Mackie SR408 / SR568 Owner's Manual - Page 70

reverberation, reverb The sound remaining in a room after the source of sound is stopped. It's what you hear in a large tiled room immediately after you've clapped your hands. Reverberation and echo are terms that can be used interchangeably, but in audio parlance a distinction is usually made: reverberation is considered to be a diffuse, continuously smooth decay of sound, whereas echo is a distinct, recognizable repetition of a word, note, phrase or sound. Reverberation and echo can be added in sound mixing by sending the original sound to an electronic (or electronic/acoustic) system that mimics natural reverberation, or worse. The added reverb is returned to the blend through additional mixer inputs. Highly reverberant rooms are called live; rooms with very little reverberation are called dead. A sound source without added reverb is dry; one with reverb or echo added is wet. RMS An acronym for root mean square, a conventional way to measure AC voltage and audio signal voltage. Most AC voltmeters are calibrated to read RMS volts. Other conventions include average volts, peak volts and peak-to-peak volts. send A term used to describe a secondary mix and output of the input signals, typically used for foldback monitors, headphone monitors, or effects devices. Mackie mixers call it an Aux Send. shelving A term used to describe the shape of an equalizer's frequency response. A shelving equalizer's response begins to rise (or fall) at some frequency and continues to fall (or rise) until it reaches the shelf frequency, at which point the response curve flattens out and remains flat to the limits of audibility. If you were to graph the response, it would look like a shelf. Or more like a shelf than a hiking boot. The EQ controls on your stereo are usually shelving equalizers. See also peaking and dipping. slap, slapback A single-delay echo without any repeats. Also see echo. solo Italian for alone. In audio mixers, a solo circuit allows the engineer to listen to individual channels, buses or other circuits singly or in combination with other soloed signals. SR An acronym for Sound Reinforcement, which refers to a system of amplifying acoustic and electronic sounds from a performance or speech so that a large audience can hear clearly. Or, in popular music, so that a large audience can be excited, stunned or even partially deafened by the tremendous amplification. Means essentially the same thing as PA (Public Address). stereo Believe it or not, stereo comes from a Greek word that means solid. We use stereo or stereophony to describe the illusion of a continuous, spacious soundfield that is seemingly spread around the listener by two or more related audio signals. In practice, stereo often is taken to simply mean two channels. sweep EQ An equalizer that allows you to "sweep" or continuously vary the frequency of one or more sections. symmetrically balanced See balanced. tinnitus The ringing in the ears that is produced with prolonged exposure to high volumes. A sound in the ears, such as buzzing, ringing, or whistling, caused by volume knob abuse! trim In audio mixers, the gain adjustment for the first amplification stage of the mixer. The trim control helps the mixer cope with the widely varying range of input signals that come from real-world sources. It is important to set the trim control correctly; its setting determines the overall noise performance in that channel of the mixer. See mic preamp. 70