Digital Networks North America Rio Chiba :: Glossary of Digital Audio Terms

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Rio Chiba

:: Glossary of Digital Audio Terms

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. You can select the

amount of bass in your music by selecting various Equalizer options.

Bitrate denotes the number of bits per second used by a digital music file. The size and quality of a compressed

digital audio file is determined by the bitrate used when encoding the file. Generally, the higher the bitrate used,

the higher the sound quality, and the larger the file size. For example, a bitrate of 96kbps (96,000 bits per second)

is generally thought of as “CD quality” for WMA audio files, and takes up about 0.75 megabytes (MB) per minute of

music. At a 64kbps bitrate, the sound quality of WMA is similar to that of an FM radio signal, but approximately two

minutes of music will fit in 1MB of space.

Depending on the context and kind of technology involved, codec can be defined as a compressed digital audio file

format (like MP3, WMA, etc.), 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 com-

pression of digital audio, there are differences in the technology.

The Rio Chiba supports the following digital audio codecs:

•MP3

•WMA

Firmware is the read-only software that is installed on the player. Like software it can be updated, but unlike soft-

ware it can never be deleted from the player.

Gain is a measurement of the amplitude of all frequency ranges. Gain adjustments boost or reduce frequencies to

provide a more desirable audio output.