Terms used in the following discussions may be unfamiliar. Some of the
more important ones are defined below.
Amplitude
The height of a waveform, which corresponds to the amount of voltage or
current in the electronic circuit.
Amplitude modulation
A means of producing special audio effects by using one channel to alter
the amplitude of another.
Channel
One "unit" of the audio device.
Cycle
One repetition of a waveform.
Frequency
The number of times per second a cycle repeats.
Frequency modulation
A means of producing special audio effects by using one channel to
affect the period of the waveform produced by another channel.
Period
The time elapsed between the output of successive sound samples,
in units of system clock ticks.
Precedence
Priority of the user of a sound channel.
Sample
Unit of audio data, one of the fixed-interval points on the waveform.
Waveform
Graph that shows a model of how the amplitude of a sound varies over
time-usually over one cycle.