone registers pressure fluctuations; a survey records a person’s account of their acoustic experience; ecological monitoring may privilege an entirely different listener or organism. The three can occupy the same coordinates without being interchangeable. The preprint bridges acoustics, urban research, standardisation and epistemology. Its importance is less a promise of terminological consensus than the demonstration that comparability begins by declaring what each record claims to represent. As a supplied preprint, it should not be cited as a settled standard or as evidence of a tested intervention.