SV Sound Page 13
A Glossary of Home Theater Terms
Don’t feel guilty if you want to skip over the below. But if you are curi-
ous about what some of the terms and abbreviations stand for, read on:
CD - Compact Disc, the music standard and capable of great sound.
Now joined by Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio as high-
resolution music alternatives that can really make subwoofers great audio
upgrades.
dB - Short for “deci-Bell” a unit of sound, a 3dB increase takes twice the
acoustic power to attain!
DD - “Dolby Digital”, the most popular form of digital surround sound,
usually found on DVD soundtracks. Actually a compression algorithm
that can provide 1 to 7 channels of movie audio .
DPL - “Dolby Pro Logic”. The last generation of non-discreet channel
surround sound. Derived from 2 “matrixed” analog channels.
DTS - “Digital Theater System” similar to DD, but often with less com-
pression. Many feel it sounds better than DD, but you be the judge.
DVD - Amazing little video disk, DVD, officially doesn’t mean anything!
HT - “Home Theater”. What you make of it. But a home (theater) with-
out a subwoofer, isn’t quite up to our definition!
Hz - Short for Hertz, the German scientist who came up with a scheme of
measuring the frequency of sound waves. 15-30 Hz is very low bass and
very rare in anything but movie soundtracks. 60-80 Hz is generally con-
sidered mid-bass above which most large full range speakers can easily
produce. The real fun (and most common) deep bass, is in the middle of
that range, call it 20-40 Hz.
LFE - “Low Frequency Effects” are the “.1” channel in 5.1 or 6.1 chan-
nel soundtracks. If you have a sub selected in your system, any LFE sig-
nal goes to the subwoofer. The sub may get bass from other channels as
well however, depending on the “size” of speakers in your set-up.
RMS - A common and accurate way to rate the power of an amplifier.
Literally “Root Means Squared”. Typically measured in “watts”.
SPL - “Sound Pressure Level”, a fancy way of saying “Volume”. Usu-
ally measured in dBs. SPL meters are critical to setting your surround
sound. Doing so by ear is nearly impossible.
Sub - Short for subwoofer