Acoustic / Acoustical - Physical symptoms of sound or sound that can be heard by the ear.
ADAT – Alesis Corporation's trademark in early 1993, a design for a digital multitrack recording system module.
ADSR – Abbreviation for Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release.
AES – Abbreviation for Audio Engineering Society.
Amp – 1) Abbreviation for Amplifier. 2) Abbreviation for Ampere. 3) Abbreviation for amplitude
Amplifier – An electronic device that processes and amplifies sound from a microphone or from an electric musical instrument, including a guitar, to then be transmitted to a loudspeaker or loudspeaker. Most are equipped with gain control, volume, equalizer.
Amplitude – The volume of an audio signal. A wave's amplitude is measured from the centerline distance. Size in dB (decibel)
Analog Recording – Recording using a magnetic and vinyl tape machine. The recording has a continuous curve.
ASIO (Audio Stream In/Out) – is a standard low latency driver, created by Steinberg Media Technologies.
Attenuation – Reduces the signal level or levels.
Audio Engineering – a skill area that deals with the use of machines and equipment for recording, audio editing, mixing, mastering and sound reproduction. This field refers to audio, including electronics, acoustics, psychoacoustics, and music. For more details, read the article Definition of the Professional Audio Engineer/Sound Engineer
Automation – The process of recording volume, pan, and effect changes during mixing that perfectly adjusts the changes made.
Band Pass Filter – a filter that allows the audio frequency to pass without change.
Bar – The distance from one bar to the next.
Beat – is a beat, such as 1-2-3-4, that we usually count when playing or hearing a song. Beats divide a phrase into uniform parts, which one beat can later be subdivided into smaller parts if needed.
Beats Per Minute – The tempo of the music expressed by the number of beats that occur every 60 seconds.
Bit depth or resolution – a number used to represent audio amplitude. An 8-bit resolution example has 256 audio levels and 48 dB dynamic range; 16-bit resolution has 65,536 audio levels and 96 dB dynamic range.
BPM – Abbreviation for Beat Per Minute (A standard in calculating musical tempo).
Buss (Bus) – a channel where you can combine other parts of the channel. In multitrack, you can use the bus to combine multiple tracks.
CD – Abbreviation for Compact Disc.
CD-ROM - Short for Compact Disc, Read Only Memory (Compact Disc which is useful for storing data digitally through computer devices).
Clip – An individual visual audio, video, or MIDI file on multitrack.
Clipping – a condition in digital audio that occurs when the amplitude of the signal exceeds the maximum level at a certain resolution.
Codec – Abbreviation for compressor decompressor. Compression of data used by ACM, AVI, MPEG and QuickTime formats from analog to digital on some soundcards.
CPU - Abbreviation for Central Processing Unit (where the brain and computer system are located).
Crossfade – an effect of fading from one audio to another.
D/A – stands for Digital To Analog Converter, a device for converting digital numeric data (digital audio signals) into voltage levels.
DAC - stands for Digital-to-Analog Converter, which is hardware that converts digital audio or video into analog signals.
DAT – Abbreviation for Digital Audio Tape, a standard two-track digital audio tape format.
DAW – Abbreviation for Digital Audio Workstation (software intended for recording and mixing in Digital Audio).
dB – The abbreviation for decibel, which is the unit of measurement used for amplitude.
DX – Or Direct-X, is a plug-in standard Windows format that has a file extension .ax or .dll. The DXi (DX instrument) and automateable features were developed by Cakewalk and are the basic format of the SONAR software. It can be read by many other DAW applications such as Cubase, Nuendo, FL Studio, Sound Forge and others.
DC – Abbreviation for Direct Current.
Delay – This is a signal difference where you can edit the original clip with a basic time. By setting the interval, frequency and sound color, delay can be utilized and cause certain effects. Effects that have a basic use of delay include reverb, chorus, echo and so on.
Destructive Editing – Editing processes (such as cut, paste, and other processes) that can alter the original audio data.
IN. – Abbreviation for Direct Injection or Direct Input.
DSP – stands for Digital Signal Processing, which is the process of transforming a digital audio signal using complex algorithms.
DVD – Optical storage media such as CD, but with greater bandwidth and capacity. DVD movies are generally 96 kHz/24-bit.
Equalization – (EQ)