Glossary of MP3 and Audio Terms

A

AAC (.aac)

AAP

Adapter

Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding: see ATRAC™.

Advanced Audio Coding: see AAC.

AIFF

American National Standards Institute: see ANSI.

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers: see ASCAP.

Analog

ANSI

Artists Against Piracy: see AAP.

ASCAP

ATRAC™

AudibleReady™

Audio Interchange File Format: see AIFF.

Audiophile

B

Bandwidth

Beats Per Minute: see BPM.

Bit

Bit Rate

Bits Per Second: see bps.

BMI^®

Bootleg

BPM

bps

Bps

Broadcast Music Inc.: see BMI^®.

Browser

Buffer Underrun Proof: see BURN-Proof™.

Burn

BURN-Proof™

Byte

Bytes Per Second: see Bps.

C

CBR

CD

CD Burner

CD Ripper

CD Text

CD-R

CD-ROM

CD-RW

CDA (.cda)

CDDB™

Codec

Compact Disc: see CD.

Compact Disc Database: see CDDB™.

Compact Disc-Read Only Memory: see CD-ROM.

Compact Disc-Recordable: see CD-R.

Compact Disc-Rewritable: see CD-RW.

Compression

Constant Bit Rate: see CBR.

Converter

Copyright

DAM

DAO

DAT

Decoder

Decompression

Digital

Digital Audio Tape: see DAT.

Digital Automatic Music: see DAM.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act: see DMCA.

Digital Rights Management: see DRM.

Digital Signal Processing: see DSP.

Disc At Once: see DAO.

DMCA

Download

DRM

DSP

E

Encode

Encryption

EQ: see Equalizer.

Equalizer

F

File

File Transfer Protocol: see FTP, Protocol.

Firmware

Fraunhoffer Institute, The

Freeware

Frequency Range

FTP

G

Giga

H

HTML

HTTP:

Hypertext Markup Language: see HTML.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol: see HTTP.

I

ID3

Internet Service Provider: see ISP.

ISP: 

J

Jitter

Jukebox

K

kbps

Kilo

kilobytes per second: see kbps.

L

Liquid Audio™

Lossy

M

M3U (.m3u)

Mega

Memory Card

MiniDisc

MMC

Motion Picture Expert Group: see MPEG.

MP3

MPEG-1, audio layer 3: see MP3.

MP3 Player

MP3Pro

MP3 Utility

MPEG

MSAudio

Multimedia Card: see MMC.

N

Normalize

O

OGG Vorbis:

P

Parallel

P2P

Peer-to-Peer: see P2P.

Pirate

Playlist

Plug-in

Preamplifier

Protocol

Q

QDesign

QuickTime^®

R

RA (.ra)

RIAA

Rip

RM (.rm)

Real Audio: see RA.

Real Media: see RM.

Recording Industry Association of America: see RIAA.

Recording Artists Coalition: see RAC.

RAC

S

Sample Rate

SDMI

Secure Digital Card

Secure Digital Music Initiative: see SDMI.

Serial

Shareware

Signal-to-Noise

Skin

SmartMedia

Sound Card

Stream

T

TAO

Track At Once: see TAO.

U

Uniform Resource Locator: see URL.

Universal Serial Bus: see USB.

Upload

URL

USB

V

Variable Bit Rate: see VBR.

VBR

Vocoder

W

WAP

Watermark

WAV (.wav)

Wave-form Audio File: see WAV.

Winamp™

Windows Media Audio: see WMA.

Wireless Application Protocol: see WAP.

WMA (.wma)

WML