M-Audio Dman 2044 [34/36] Appendix a glossary of terms

Possible Cause 3: In an effort to eek out the best possible graphics

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.