aliasing: When frequencies higher than half the sample rate are incorrectly converted to lower frequencies causing noise.
AIFF: Audio Interchange File Format.
amplitude: The loudness of a sound.
attenuate: To lesson the amplitude or specific frequencies of a sound.
clipping: When the amplitude of a sound is so loud that outer edges of the sound are chopped off. A little clipping is OK, but a lot of clipping will add noise.
compression: To compress a sound to save memory. A ratio of 3:1 compresses the sound by 37.5% and adds a small amount of noise. A ratio of 6:1 compresses the sound by 75% and adds a larger amount of noise. Once a sound is compressed, uncompressing it does not put the sound back to its original state because some of the sound data was lost.
cycle: Where a portion of the sound starts at zero, goes to positive, then to negative, then to zero. Same as period.
decibel (db): A unit for measuring the relative loudness of a sound.
filter slope: The amount of attenuation of the frequencies past the filter cutoff point expressed in negative decibels per octave. For example a slope of -6 db per octave would mean frequencies above the cutoff point would drop 6 db every octave.
frequency: The number of cycles per second. Middle C is 261.6256 hertz.
FSSD: A SoundEdit file.
hertz (Hz): Used to specify frequency in cycles per second. 1 kHz = 1000 Hz.
invert: Upside down. If two identical sounds are mixed together, and one is inverted, they would cancel each other out (silence).
Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO): When a waveform is used to modulate a sound's amplitude or pitch for tremolo and vibrato effects.
MACE: Macintosh Audio Compression and Expansion.
millisecond: 1/1000 of a second.
modulation: To use a waveform to control the amplitude or pitch of a sound.
normalize: To set the amplitude of the sound to the maximum without any clipping or to it's orignal amplitude.
Nyquist's Theorem: A sound can only have frequencies that are less than half the sample rate, any frequencies higher than half the sample rate will cause noise.
period: Where a portion of the sound starts at zero, goes to positive, then to negative, then to zero. Same as cycle.
phase: The starting point of a period specified in degrees (0 to 360). Any phase value other than zero is considered out of phase. If the period was 180° (degrees) out of phase it would be inverted.
pitch: See frequency.
sample: One segment of a digital sound. A digital sound is made up of many samples strung together. One sample of uncompressed 8 bit sound is equal to one byte.
sample rate: The samples per second that the sound was recorded at. The maximum frequency for a sound is half the sample rate, so if you are recording at 22 kHz, highest frequency that can be recorded is 11 kHz.
Sd2f: A Sound Designer II sound file.
sfil: A System 7 sound file.
tremolo: To modulate the amplitude of a sound.
vibrato: To modulate the pitch of a sound.
waveform: A drawing of a sound. Sound Sculptor also refers to waveforms as a one period sound. See "Waveforms Folder" for more information.