Fader: Another name for variable attenuator, volume control, or potentiometer (see WFTD archive Potentiometer). A fader works just like a standard potentiometer, only instead of rotating, it slides along a straight path. Faders are most commonly used on mixing boards and graphic equalizers, where it is nice to have both an easy way to move the level up and down, and to provide a sort of graphic representation of the relative levels of many channels (or frequencies in the case of an EQ). Faders have also historically been used on some synthesizers as controllers for various parameters. The name comes from the phrase "fade out." Once faders came into existence it became much easier for an engineer to do a smooth fade out.
Field: In video a field is one of two interlaced images making up a single video frame. The scan lines of each field combine to make one complete image. Fields are thus shown on a television screen at twice the frame rate. In the case of NTSC video used in the United States the field rate is 59.94 Hertz, while the frame rate is 29.97 Frames Per Second (FPS).

Field Effect Transistor (FET)

A particular type of transistor, an FET behaves in a similar fashion to a triode (tube). There are actually several types of FETs, a common one in the pro audio world being the MOSFET (Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor). FETs have a high input impedance, and respond in a linear fashion. This makes them ideal for condenser microphone preamps, as well as for certain power amplifier designs.

Filter

A filter is an electronic device designed to reduce a signal's energy at a specific frequency. A true filter always acts as a subtractive device, not adding anything to the signal. In many filters, an amplifier is often incorporated into the circuit, allowing the frequency to be boosted or cut (active filter). Filters of different frequencies are often combined to create equalizers.

Finalize

This is a word that gets used in many different contexts lately. One company has even used it to name a product. Up until recently, however, its relevance to us was mostly in the domain of recording CDs on a CD recorder. Finalization is the process where an Orange Book disc (one that is in process) is made into a Red Book CD, which is suitable for playback on any CD player. The idea being that finalization is the last step in the process, after which there is no turning back. Finalized WORM discs cannot be changed or updated in any way without rendering them useless. This is because the key ingredient in finalizing a disc is writing the TOC. Sometimes this process is also called "fix-up."

FireWire

A subset of the SCSI-3 standard, also known as IEEE 1394, Firewire is a new high speed data exchange protocol developed at Apple. Occasionally it is referred to as "serial SCSI" because it is a serial protocol and conforms to SCSI standards as well. It is now a common interface on new digital video equipment and is beginning to be used in audio as well. FireWire is fast: it starts at 100 Megabits per second and goes on up past 400 Mbs, easily handling the bandwidth required for a 30 frame-per-second 640x480 pixel datastream from a prosumer video camera. FireWire supports asynchronous (see WFTD archive asynchronous) transfers, as well as isochronous (see WFTD archive isochronous) transfers so that a stream of video from a video camera can co-exist on the same FireWire bus with another sending device, yet the bus will still carry the video images continuously without discontinuities. Another benefit of FireWire is that it is a hot swappable technology (see WFTD archive hot swap) and allows 63 devices on a buss with auto termination and identification.

5.1

A subset of the Dolby AC-3 sound playback standard (a.k.a. Dolby Digital), and the specific format sound data is in that corresponds to that standard. This is the current state of the art home theater surround sound technology. It means that there are five channels of information (left, center, right, left rear, right rear) and one active sub channel (the .1 channel). It is also a major standard that is becoming part of the DVD standard, which means there will be numerous releases in this format for the next few years.

Flange/Flanging

A flange is the metal rim or the reel part of a reel to reel tape (also called open reel tape), as opposed to the hub. Years ago when tape machines were used to create delays in audio production a process called flanging was invented. It consisted of recording the same signal on two tapes each playing together and then, using pressure to one of the reel flanges, briefly slowing down one of the machines. The short timing discrepancies that result produce a very pronounced comb filter effect. The effect was often modulated by alternating pressure to each machine's reels. One machine would slow down relative to the other, and then the second machine would be slowed beyond the first. It was also possible to route some of the signal being played back into the recording circuit to provide regeneration and resonance effects. Later electronic flangers were invented that used a modulated analog or digital delay line, which was mixed back with the dry signal. While much more convenient than the old open reel approach many engineers agree that the electronic units have never sounded as good as the "reel" thing.

Flat Response

A piece of gear (or a system) is said to have flat response when it outputs all frequencies at equal levels, assuming that a flat signal was used as input. That is to say, no frequency is boosted or cut in level by the "natural" frequency response of the gear. This is desirable for most studio situations; if a mix sounds good on a "flat" system, it should translate well to an end listener's system.

