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F

FLAC [Free Lossless Audio Codec]
An audio format similar to M P3, but lossless,
meaning that audio is compr essed in FLAC
without loss in qualit y.
FM (Frequency Modulation)
In radio broadcas ting: a method of modulatio n
in which the frequenc y of the carrier volta ge
is varied with the fre quency of the modulatio n
voltage.

J

JPEG
A very common digital s till picture forma t.
A still-picture d ata compression sys tem
proposed by the Joint Photog raphic Exper t
Group, which features s mall decrease in image
quality in spite of its h igh compression rati o.
Files are recognized by thei r le extension
‘.jpg’ or ‘.jpeg.’

K

Kbps
Kilobits per second. A d igital-data-r ate
measurement sys tem which is often used
with highly compresse d formats such as AAC ,
DAB, MP3 etc. The higher t he amount, the
better the quality g enerally is.

L

LCD (Liquid Crystal Displ ay)
Probably the most common w ay to show
visual information on non -computer elect ronic
equipment.

M

MHz (Mega Hertz)
One million cycles per second .
16 Glossary

A

Album art
Album art is a feature t hat displays the
artwork (cover pictu re) of a music album. This
display enables the user to qu ickly identify
a music album. The ar twork les for music
albums can be downloaded fr om the Internet.
APE
A lossless audio le compre ssion format by
Monkey’s Audio that makes bit-fo r-bit copies
without sacricing q uality.

C

Compression
In audio terms, this is a pr ocess of temporarily
or permanently red ucing audio data for more
efcient storage or t ransmission. A temp orary
reduction in le size is c alled ‘non-lossy’
compression, and no infor mation is lost. A
permanent reduc tion in le size (such as with
MP3 les) is called ‘lossy’ comp ression, and
involves discarding unne cessary informatio n
which is irretriev ably lost.

D

Decibel (dB)
A unit of measure used to exp ress relative
difference in power or inte nsity of sound.
Digital Audio
Digital Audio is a sound sig nal that has been
converted into numer ical values. Digit al sound
can be transmitte d through multiple cha nnels.
Analog sound can only be tr ansmitted throu gh
two channels.
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