Glossary

This page gives very brief explanations of these terms, with some links to Wikipedia for much more comprehensive explanations.

We'll likely have a symbol for the wikipedia link. This page is optional and need not be in the manual, but I'm following up an idea on the Old Pages page.

We need a standard way of indicating that a word referred to in a definition can itself be found in the Glossary. I suggest bold italics

Fine, and it should be in the manual unless a very good explanation why not is given. However even after 1.4.0 if needs be, we must have an Index. And when we do, I think these terms are part of it (because of the overlap between the Index to our pages and the Glossary items). -Gale

• Amplitude:
• Cepstrum:
• Compressed Audio Format:
• Compression:
• Cycle:
• dB: (decibels) A logarithmic unit (typically of sound pressure) describing the ratio of that unit to a reference level.
• FFT: (Fast Fourier Transform). A method for performing Fourier transforms (see below) quickly.
• FLAC:
• Filter: A sound effect that lets some frequencies through and suppresses others.
• Fourier Transform: A method for converting a waveform to a spectrum, and back.
• Frequency: Audio frequency determines the pitch of a sound. Measured in Hz (see below), higher frequencies have higher pitch.
• Harmonics: Most sounds are made up of a mix of different frequencies. In musical sounds, the component frequencies are simple multiples of each other, for example 100Hz, 200Hz, 300Hz. These are called harmonics of the lowest frequency sound.
• High Pass Filter: A filter that lets high frequencies through.
• Hz (Hertz): Measures a frequency event in number of cycles per second. See Frequency and Sample Rate, both of which are measured in Hz.
• LAME:
• Logarithmic:
• Lossless:
• Lossy:
• Low Pass Filter: A filter that lets low (bass) frequencies through.
• MIDI:
• MP2:
• MP3: A compressed audio format.
• Ogg Vorbis An Open Source compressed audio format.
• Pitch:
• Sample Rate: Measured in Hz like Frequency, this represents the number of digital samples captured per second in order to represent the waveform.
• Spectrum: Presentation of a sound in terms of its component frequencies.
• Uncompressed Audio Format:
• WAV:
• Waveform:
• Wavelength: