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Page 21
A Glossary of Home Theater Terms
Don’t feel guilty if you want to skip over the below. But if you are curious
about what some of the terms and abbreviations stand for, read on:
CD - Compact Disc, the music standard and capable of great sound. Now joined
by other disk-based high-resolution music alternatives that can really make sub-
woofers great audio upgrades.
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 7 channels of movie or music audio .
DPL - “Dolby Pro Logic”. The last generation of non-discreet channel surround
sound. Derived from 2 “matrixed” analog channels.
DTS - “Digital Theater System” similar to DD, but often with less compression.
Many feel it sounds better than DD, but you be the judge.
DVD - Amazing little video disk, “DVD”, technically doesn’t “mean” anything (but
practically, it changed the face of home entertainment)!
HD - High definition. Generally relating to the new generation of much improved
movie resolution, but often accompanied by new improved audio resolution for-
mats.
HT - “Home Theater”. What you make of it. But a home (theater) without a sub-
woofer, isn’t quite up to our definition!
Hz - Short for Hertz, the German scientist who came up with a scheme of measur-
ing the frequency of sound waves. 15-30 Hz is very low bass and very rare in any-
thing but movie soundtracks. 60-80 Hz is generally considered mid-bass above
which most large full range speakers can easily produce. The real fun (and most
common) deep bass, is in the middle of that range, call it 20-40 Hz.
LFE - “Low Frequency Effects” are the “.1” channel in 5.1 or 6.1 or even 7.1
channel soundtracks. 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 meas-
ured in dBs. SPL meters are critical to setting your surround sound. Doing so by
ear is nearly impossible.
Sub - Short for subwoofer