FM Synthesis

The generation of complex signal waveforms in electronic music by Frequency Modulation of one or more sine wave signals by other sine waves (or other waveforms). FM synthesis as a method of generating complex musical waveforms was pioneered by John Chowning at Stanford University, and has shown that an extremely wide variety of waveforms may be made this way. The method also requires significantly less hardware than other similar methods, such as additive synthesis. One of the first commercial synthesizers to use FM synthesis was the Synclavier, produced by the now defunct New England Digital Corp. Easily the most famous FM synthesizer, however, is the Yamaha DX-7. This keyboard brought FM synthesis to the masses and is still renowned for its pure bell like tones and electric piano sounds.

Fool

One who is regarded as deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding.
Someone who thinks he can match wits with Sweetwater's inSync editor.
A member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment, as with jokes or antics; a jester.
A dessert made of stewed or puréed fruit mixed with cream or custard and served cold.
Spud Webb taking a charge from Shaquille O'Neal.
One who has been tricked or made to appear ridiculous; a dupe.
Taking the gig mixing monitors for a 100 piece bottle blowing band.
One who knowingly drives a Crown PSA-2 amplifier to full output into a 20 watt 100 ohm resistive load to "see what will happen."

Formant

The resonant characteristics of an acoustic sound generator. For example, the distinguishing characteristics of the vowel sounds of a human voice, as determined by that person's physical characteristics; what makes each voice sound unique. These characteristics are actually emphasized frequency bands, and are relatively fixed in frequency despite the pitch of the voice changing.

Like the human voice, a musical instrument also has a fixed set of formants, which give it a unique, recognizable tonal color or timbre. It is this set of formants that allow us to recognize an instrument regardless of the pitch it is playing; the tonal color remains relatively static.

This brings to light one of the potential problems with samplers: When you digitally transpose a sound up or down, you are also transposing the formants associated with that sound, giving us the infamous "Jolly Green Giant" or "chipmunk" effect. When you transpose a vocal sample, you are essentially changing the size of that person's head (something they might not appreciate...)!

Some devices, such as Digitech's Vocalist series of pitch transposers, attempt to control formants when changing pitch, resulting in a more natural sounding transposed note.

Format

The organization of information according to preset specifications. In digital audio and computer applications it pertains to the dividing of media into marked segments and determining how data will be arranged on it. The process known as formatting prepares a storage medium, usually a disk, to record data. In this process, the drive writes special information onto the recording surface(s) in order to divide it into areas (called blocks) that are ready to accept user data. When you format a disk, the operating system erases all bookkeeping information on the disk, tests the disk to make sure all sectors are reliable, marks any bad sectors, and creates internal address tables that it later uses to locate information. On many systems it is possible to perform either a high level or low level format. A high-level format generally only erases the address tables of a disk, which makes it appear to be blank even though the data hasnÕt been erased. Hard disks also have a low-level format, which sets certain properties of the disk such as the interleave factor. The low-level format also determines things like what type of disk controller can access the disk and, last but not least, does zero all data.

Formatted Capacity

The capacity of a drive after it is formatted for a particular type of computer or computer system. Most hard disks have their capacities rated in absolute terms. In other words, they are rated at the total raw amount of storage space available. However, when a drive is formatted, various types of data are stored on the drive that are required by the formatting device to be able to read and write data to it. Not only does this data take up some space, but space is also lost due to how blocks of available space are allocated, which is different for each type of system. The amount of available space that shows up after being formatted on a specific type of system is the formatted capacity.

Fragmentation

When a computer write or re-writes a file to a hard disk, it doesn't necessarily write the file as one contiguous block of information. For a variety of reasons, it may put different pieces of the file in different places on the drive. More and more files become fragmented as time passes. This results in more wear and tear on the drive mechanism as it jumps around to read the files, and also in a significant slowdown in access times. The solution to this problem is to defragment your drive. Defragmenting (also known as "defragging" or "optimizing") means to re-order the files so that they are each stored as one contiguous chunk of data. A variety of disk utilities will perform this function for you, one of the more popular packages being Norton Utilities. One of the things that fragments a drive fastest is hard disk recording. It is wise to be aware of how fragmented your drive is when recording, as this can seriously affect system performance. Some manufacturers recommend optimizing if your drive has as little as 5% fragmentation...

