Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
29 results found in Audio.
- Acoustic Event Detection (Sound Event Detection, Audio Event Detection, Sound Event Classification)
- The automated process of identifying and classifying specific sounds within an audio stream, such as recognizing a phone ringing, door knocking, fire alarm, or speech from continuous environmental aud…
- Ambient Audio (Ambient Sound, Environmental Audio, Background Audio)
- The background sound of an environment — voices, traffic, water, wind, music, birdsong — captured incidentally rather than as the main focus of a recording. In accessible photography and audiophotogra…
- Audio Description Script (AD Script, Video Description Script, Described Video Script)
- An audio description script is the written text that forms the basis of an audio description track for video content. The script contains narration that describes visual elements — including actions, …
- Audio-to-Haptics Translation (Audio-haptic translation, Audio-to-vibration conversion)
- A class of techniques that convert audio signals — either recordings of real-world interactions or AI-generated sounds — into vibrotactile patterns that can be rendered through actuators embedded in p…
- Bone-Conduction Headset (Bone-conduction headphones, Bone-conduction earphones)
- A headphone that delivers sound by vibrating the bones of the skull and jaw rather than projecting air through the ear canal, leaving the wearer's ears uncovered and able to hear ambient sound. Bone-c…
- Head-related transfer function (HRTF)
- A response function that describes how sound from a specific point in space is filtered by the shape of the outer ear, head, and torso before reaching the eardrum. HRTFs are unique to each individual …
- Mood (Affect, Affective State)
- In affective computing and music research, the emotional quality a stimulus evokes in a listener or viewer, commonly characterized along dimensions such as valence (pleasant–unpleasant) and arousal (c…
- Non-diegetic Sound (Non-diegetic Audio, Extradiegetic Sound)
- Sound in film, television, or games that does not originate from any source within the story world and cannot be heard by the characters - for example, orchestral score, voice-over narration, or added…
- Object-Based Audio (OBA, Object-Based Broadcasting)
- An audio production and delivery paradigm in which speech, music, effects, and ambience are transmitted as discrete objects with metadata describing their role and relationships, rather than as a sing…
- Open Sound Control (OSC)
- An open, network-based protocol for communication between computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices, developed by Matthew Wright and Adrian Freed (1997). OSC sends human-readable add…
- Pitch
- The perceived highness or lowness of a sound, determined primarily by its fundamental frequency (measured in Hertz). Pitch is one of the primary dimensions along which music and speech are organized, …
- Podcast (Podcasting)
- An episodic, on-demand audio programme distributed over the internet, typically via RSS or proprietary platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and BBC Sounds. Podcasts are a dominant form of long-f…
- Psychoacoustics
- The branch of perceptual psychology that studies how humans subjectively perceive sound - loudness, pitch, timbre, spatial location, foreground/background segregation, and masking. Psychoacoustic prin…
- Rhythm-Action Game (Rhythm Game, Music Rhythm Game, Beat-Matching Game)
- A genre of video game in which players must make timed inputs (button presses, key strokes, or physical movements) synchronised with musical beats or rhythmic patterns. Popular examples include Dance …
- Shepard Tone (Shepard Scale, Shepard-Risset Glissando)
- A psychoacoustic auditory illusion created by layering sine waves separated by octaves, producing the paradoxical perception of a tone that continuously rises (or falls) in pitch indefinitely, yet cyc…
- Sound Design (Audio Design)
- The craft of creating, selecting, and arranging audio elements - dialogue, music, ambient sound, foley, and effects - to shape the experience of a film, game, broadcast, or interactive product. For ac…
- Sound localization (Auditory localization, Spatial hearing)
- The ability to identify the direction and distance of a sound source, relying on cues such as interaural time differences, intensity differences, and spectral filtering by the outer ear. Sound localiz…
- Spatial audio beacon (Audio beacon, 3D audio waypoint)
- A virtual sound source placed at a specific geographic location that a user can hear through headphones, providing directional guidance by leveraging spatial audio to indicate the direction and distan…
- Spatialised Audio (Spatial Audio, 3D Audio, Directional Audio)
- Audio technology that places sounds in specific locations in three-dimensional space relative to the listener, creating the perception that sounds come from particular directions or distances. In acce…
- Spatialization (Spatialisation, Audio Spatialization, 3D Audio Spatialization)
- The process of rendering a sound so that it appears to originate from a specific location in three-dimensional space around the listener. Spatialization typically combines head-related transfer functi…