Audacity Glossary: Audacity is an audio editing software. Its main function is to record and edit different types of audio.
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This page will explain some very technical terms. These technical terms are related to digital audio.
General terms
ADC
ADC is the short name for analog to digital converter. It converts an analog signal into a digital signal. The microphone records the signal. This helps a digital device to detect and manipulate it.
ASIO
ASIO stands for audio stream input/output. This is a computer audio driver protocol for digital audio. The creator of ASIO is Steinberg. It also provides low latency. It is a high fidelity interface between software and sound card.
Compression
It is a process in which there is a reduction of louder passages, and increase in softer passages. It functions to even out overall volume level.
Frequency
It is the speed of the vibration. And, it also calculates the pitch of the sound. The unit of frequency is Hz (hertz). Humans have a hearing capacity from 20 Hz to 20000 Hz of audio frequency.
Harmonics
Sometimes sounds are made up of integral multiples of a reference or basic frequency. One knows them by the name Harmonics. For example, 1f,2f,3f; where 1f can be the reference frequency.
Lame
It is a software that converts audio signal to MP3 signal.
Hertz
It is the measure of frequency, i.e speed of vibration or pitch of the sound.
IVR
IVR stands for interactive voice response. It is an automatic system that allows a computer to interact with humans. It gathers the required information through calls etc.
Latency
There is a time interval between the audio signal being sent or received. The time interval is Latency. It can be due to audio to digital or digital to audio conversion.
Pitch
It is the quality of sound. It can be determined by the rate of vibrations produced. The quality of sound is the frequency.
Waveform
It is an image which represents an audio signal.
Windows direct sound
It is a software component by Microsoft, and is for the Windows OS. It provides a low latency interface between the audio signal, and has many applications.
Audio file formats
In this part, you will observe some audio file formats. The use of these files is to store audio files on the computer.
AAC
It stands for advanced audio coding. It is lossy and compressed. But, it sounds better and gives better quality of sound at the same bit rate of MP3. This is the standard format, which generally has an MP4 extension.
MP3
MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3) is a standard technology and format. It is a format that transmits audio all over the internet. It is lossy and compressed.
RAW
It is a category of audio file formats for storing uncompressed audio. Technical tests use this feature.
WMA
It is a Windows media audio format. Its creator is Microsoft.
So, finally, we have come to the end of this page and topic. In this, we studied various audio formats. We also read about their technical terms. Hope this article was helpful to you. Click here to learn more.
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