The Book of Audacity

Audio Effects Glossary

Audio effects have their own terminology, so let’s take a look at some of the more common terms you’re going to encounter with audio plug-ins.

All-pass filter

A filter that passes all frequencies equally and applies phase shifting. Reverberation effects use all-pass filters.

Decay

Decay controls how quickly or how slowly a sound fades away.

Delay

This controls the degree of reverberation and how it sounds, whether it’s just a bright lively touch or an overdone muddy mess. In the olden days, this was done with tape loops and changing the spacing between the recording and playback heads on tape recorders. Now all you do is move a slider or type a numeric value in seconds or fractions of seconds.

Four basic audio waveforms

A waveform ...