Designing Web Audio & CD-ROM

Chapter 12. Glossary

Acoustics

Term used to describe the science of sound as well as how sound travels through particular environments. Sound waves reflect and disperse off of various surfaces in our environment, such as a wall or trees or even people. These sound waves travel through the air, bouncing off objects before they reflect back to our ears. We rarely ever hear the pure direct vibration of a sound wave before it is masked or altered by the coloration of thousands of small reflections.

Active Streaming File (ASF)

Microsoft’s proprietary streaming media format.

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)

Standard Macintosh file format commonly used on the Internet.

Aliasing

A type of quantization error or digital distortion that occurs during analog to digital conversion. Sampling rates that are too low to accurately reproduce a sound often cause aliasing or unwanted sound artifacts such as a low rumbling or “woosh” noise.

Ambient Soundscape or Loop

The term applied to a background audio track or continuous loop that helps set a mood behind the visual content.

Amplitude

The maximum change in air pressure. Amplitude is universally measured in decibels (dB). The metric is used both to measure the loudness of a sound signal and to mark the maximum cut-off point for analog and digital recording. This cut-off is the maximum level before distortion and is called the 0dB point.

Analog Distortion

The term commonly used in analog tape recording or tube amplification when a signal goes above the ...