Glossary
This glossary is an editorial index, not a generated term dump. Start with the grouped guides below, then follow the related links inside each page when you need implementation detail.
New to audio analysis?
Read Audio Basics first, then MIR Overview. If you are here for the mastering demo, start with What Is Mastering?.
Quick Lookup
| Looking for | Go to |
|---|---|
| Samples, sample rate, Nyquist, bit depth, frequency and harmonics, phase and polarity, dB and dBFS, peak vs RMS, clipping, headroom, latency | Audio Basics |
| LUFS, integrated loudness, LRA, the loudness gate | LUFS, LRA |
| True peak, dBTP, inter-sample peak, limiter ceiling | True Peak |
| Crest factor, dynamic range | Crest Factor, Dynamic Range |
| Stereo width, correlation, phase cancellation | Mono Compatibility |
| Input gain, trim, headroom between stages | Gain Staging |
| Fader, pan, inserts vs sends, buses | Mixing Basics, Buses and Sends |
| BPM, beats, onsets | Tempo and BPM, Onset Detection |
| Key, chroma, chords | Key Detection, Chord Recognition |
STFT, spectrogram, nFft, hopLength | Spectrogram and STFT |
| Mel, MFCC, timbre | Mel, MFCC, and Timbre |
| F0, pitch tracking | Melody and Pitch |
| Semitones, cents, MIDI note numbers, formants | Editing Basics |
| Denoise, declip, declick, dehum, dereverb | Repair and Input Controls |
| RT60, EDT, clarity | Reverberation Time, Clarity and Definition |
Foundations
These pages cover the signal and analysis concepts that recur across the API, CLI, WASM, and browser demos.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Audio Basics | Samples and sample rate, bit depth, mono/stereo and sample frames, frequency and harmonics, time vs frequency domain (Nyquist, phase, polarity), amplitude and dB (peak, RMS, loudness), clipping, headroom, and latency. |
| MIR Overview | BPM, beats, onsets, key, chords, chroma, FFT, STFT, spectrograms, MFCC, CQT, VQT, HPSS, pitch, and sections. |
| Mixing Basics | Tracks and channel strips, trim, fader and gain staging, pan, inserts vs sends, buses and subgroups, automation, and metering. |
| Editing Basics | Pitch vs time, semitones and cents, MIDI note numbers, formant, and samples vs seconds. |
| Browser Local Processing | What stays local in the browser demos, what still loads from the network, and the tradeoffs of local WASM processing. |
Analysis Guides
These pages expand the MIR (Music Information Retrieval) terms used by the analyzer, realtime views, and feature-extraction APIs.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Spectrogram and STFT | FFT, STFT windows, nFft, hopLength, spectrograms, CQT, and VQT. |
| Onset Detection | Onsets, transients, onset-strength envelopes, and why tempo starts there. |
| Tempo and BPM | BPM estimation, tempograms, autocorrelation, confidence, and half/double-tempo ambiguity. |
| Beats and Downbeats | Beat tracking, dynamic programming, meter phase, and downbeat estimation. |
| Meter and Grouping | Time signatures, beat units, accent grouping, and scoring a meter over a beat series. |
| Chroma Features | Pitch classes, chromagrams, and why chroma powers key/chord analysis. |
| Key Detection | Chroma-profile key estimation, candidate keys, profile families, and confidence. |
| Chord Recognition | Chord templates, beat-synchronous chroma, smoothing, HMM options, and segment confidence. |
| Mel, MFCC, and Timbre | Mel scaling, MFCCs, spectral centroid, flatness, and timbre descriptors. |
| Melody and Pitch | F0, YIN, pYIN, monophonic pitch tracking, voicing, and melody contours. |
| Section and Structure | Boundary detection, self-similarity, repetition, energy, and section labels. |
Mixing Guides
These pages expand the mixing-engine terms — the channel strip, routing, image, and metering — used by the Mixing Engine guide.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Channel Strip | The fixed strip signal order, why it decides what each control does, and PFL/AFL cue monitoring. |
| Buses and Sends | Master/aux/submix roles, pre/post-fader sends, FX buses, and VCA groups. |
| Pan and Stereo Width | Pan modes, pan law, and stereo width vs mono compatibility. |
| Automation and Metering | Automation curves, typed automation-lane targets, goniometer, correlation, and true-peak metering. |
Editing Guides
These pages expand the editing-DSP terms behind the Editing DSP guide.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Time Stretch and Pitch Shift | Phase vocoder, resampling, the time/pitch trade, and artifacts. |
| Pitch Correction and Note Editing | MIDI-targeted correction, note regions, and sample-accurate edits. |
| Voice and Formant | Formants, the vocal tract, and pitch vs formant independence. |
Repair Guides
Repair removes damage from a source before tone, dynamics, and limiting. The glossary page explains the six-stage chain and why its order is fixed; the guides show how to measure a recording and apply each stage.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Repair and Input Controls | The six-stage repair chain, the denoise depth key, and input gain before the main chain. |
| Audio Repair Workflow | Choosing, measuring, and applying the repair stages. |
| Repairing Broadband Noise and Hum | Detecting a noise floor or mains hum and choosing the matching stage. |
| Repairing Clipping, Clicks, and Crackle | Detecting and repairing impulsive defects with declip, declick, and decrackle. |
| Repairing Diffuse Reverb | Measuring a late diffuse tail and configuring the offline dereverberator. |
Instruments and MIDI
These pages explain how libsonare turns MIDI into sound — the built-in NativeSynth, the SoundFont player, and the MIDI vocabulary they share.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Synthesis Basics | Oscillators, filters, the synthesis families NativeSynth uses, and patch fields versus engine parameters. |
