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Page 11
A Glossary of Home Theater Terms
Frankly, don’t feel guilty if you want to skip over the below. But if
you are curious about just what some of the terms and abbreviations
stand for, read on:
dB - Short for “deci-Bell” a unit of sound, a 3dB increase takes twice
the acoustic power to attain!
DD - “Dolby Digital”, the most popular form of digital surround
sound, usually found on DVD soundtracks. Actually a compression
algorithm that can provide 1 to 6 channels of movie audio .
DPL - “Dolby Pro Logic”. The last generation of non-discreet chan-
nel surround sound. Derived from 2 “matrixed” channels.
DTS - “Digital Theater System” similar to DD, but with less com-
pression. Many feel it sounds better than DD, but you be the judge.
DVD - Amazing little video disk, DVD, doesn’t “mean” anything!
HT - “Home Theater”. What you make of it. But a home (theater)
without a subwoofer, isn’t quite up to our definition!
Hz - Short for Hertz, the German scientist who came up with a
scheme of measuring the frequency of sound waves. 15-30 Hz is very
low bass and very rare in anything but movie soundtracks. 60 Hz is
generally considered mid-bass above which most large full range
speakers can easily produce. The real fun (and real) bass, is in the
middle of that range, call it 20-40 Hz.
LD - Laserdisc, grandfather to the DVD. Still capable of great pic-
ture and sound. Increasingly going the way of the 33 1/3 LP.
LFE - “Low Frequency Effects” are the “.1” channel in 5.1 sound
tracks. If you have a sub selected in your system, any LFE signal goes
to the subwoofer. The sub may get bass from other channels as well
however, depending on the “size” of speakers in your set-up.
RMS - A common and accurate way to rate the power of an amplifier.
Literally “Root Means Squared”. Typically measured in “watts”.
SPL - “Sound Pressure Level”, a fancy way of saying “Volume”.
Usually measured in dBs.
Sub - Short for subwoofer
“5.1” - Reference to 5 full range channels and one bass only channel.