Rio Audio SP350 - Manual (Page 22)

Index
Glossary of Digital Audio Terms
22 Contents
RioV
olt MP3/WMA >> CD Pla
yer
Encoding, or “ripping” and encoding
Encoding, sometimes referred to as “ripping” and
encoding, refers to extracting audio from a music
CD (ripping), and converting it (encoding) into a
compressed digital audio format like MP3 or WMA.
Firmware
Firmware is software—programs or data—that has
been written onto read-only memory (ROM).
Firmware is a combination of software and
hardware that is comparable to an operating system
on a computer. The RioVolt firmware controls
everything from the liquid crystal display and codec
support to the RioVolt’s other functions.
Upgrading the RioVolt firmware
ID3 Tag
The ID3 tag is the part of the encoded MP3 file that
contains information about the digital music file
such as song title, artist, album title, encoding
bitrate, track time duration, and so on.
MP3
MP3 is short for Moving Pictures Experts Group
Audio Layer 3. MP3 is the most well known
compressed digital audio file format. This format
allows for near “CD quality” sound, but at a fraction
of the size of normal audio files. MP3 conversion of
an audio track from CD-ROM reduces the file size by
approximately a 12:1 ratio with virtually no
perceptible loss in quality. This digital sound
encoding and compression process was developed
by the Fraunhofer Institut fur Integrierte
Schaltungen and Thomson Multimedia. MP3
compression removes the redundant and irrelevant
parts of a sound signal that the human ear doesn't
hear. The MP3 encoding process is well suited for
the transfer of high quality audio files with small file
size over the Internet.
Red Book
The specification for audio (CD-DA) compact discs.
Treble
Treble is the high notes of the sound spectrum.
Increasing the treble value will raise the levels of
the high sounds in your music files.
VBR
Variable Bitrate (VBR) encoding converts tracks at a
variable rate, using higher bitrate encoding for
complex portions and lower bitrate encoding for
pauses in songs.
WMA
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is the compressed
audio format created by Microsoft as an alternative
to MP3. WMA offers greater file compression than
MP3, enabling you to store more music on your PC
or writable CDs.