Frame

In video/film a frame is one single, complete image. In video a frame is made up of two video "fields" and many scan lines. It is represented by one complete SMPTE Time Code word for synchronization purposes. In digital audio a frame is a "slice" of digital information. In standard compact discs (Red Book) a frame covers six sampling periods, or 136 microseconds.

Frame Count

A quantity of frames that are counted in film, video, and audio per second. Frame count should not be confused with Frame Rate or Frame Speed, though these words are sometimes used interchangeably. Frame count actually has nothing to do with speed. It only pertains to how many unique frame numbers exist per unit of running time (not necessarily real time) of video, film, or audio. Drop Frame Time Code is a unique frame counting method that exists to keep frame numbers aligned to the reality that in NTSC color video the Frame Speed is actually only 29.97 frames per second. This way the time code numbers stay in agreement with real running time.

Frame Rate

Another term that can has been used to mean two different things in our industry. The literal definition of frame rate is the same as "frame speed." Some engineers call it frame speed just to avoid possible confusion. Frame speed is the number of frames that go by in audio, film, or video per unit of real (actual) time (usually one second). 30 fps means that 30 frames occur per second, while 24 fps means 24 frames occur per second. Pretty simple. Unfortunately another distinction, "frame count," can work its way in here too. Frame count is the number of frames that are COUNTED in one running second of audio, video, or film regardless of the actual running speed. Film, audio, and all different types of video use different frame counts. Drop frame time code is an example of a frame count where the number of frames that occur per second of video (not real) time are altered to account for slightly slower running speed of color NTSC video. Non-drop is another frame counting scheme. The 24 frames per second used in film is both its frame count and its frame rate. So when video guys refer to 30 drop frame they are speaking in terms of frame count. When they say 29.97 they are speaking in terms of frame rate. Unfortunately both get called frame rate, which has served to make the issue even more confusing than it already is.

Free Field

A speaker or sound source is operating in a free field if there are no reflecting surfaces around the source. Technically, there is no such thing as a true free field - there's always SOMETHING for sound to bounce off of (although an anechoic chamber comes pretty close) and anytime there is a reflective surface, the response of the speaker is being changed.

FreeMIDI

FreeMIDI is a complete MIDI operating system for the Macintosh and handles all MIDI communication between various pieces of hardware, including the Mac CPU and MIDI interfaces, and any Free MIDI compatible MIDI software. It ships free of charge and is automatically installed with all Mark of the Unicorn music software products. It comes in the form of a FreeMIDI system extension, an optional OMS emulator extension (to emulate the Opcode MIDI System), and a FreeMIDI Folder, which resides in the top level of the System Folder. FreeMIDI automatically detects what type of MIDI interface is connected to the Macintosh modem and/or printer port, automatically detects what MIDI devices are connected to interface (it "knows" over 200 types of devices), and provides the user with a graphical representation of their MIDI studio. It also provides pop-up sound lists for over 100 popular MIDI synthesizers-as, generic support for any General MIDI device, and advanced features such as inter-application communication, and multiple application real-time synchronization.

Frequency

Literally the number of times something occurs per unit of time. In the audio world the frequency of sound vibrations are directly related to what we hear as pitch, though the relationship is NOT linear. It is also inversely related to wavelength. We use the word frequency, and the values associated with it, as an objective way to speak about sound characteristics. Saying a unit has a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20kHz is much more accepted than specifying the response in terms of pitch.

Frequency Doubling

Generally caused by overloading a low-frequency speaker, frequency doubling makes bass instruments sound an octave higher than they really are. This is because the overdriven speaker is making the second harmonic louder than the fundamental pitch.

Frequency Modulation (FM)

The changing of the frequency of a "carrier" in response to a "modulating" signal, usually an audio waveform. As the modulating signal voltage (amplitude) varies up and down the frequency of the carrier varies up and down from its nominal unmodulated value. In music, vibrato is a form of frequency modulation because it is a periodic variation in frequency (pitch). In FM broadcasting the audio signal is used to modulate a high frequency carrier that is then transmitted. At the receiving end a special circuit called a FM detector, or "discriminator" is used to recover the audio from the modulated signal. FM is considered a better (than AM - Amplitude Modulation) method of transmitting radio and TV signals because the FM signal is not as sensitive to amplitude variations caused by atmospheric interference. FM is also used as a sound synthesis technique (see FM Synthesis).