| Envelopes and Modulation | ADSR and DAHDSR envelopes, one-shot notes, LFOs, per-voice drift, velocity, key tracking, and the mod matrix. |
| MIDI Basics | Notes, velocity, channels, CC, program change, banks, General MIDI, pitch bend, and MIDI 2.0. |
| SoundFont and Sampled Instruments | Sampled vs synthesized sound, SF2 banks and programs, and the General MIDI fallback. |
| GM and GS | What a standard that numbers instruments promises: program numbers, the drum channel, Bank Select and variation tones, and what GS adds. |
| Physical Modeling | Computing the instrument instead of replaying a recording: the waveguide loop, continuous expression, and the cost inversion against sampling. |
Arrangement and Projects
These pages expand the headless-DAW terms used by Project Editing, Recording and Takes, and Project Bounce.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Clips and Tracks | The project model: tracks, clips, the timeline, MIDI destinations, clip edits, source metadata, and bounded undo history. |
| Takes and Comping | Multiple recorded takes in a clip, the active take, comp segments, and loop recording. |
| Warp and Tempo Sync | Warp modes, anchors, tempo maps, time signatures, and pitch-preserving stretch. |
| Bounce and Rendering | Rendering an arrangement to audio, the mixer scene, instrument bounces, and latency compensation. |
Realtime Guides
These pages expand the realtime/streaming terms used by StreamAnalyzer, the RealtimeEngine, and the AudioWorklet path.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Streaming Analysis | Blocks, frames, hops, updating estimates, and compact frame reads. |
| Realtime Engine | Transport, clip scheduling, the metronome, and telemetry. |
| Realtime Safety | The audio-callback deadline, no-allocation/lock-free rules, and the AudioWorklet. |
Room Acoustics
These pages expand the room-acoustic terms used by the Spatial Room Scanner and the Room Acoustics guide — what a room's decay reveals about its size, surfaces, and the distance to a source.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Reverberation Time (RT60 and EDT) | RT60, early decay time, the T20/T30 extrapolation, and why the two measures disagree. |
| Clarity and Definition (C50, C80, D50) | Early-to-late energy ratios for speech and music, and definition as a percentage. |
| Source Distance and DRR | Direct-to-reverberant ratio, critical distance, and why one channel resolves distance but not direction. |
| Spaced Receivers and Inter-Channel Coherence | The stereo receiver pair behind roomMorphStereo and the room inserts, receiverSpacingM, and how spacing sets where the two reverb tails stop moving together. |
| Room Geometry and Volume | The equivalent shoebox, volume, and Sabine's volume/absorption trade-off. |
| Per-Band Decay and Absorption | Per-band RT60, absorption coefficients, and the high-frequency rolloff. |
| Inverse Room Estimation | Impulse-response (IR) based vs blind estimation, and how to read the confidence score. |
Mastering Concepts
These guides explain the listening and measurement ideas behind the mastering demo.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| What Is Mastering? | A fuller introduction to mastering as a final delivery process. |
| The Mastering Chain | The order the mastering stages run in and how the demo exposes them. |
| LUFS | Integrated loudness and common delivery targets. |
| True Peak | Inter-sample peak safety and why dBTP differs from sample peak. |
| Loudness Matching and A/B Comparison | Level-matched before/after listening, so decisions are not driven by louder-is-better bias. |
| Reference Track | Using a finished release as a tonal and loudness anchor. |
| True Peak Safety | Choosing ceilings that survive encoding and playback conversion. |
| Dynamic Range | Reading movement and density beyond loudness alone. |
| Crest Factor | Peak-to-average contrast and what it says about punch. |
| Mono Compatibility | Checking whether stereo width survives mono playback. |
| Gain Staging | Keeping levels sensible before, during, and after processing. |
| Air Band | High-frequency openness and why it needs restraint. |
Mastering Feature Guides
These pages group controls by how they are used in the chain. Individual parameters are intentionally not split into thin generated pages.
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| Repair and Input Controls | Input gain, denoise, source clipping, and preparation before the main chain. |
| Dynamics Controls | Threshold, ratio, attack, release, knee, gain reduction, punch, and multiband compression. |
| Crossover Slope and Mode | How multiband processors split bands: slope in dB/oct, Linkwitz-Riley, Butterworth, Bessel and linear-phase FIR, and their latency and phase costs. |
| Tone and Air Controls | Tilt EQ, exciter amount, air-band amount, and brightness decisions. |
| Stereo, Limiter, and Loudness Controls | Stereo width, limiter ceiling, loudness target, and final rendering. |
| Reference Match | Reference import, level matching, spectral comparison, and match strength. |
| Delivery Targets | Choosing LUFS and true-peak targets for streaming, podcast, club, and archive use. |
| Reading Mastering Meters | LUFS, peak, crest factor, correlation, phase, and stereo image together. |
| Choosing a Mastering Preset | Selecting a starting point without treating presets as finished masters. |
| Mastering Quality Checklist | A final review path before trusting an export. |
| Error Recovery | What to do when decoding, rendering, reference matching, or playback checks fail. |