Binary
A counting system based on only two states: 1s and 0s. It is ideal for electronic equipment where it can be represented as high and low voltages, light on/off, N-S or S-N magnetic domains, etc.
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BPM
Beats Per Minute.
Bus
(Also sometimes referred to as a buss) An electrical signal path along which multiple signals may travel. A typical audio mixer contains several (mix) buses which carry the stereo mix, subgroups, the PFL signal, the aux sends, and so on. Power supplies are also fed along buses.
Capsule
An alternative term for a transducer which converts acoustic sound waves into an electrical signal.
Carbon Microphone
(Also known as a Carbon Button Microphone). An obsolete form of microphone in which carbon granules are contained between two metal contact plates, one of which acts as the diaphragm and moves in response to sound waves. The microphone has to be biased with a DC voltage which causes a current to pass from one metal contact plate, through the carbon granules, to the other metal contact plate. The varying pressure exerted on the carbon granules by the moving diaphgram causes a varying resistance and thus a varying current which is analogous to the sound waves. Carbon Button Microphones were used in the very early days of sound recording and broadcasting, as well as in domestic telephones up until the 1980s when electret capsules became more commonplace.
Cardioid
A specific form of polar response of a unidirectional microphone or loudspeaker. It is an inverted heart-shape which has very low sensitivity at the back (180 degrees), but only slightly reduced sensitivity (typically between 3 and 6dB) at the sides (90/270 degrees).
Chip
A slang term for an Integrated Circuit or IC.
Chord
Three or more different musical notes played at the same time.
Chorus
An effect created by doubling a signal and adding delay and pitch modulation, intended to make a single source sound more like an ensemble.
Chromatic
A scale of pitches rising or falling in semitone steps.
Click Track
An audible metronome pulse which assists musicians in playing in time.
Clipping
When an audio signal is allowed to overload the system conveying it, clipping is said to have occurred and severe distortion results. The ‘clipping point’ is reached when the audio system can no longer accommodate the signal amplitude –either because an analogue signal voltage nears or exceeds the circuitry’s power supply voltage, or because a digital sample amplitude exceeds the quantiser’s number range. In both cases, the result is that the signal peaks are ‘clipped’ because the system can’t support the peak excursions - a sinewave source signal becomes more like a squarewave. In an analogue system clipping produces strong harmonic distortion artefacts at frequencies above the fundamental. In a digital system those high frequency harmonics cause aliasing which results in anharmonic distortion where the distortion artefacts reproduce at frequencies below the source fundamental. This is why digital clipping sounds so unlike analogue clipping, and is far more unpleasant and less musical.
Clocking
The process of controlling the sample rate of one digital device with an external clock signal derived from another device. In a conventional digital system there must be only one master clock device, with everything else ‘clocked’ or ‘slaved’ from that master.
Clone
An exact duplicate. Often refers to digital copies of digital tapes.
Close-Miking
A mic technique which involves placing a microphone very close to a sound source, normally with the intention of maximising the wanted sound and minimising any unwanted sound from other nearby sound sources or the room acoustics. In classic music circles the technique is more often known as 'Accent Miking'.
Cloud
Essentially an internet communications network (either a Wide Area Network [WAN] or a private network) in which a data-centre performs a range of services such as data storage (cloud storage) or remote apps and programs (cloud computing). The term comes from the way network engineers used to draw system diagrams with a cloud symbol to simplify a very complex (and irrelevant) network of routers, switches, drives and cables into something that just showed the relevant external connection points.
Codec
An abbreviation formed from coder-decoder, implying a 'double-ended' processing system where a signal is encoded into a specific format before transmission or recording, and then decoded on reception or replay. An example of an analogue codec might be the Dolby A or Dolby B tape noise-reduction systems, while a digital codec might be something like the FLAC data-reduction system where redundant data is removed in the coding process and fully restored in the decoding process.
Coincident
A means of arranging two or more directional microphone capsules such that they receive sound waves from all directions at exactly the same time. The varying sensitivity to sound arriving from different directions due to the directional polar patterns means that information about the directions of sound sources is captured in the form of level differences between the capsule outputs. Specific forms of coincident microphones include ‘XY’ and ‘MS’ configurations, as well as B-format and Ambisonic arrays. Coincident arrays are entirely mono-compatible because there are no timing differences between channels.
Colouration
A distortion of the natural timbre or frequency response of sound, usually but not always unwanted.
Common Mode Rejection
A measure of how well a balanced circuit rejects an interference signal that is common to both sides of the balanced connection.