26
D
Decibel (dB)
A unit of measure used to express relative
difference in power or intensity of sound.
Digital Audio
Digital Audio is a sound signal that has been
converted into numerical values. Digital sound
can be transmitted through multiple channels.
Analog sound can only be transmitted through
two channels.
F
FLAC [Free Lossless Audio Codec]
An audio format similar to MP3, but lossless,
meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC
without loss in quality.
FM (Frequency Modulation)
In radio broadcasting: a method of modulation
in which the frequency of the carrier voltage
is varied with the frequency of the modulation
voltage.
J
JPEG
A very common digital still picture format.
A still-picture data compression system
proposed by the Joint Photographic Expert
Group, which features small decrease in image
quality in spite of its high compression ratio.
Files are recognized by their file extension
‘.jpg’ or ‘.jpeg.’
K
Kbps
Kilobits per second. A digital-data-rate
measurement system which is often used
with highly compressed formats such as AAC,
DAB, MP3 etc. The higher the amount, the
better the quality generally is.
19 Glossary
A
Album art
Album art is a feature that displays the
artwork (cover picture) of a music album. This
display enables the user to quickly identify
a music album. The artwork files for music
albums can be downloaded from the Internet.
APE
A lossless audio file compression format by
Monkey’s Audio that makes bit-for-bit copies
without sacrificing quality.
C
CMMB
China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting
(CMMB) is a mobile television and multimedia
standard developed and specified in China
by the State Administration of Radio, Film,
and Television (SARFT). It is based on the
satellite and terrestrial interactive multiservice
infrastructure (STiMi), developed by TiMiTech,
a company formed by the Chinese Academy
of Broadcasting Science. CMMB it has been
described as being similar to Europe’s DVB-
SH standard for digital video broadcast from
both satellites and terrestrial ‘gap fillers’ to
handheld devices.
Compression
In audio terms, this is a process of temporarily
or permanently reducing audio data for more
efficient storage or transmission. A temporary
reduction in file size is called ‘non-lossy’
compression, and no information is lost. A
permanent reduction in file size (such as with
MP3 files) is called ‘lossy’ compression, and
involves discarding unnecessary information
which is irretrievably lost.
EN
