 list of audio terminology
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Baffle: A surface used to mount a loudspeaker.
Balanced: Referring to wiring: Audio signals require two wires. In an unbalanced line the shield is one of those wires. In a balanced line, there are two wires plus the shield. For the system to be balanced requires balanced electronics and usually employs XLR connectors. Balanced lines are less apt to pick up external noise. This is usually not a factor in home audio, but is a factor in professional audio requiring hundreds or even thousands of feet of cabling. Many higher quality home audio cables terminated with RCA jacks are balanced designs using two conductors and a shield instead of one conductor plus shield.
Bandwidth: The total frequency range of any system. Usually specified as something like: 20-20,000Hz plus or minus 3 db.
Band-pass Enclosure: A multi-chambered ported system.
Band-pass filter: An electric circuit designed to pass only middle frequencies.
Bass Blockers: Commercial name for auto-sound first order high pass crossovers (non-polarized capacitors), generally used on midbass or dash speakers to keep them from trying to reproduce deep bass.
Bass Reflex: A type of loudspeaker that uses a port or duct to augment the low-frequency response. Opinions vary widely over the "best" type of bass cabinet, but much has to do with how well a given design, such as a bass reflex is implemented.
Beaming: A tendency of a loudspeaker to concentrate the sound in a narrow path instead of spreading it.
Bessel crossover: A type of crossover design characterized by having a linear or maximally flat phase response. Linear phase response results in constant time-delay (all frequencies within the passband are delayed the same amount). Consequently the value of linear phase is it reproduces a near-perfect step response with no overshoot or ringing. The downside of the Bessel is a slow roll-off rate. The same circuit complexity in a Butterworth response rolls off much faster.
Bi-amplify: The use of two amplifiers, one for the lows, one for the highs in a speaker system. Could be built into the speaker design or accomplished with the use of external amplifiers and electronic crossovers.
Bi-wiring: The use of two pairs of speaker wire from the same amplifier to separate bass and treble inputs on the speaker.
Blu-ray Disc: A Blu-ray Disc (also called BD) is a high-density optical disc format for the storage of digital media, including high-definition video. The name Blu-ray Disc™ is derived from the blue-violet laser which, because of its short wavelength (405 nm), allows substantially more data to be stored than a comparably sized DVD. A Blu-ray Disc can store approximately 5X as much data as a DVD which uses a red laser with a wavelength of 650 nm. A benchmark for the purpose of calculating duplication speeds, a Blu-ray Disc™ takes about 45 minutes to burn its 25 GB of data at a 2X speed. On average, a single-layer Blu-ray Disc™ can hold a High Definition feature of 135 minutes using MPEG-2, with room for an additional 2 hours of bonus material in standard definition quality. A dual layer disc will extend this number up to 3 hours in HD quality and 9 hours of SD bonus material.
BNC: A type of connection often used in instrumentation and sometimes in digital audio. BNC connectors sometimes are used for digital connections such as from a CD Transport to the input of a DAC.
Boomy: Listening term, refers to an excessive bass response that has a peak(s) in it.
Bright: Listening term. Usually refers to too much upper frequency energy.
Bridging: Combining both left and right stereo channels on an automotive amplifier into one higher powered mono channel. When an amplifier is bridged, the impedance that the amplifier actually "sees" is calculated based upon the output of both stereo channels. Here is a simple formula to help define this:
Bridged Mono Impedance = (Y / X)/2
Y = impedance of driver(s) (both drivers should be identical)
X = # of drivers in circuit
One 4 ohm sub in bridged mono is equal to hooking up two 2 ohm subs in stereo, one to each channel.
Butterworth crossover: A type of crossover circuit design having a maximally flat magnitude response, i.e., no amplitude ripple in the passband. This circuit is based upon Butterworth functions, also know as Butterworth polynomials.
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