Sound event

Dictionary definition of event: "something that occurs in a certain place during a particular interval of time." This suggests that the event is not abstractable from the time-and-space continuum that defines it. The sound event, like the sound object, is defined by the human ear as the smallest self-contained particle of a soundscape. It differs from the sound object (see this)  in that the latter is an abstract acoustic object for study, while the sound event is a symbolic, semantic or structural object for study, and is therefore a non-abstractable point of reference, related to a whole of greater magnitude than itself. 

(Source: Schafer, R. Murray: Our Sonic Environment and the soundscape: the tuning of the world. Destiny Books 1994).