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Digital audio terms
Page 11
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 operat-
ing system on a computer. The Rio firmware controls everything from the liquid crystal display
and codec support to the Rio's other functions.
How to upgrade the Rio firmware
Gracenote
Gracenote, formerly known as the CD Database (CDDB), is a vast database of CD informa-
tion that includes artist, disc name, song title, and other information. Gracenote supports hun-
dreds of third party software CD players. Software programs use a CDs serial number to
search the Gracenote Web site for CD information. Access to the Gracenote service is
offered free of charge to end-users. Visit the
Gracenote Web site
for more information.
MP3
MPEG-1, Layer 3 Audio (MP3) is a 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 virtu-
ally no loss in quality. This digital sound encoding and compression process was developed
by the Fraunhofer Institut fur Integrierte Schaltungen and Thomson Multimedia. MP3 uses
perceptual audio coding and psychoacoustic compression to remove the redundant and irrel-
evant parts of a sound signal that the human ear doesn't hear. It also adds a Modified Dis-
crete Cosine Transform (MDCT) that implements a filter bank, increasing the frequency
resolution 18 times higher than that of layer 2. The MP3 encoding process is well suited for
the transfer of high quality audio files with small file size over the Internet.
Playlist
Playlists let you organize lists of tracks to play in the order you choose. Playlists make it eas-
ier to manage large collections of music.
SDMI
The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) is a forum of over 130 companies in the fields of
recorded audio content, computers, and consumer electronics, for the purpose of developing
an integrated method of copyright protection technology that can be used worldwide. SDMI is
working to create a framework for preventing improper usage of audio files and to promote
legal music distribution services.
Skin
The skin is the software option that determines how digital audio player software applications
appear on your computer screen. Some applications allow you to customize the color and
window design of your software by changing the skin. Some skins omit certain playback con-
trols for simplicity.
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