Glossary of
Digital Music Terms

For your convenience we have included a glossary of digital music terms to help you in understanding the definitions and meaning of many digital music terms.

A

AAC is a compressed audio format.
Audio Extraction or "ripping" is when you bring an individual track from a CD onto your computer.

B

Burn means to put information onto a CD.
Burn audio CD lets you burn audio CDs without needing a separate burning program.
Burst mode is the fastest ripping mode with no error-detection.

C

Compress and encode mean to reduce the size of the file.
Converting- The program takes your files and changes them to another format, such as WAV to MP3 or vise versa.
CUE sheet support- When burning an album as a single WAV, this enables each song to be burned as a separate track without having to split the file.

D

Database is the program that can retrieve album, artist, and title info using an Internet connection.
Digital Audio Extraction-(DAE) same as audio extraction.

E

Editing lets you cut, past, split and move your files in different ways.
Encode and compress mean to reduce the size of the file.
External encoders are controlled by the ripping program, but are not built in.
Extraction - same as coping or ripping.

F

File naming scheme - Lets a user control the file names of ripped tracks.

G

Glitch removal helps to reduce noise from the audio track. H

I

Internal encoders are built into the ripper. For example, the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder is built into software that Music Match uses.

J

Jitter-correction - a method of securing error-free extraction.

K

L

Lossy compression enables big WAVs to be transformed into tiny files, but has a loss of quality that may be picked up through good quality sound systems.
Lossless compression cannot produce tiny files but will retain the quality of the original file.

M

MP3 is a compressed audio format
MIDI stands for "musical instrument digital interface". This is an electronic language for computers and electronic instruments.

N

Normalizing- Sets the volume of the track so that the loudest parts reach a specified level.

O

OGG Vorbis is a compressed audio format.

On-the-fly compression is when audio data is encoded (such as MP3) at the same time as a track is ripped.

P

Q

R

Recording means the program can record audio from analogue sources, such as Mic and Line In.
Rip is the process of transferring audio contents of a CD to your computer.

S

Secure mode does redundant read and comparison of data for exact reps.
Synchronized mode is the standard ripping mode that uses jitter-correction to read the audio data.

T

Tagging- Lets a user control the file names of ripped tracks and the info is added to the tags of encoded files.
Tethered Downloads - The ability to download a song to your hard drive, but not to burn it.

U

V

W

WAV is an audio file.
WMA is a compressed audio format.

X

Y

Z

If you have any questions or suggestions of words to add to our glossary of digital music terms, please contact us. Thank you.

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