Rhapsody, SPL sound pressure level, Stereo

A control found on receivers, and some mixers or signal processing units that silences (mutes) a signal path, or output.

Ohm

Measure of resistance to current (impedance). The lower the impedance of a speaker, the harder it is to drive.

PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)

Pioneering form of digital recording.

RF (radio frequency)

An alternating current or voltage with a frequency (or carrier wave) above about 100kHz. It is called radio frequency because these frequencies have a capacity to be radiated as electromagnetic waves by radio (and television) stations.

Rhapsody®

Rhapsody® is a membership-based digital music service that allows listeners to subscribe to music through the Internet at a monthly rate, rather than to purchase the music.

S/PDIF (SPDIF) (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) A standard audio-file transfer-format that was developed jointly by Sony and Philips. S/PDIF allows the transfer of digital audio signals from one device to another, without the need to convert first to analog.This prevents the quality of the digital signal degrading during transfer to analog.

Sensitivity

Volume that a speaker offers for a specific voltage input, expressed in decibels per watt (dB/W).

Shuffle

A feature that plays audio files (tracks) in random order.

Signal to noise ratio

Represents the difference between the level of the audio signal, and any interference.The larger the figure, the purer the sound.

SPL (sound pressure level)

An acoustic measurement of sound energy.

1 dB SPL is the smallest increment in sound level to which the average human is sensitive. Theoretically, 0 dB SPL is the threshold of human hearing while approximately 120 dB is the threshold of pain.

Stereo

Literally means solid. Usually taken to refer to two channel stereo, though developments in digital audio facilitate multichannel stereo.

Streaming

A technique for transferring data such that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream. Streaming technologies are often used on the Internet because many users do not have fast enough access to download large multimedia files quickly, so the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted.

UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) Universal Plug and Play is a networking architecture developed by a consortium of companies to ensure easy connectivity between products from different vendors. UPnP devices should be able to connect to a network automatically, handling identification and other processes on the fly.The standards developed by the UPnP Forum are media-, platform-, and device-independent.

VBR (variable bit rate)

Glossary English

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