Tech Terms to Know

Frequency - "Pitch" - measured in kHz

Amplitude - "Dynamics" - the height of the sine wave, representing strength of sound pressure, measured in decibels. 

• Decibel - dB - Loudness

Sound Intensity - Watts per square meter (W/m²)

• Watts - W - Sound Power

Sample Rate - the number of samples of audio (or any digital content) taken per second. 

• Typical CD Quality = 44,100 kHz/second or 44,100 samples per second. The most upper and lower bounds of what can be heard. 

• CD Travel/Download Rate - It's bit rate per second (Kbps) is 1141 Kbps. How fast it goes per second. 

• File Types

  • WAV - Waveform Audio file format - uncompressed file format ("windows")

  • AIFF - Audio Interchange File format - uncompressed file format ("apple")

  • Compressed ("chopped") formats - MP3 (MPEG-3), FLAC, WMA, ALAC, etc. Basically they cut the top and bottom off of the audio limits. Depending on the size you choose. 

  • MP3 (MPEG-3) typically ranges are in bit rates, and how quickly they can be downloaded.

  • MP3 travel/download at 96-310 Kbps. 

• Human Hearing Limit | Pitch -- 44,100 kHz/second means that the human ear will hear (theoretically) 22,050 Hz or less (this is just about the maximum people can perceive). 

Bits and Bytes - Bit = 1, Byte= 8 Bits

Bit Depth - how much data can be stored in a single sample. 

• Typically 16-bit is the standard. 

• Sometimes you can use 24- or 32-bit "floating" which means you have a wider range to avoid clipping out upper and/or lower ends/parts of the audio. 

• Old school sounding recordings may use 8-bit. 

• File Extensions - MP4 (MPEG-4), MOV, AVI, MKV, etc. This is the way things are held together in your video. 

• Codec - How your files are compressed (or not) which can affect the size of your file(s). 

  • Lossy - Higher compression by cutting out some data, smaller file sizes but possibly lower quality

  • Lossless - Compresses data without losing any information, keeps original quality, higher file size(s).

  • Playback - they help by smoothing out files so they are easily playable on many types of devices.

  • Storage - since file sizes can be lower, they help manage file storage space.