Appendix A - Glossary Of Terms - M-Audio Dman 2044 Manual

In an effort to eek out the best possible graphics
Possible Cause 3:
benchmark test results, many accelerated graphics cards hog the PCI bus
in order to improve their performance. As a result, other hardware in the
computer may be starved of bus and/or processor time. When starva-
tion becomes bad enough, audio recording and/or playback can not
keep up with the data requirements and this results in audible clicks,
pops and other audio artifacts. This is not the fault of the audio card.
Usually this problem is fixed by turning off or reducing the amount of
graphics acceleration used by the graphics card. In Windows 95, many
video cards will allow you to make this adjustment via Settings | Control
Panel | System | Performance | Graphics. In other products you may be
required to edit the SYSTEM.INI or other file. Please contact your graph-
ics card manufacturer regarding this adjustment.

Appendix A - Glossary of Terms

For those of you who do not speak "digital audio tech" (yet), we will
define some often-used terms here:
A/D Converter: A/D stands for Analog-to-Digital. An A/D converter
takes an analog audio input and converts it into numerical (digital) form.
The resulting numerical form is easily manipulated and stored by a host
computer.
D/A Converter: D/A stands for Digital-to-Analog. A D/A converter
takes numeric (digital) data as its input, then converts it and outputs it as
analog audio.
DSP: Digital Signal Processor. A processor optimized and tweaked for
use with complex signals such as audio.
Full-Duplex: The ability to record and playback at the same time. If you
are using a multi-track digital recording program, this is a very impor-
tant feature. Full-duplex would, for example, allow you to hear previ-
ously recorded vocal tracks while you are recording the harmonies.
PCI Architecture: PCI (Peripheral Connect Interface) is a high-speed bus
that supports Plug-and-Play. PCI is newer and faster than the ISA bus
which is in the original PC compatible computers.
Sample Rate: The rate at which analog audio is converted to numeric
data, or vice-versa. The higher the sample rate, the more accurate the
audio reproduction. As of the writing of this manual, audio CD's are
recorded at 44.1 kHz sampling rate.
34