Index
Glossary of Digital Audio Terms
21
Contents
Glossary of Digital Audio Terms
Bass
Bass is the particular low-range area of the sound
spectrum where low musical notes and sounds are
located. Increasing the bass value will make the low
vocals and drums more prominent in your music.
Adjusting this level too high can cause distortion at
high volumes in some music files.
Bitrate
Bitrate denotes the number of bits per second used
to represent a digital music file. The size and quality
of a compressed digital audio file is determined by
the bitrate used when encoding the file. The higher
the bitrate used, the higher the sound quality, and
the larger the file size. For example, with MP3, a
bitrate of 128kbps (128,000 bits per second) is
generally thought of as “CD quality”, and takes up
about 1 megabyte (MB) per minute of music. At a
64kbps bitrate, the sound quality is similar to that
of an FM radio signal, but you can get
approximately two minutes of music in that same
1MB of storage space. CD audio has a bitrate of
1.4Mbits per second (1,400,000 bits/second).
Codec
Depending on the context and kind of technology
involved, codec can be defined as a compressed
digital audio file format (like MP3, WMA, and so on),
a “coding/decoding” chip used to translate between
digital and analog transmissions (used in modems),
or a compression/decompression algorithm. Codecs
compress audio data into a file, often for efficient
transmission over a network, and then decode it for
playback. While all the codecs perform similar
compression of digital audio, there are differences
in the technology.
The RioVolt supports the following digital audio
codecs:
• MP3
• WMA
• CD Audio (
Red Book
)
