Jargon Busters

Jargon Buster: Audio Technology

Do you find all the terminology associated with various musical equipment and processes confusing? Hopefully the following will help you understand some of the commonly used jargon.

AC Adapter: A circuit which modifies an AC current, usually converting it to a DC current.

A/D Converter: A circuit which converts a signal from analogue to digital form; the opposite of a D/A converter.

AM: Amplitude Modulation A method of radio transmission which sends information as variations of the amplitude of a carrier wave.

Amperage: The amount of electrical current transferred from one component to another.

Amplifier: A device which increases signal amplitude.

Amplify: To increase amplitude.

Amplitude: The strength or power of a wave signal. The "height" of a wave when viewed as a standard x vs y graph.

Analogue: Information stored or transmitted as a continuously variable signal (as opposed to digital, in which the analogue signal is represented as a series of discreet values). Analogue is often technically the more accurate representation of the original signal, but digital systems have numerous advantages which have tended to make them more popular (a classic example is vinyl records versus CDs).

Audio: Sound. Specifically, the range of frequencies which are perceptible by the human ear.

Auxiliary Channel: On audio mixers, a bus which has an independent feed from each individual channel. Each channel has a control to adjust the level being sent to the auxiliary master output, which in turn has a control to adjust the overall level at the output bus. The auxiliary channel may be a simple output (to feed a device such as a tape machine or monitor), or it may be a "loop". An auxiliary loop sends a signal from the auxiliary output bus to a signal processing device such as a reverb generator, then brings the output of that device into an "auxiliary return" bus (thus creating a loop from the desk to the device, back to the desk). This return bus will have a level control pot, which is used to mix the incoming signal into the mixer's master output bus.