Frequency Response/Frequency Range

From inSync reader Kevin T. comes the following question (which qualifies as both a WFTD and a TTOTD): What is the difference between frequency response and frequency range as it pertains to studio reference monitors?

Kevin, first of all, thanks for the question! According to the Unabridged inSync Master Dictionary (which we make up as we go...): Frequency Range is the actual span of frequencies that a monitor can reproduce, say from 5 Hz to 22 kHz.

Frequency Response is the Frequency Range versus Amplitude. In other words, at 20 Hz, a certain input signal level may produce 100 dB of output. At 1 kHz, that same input level may produce 102 dB of output. At 10 kHz, 95 dB, and so on. A graph of all the frequencies plotted versus level is the Frequency Response Curve (FRC) of the monitor.

When you see a Frequency Response specification for a monitor, the manufacturer is telling you that for a given input signal, the listed range of frequencies will produce output within a certain range of levels. For example: 20 Hz to 20 kHz ± 3 dB. For these frequencies, the monitor will output signals that are within a 6 dB (± 3 dB) range. This does not mean that the speaker won't reproduce frequencies outside this range, it will! But frequencies outside the range will be more than 3 dB off from the reference level. For further information, see also May 5th's inSync Word For The Day, "Flat Response", available in the inSync Archives.

FSK

Abbreviation for Frequency Shift Keying. An audio tone (frequency) modulated by a square wave, which is used both for data transfer and also for sequencer and drum machine synchronization. FSK is the sound that you hear your fax or modem making as it establishes communication. In the early days of electronic music, before MIDI (yes, I was there), drum machines or sequencers were synchronized to each other or to a tape machine via this method. Back then the only information transmitted was a rate which was interpreted as tempo by the machines. There was no location information included so the song always had to be started from the very beginning in order to achieve proper sync. If there was any drop out or glitch along the way one had to go back and start at the very beginning of the song to reestablish sync. It was cumbersome and unreliable to say the least, and that is why formats such as SFSK, DTL, SMPTE, and MTC were later adopted.

Full Code

A phrase used in digital audio applications that means a full digital signal. Digital devices (in theory) have a very finite and exact amount of dynamic range depending upon how many bits are used in recording (8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, etc). A Full Code signal is the maximum theoretical output of a given digital device. This is when all of the one's and zero's of the digital signal become one's for a given sample. There is no room for any more amplitude once Full Code is reached. If any more level is applied to A/D converters once Full Code has been reached they will produce numeric values that will result in massive distortion of the signal. Of course, you must remember that there are over 44 thousand such samples per second (depending upon your sample rate) so any one sample going over Full Code is not going to be audible. A few hundred or thousand clipped samples, however, is quite audible.

Full Duplex

Full Duplex is a term that comes to us from the telecommunication industry. It is the ability of a line or channel to simultaneously transmit in both directions. In the music industry, we most commonly see this term applied to computer sound cards. A "Full Duplex" audio card is able to both record and playback at the same time - a handy feature if you are performing overdubs!

Full Normal

A patchbay term that more specifically defines a normal. The terms normal and full normal are often used interchangeably, but because normal is a generic term and could also mean half normal, it is appropriate to use the term full normal. In a full normal patch bay point, plugging a plug into either the top or bottom row of the front patch connectors will break the normal connection between them.

Fundamental

In audio the fundamental is the frequency of the root, or core pitch making up a pitched sound. Except for a few special cases the fundamental is always the lowest frequency making up any pitched sound and is generally the strongest pitch we hear (in a strict Physics sense the fundamental is, by definition, the lowest pitch of a sound). Most sounds are comprised of a combination of a fundamental pitch and various multiples of it known as overtones. When overtones are added to the fundamental, which occurs in almost all naturally occurring sounds, the character of the sound is changed. The relationship between the fundamental and the overtones are what gives each sound its basic timbre.

Fuse

A word that can mean several different things depending upon the context. For our purposes we are concerned with the definition of a fuse as a component in an electrical circuit whose function is to fail in an overload condition and thus prevent more substantial components from failing. Fuses have historically been used for safety reasons. In electrical wiring, for example, a limit must be placed on the amount of current allowed to pass through wire of a given gauge (thickness) and insulating material. If too much current is allowed to flow, the wire can become hot enough to start a fire or cause other problems. Fuses are designed in all shapes and sizes to fail first so overload conditions do not cause damage or produce unsafe conditions. They are often employed in electronic equipment so that a component failure does not cause a cascade affect and take out the entire unit.