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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 channel
surround sound. Derived from 2 “matrixed” channels.
DTS - “Digital Theater System” similar to DD, but with less compres-
sion. 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 picture
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”. Usu-
ally measured in dBs.
Sub - Short for subwoofer
“5.1” - Reference to 5 full range channels and one bass only channel.