ACRO-NUMB?

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER - An audio component that includes both preamp and power amp in one box.

LEARNING REMOTE/UNIVERSAL REMOTE CONTROL - A universal remote will operate most, if not all, brands of electronics. These are usually programmed at home, by punching the appropriate code into the remote. So if you have a Sony TV, Panasonic VCR, and Sansui receiver, your remote should work them all. You can quite often find that not all of the original remote's features will work, though, unless you have a remote with so many buttons it isn't funny. A learning remote is one you can 'teach' the codes of another brand. This is usually done by pointing the remotes at each other and teaching it the functions of the various buttons.

LETTERBOX - Most often seen on laserdiscs, this is a viewing format that allows you to see the entire widescreen image of a movie without having the edges lopped off as with happens with most videocassettes or movies on TV. Gives you the original director's complete vision for how the production should look. Unfortunately, it leaves blank spaces above and below the picture that causes some people to think you're actually seeing less of the film (because the picture is shorter from top to bottom than a regular TV program). Letterboxed movies are the best, but they also encourage one to spend huge hunks of money on big screen TV's, because a letterboxed "Ben-Hur" just doesn't make it on a 21 inch screen.

LOUDNESS CONTROL - Ever wonder what that little button or switch on your amp really does? It's a bass boost meant to be used at low volumes at which your ear isn't as sensitive to them. You can turn it off once you're around halfway up on your volume control.

MAXIMUM INPUT POWER - Pay attention to this one, speaker buyers. It's the wattage at which your loudspeaker systems turn into little smoking ruins.

MEGABYTE - One million bytes (actually slightly more, but it's never enough).

MEGAHERTZ (MHz) - In computers, this is how quickly your processor (CPU) processes (P.U.'s). The bigger the number, the faster and therefore the better. When comparing these "clock speeds," only pay attention to similar chips, like 486 and 486. Always compare apples with apples.

MIDRANGE - The speaker driver that handles the medium frequencies.

MONAURAL - While this really means "with one ear," a la Vincent Van Gogh, it's generally taken to mean single channel audio, like on old radios, movies, or VCR's. Stereo and quadrophonic double and quadruple the audio channels, giving a "sound stage" that more closely approximates the original signal because you can spread the instruments around and fill the room with ambience. Or so they say.

MTS STEREO/SAP - This is a video term. Most TV's and VCR's sold these days come with an MTS tuner. This means when you see the "in stereo where available" logo on your favourite TV show, you'll be able to hear its glorious sound. MTS stereo will also transmit Dolby Surround-encoded programs. SAP stands for "Second Audio Program," and isn't used nearly as much as it could be. It gives the opportunity for a program to be broadcast in two languages at the same time. It can also be used to give a running commentary to a program that has its regular soundtrack running on the other channel.

MULTIMEDIA - A really nice buzzword that means your computer is capable of more than just putting stuff on your monitor screen. It means you can also access and display video, with stereo audio and all sorts of neat things that seem to grow in number every day.

MUSIC SCAN - A feature that plays the first few seconds of each selection on a tape or CD, it makes it easy to find a particular selection quickly. Assuming, of course, you recognize the first few seconds of the song.

NOISE - There are probably a million legitimate definitions of noise. For TechnoFILE's intents and purposes, noise is anything unwanted in the signal.

OHM - The measurement unit of electrical resistance/impedence. If you really want to know, one ohm is the resistance through which one volt will give a current of one ampere. See, you shouldn't have asked.

OUTPUT SOUND PRESSURE LEVEL - Measured in decibels, this is how loud your speakers will play. The higher the number, the more in danger you are of becoming an incurable Who fan.

PASSIVE RADIATOR - Or, when is a speaker not a speaker? This is a diaphragm that doesn't have the magnets and other stuff that make it a real speaker. They vibrate in concert (no pun intended) with the woofer, augmenting its output. From the front they look pretty much like speakers, but they have nothing behind.

PCMCIA - "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms." Also a new type of storage device or peripheral that's about the size of a credit card. You can get modems, hard drives, and other neat stuff on 'em right now, and Gawd only knows what you'll be able to do with them tomorrow.

PEAK LEVEL SEARCH - A compact disc feature that looks for the loudest part of a selection, this is helpful if you want to set the recording levels on your tape deck to prevent distortion that'll turn playback into a horrible experience.

PHASE - Another term that applies to kids, as in something they go through. In home theatre, phase can be described as the relationship between different frequencies of the same sound. What you really need to know is that your speakers should be hooked up in phase if you want them to sound right. Out of phase speakers can sound kind of 'hollow.' Getting them in phase is easy: just make sure you keep the positive wire to the positive terminal at both ends and do likewise for the negative.

POWER AMPLIFIER - This is the audio device that takes the signal from your preamplifier and gives it enough ooomph to wake the dead.

PPM - Pages Per Minute. This is how quickly your printer, copier, or whatever, works. Obviously, the higher the number the more closely its performance approaches the speed of light. Don't be fooled, though. Sometimes the ads will say "up to 8 PPM" or something like that, and the operative words are "up to." They're talking about printing stuff like reams of text; if you're printing a complex graphic you may want to go for a walk or take a nap. Laser printers start at about 4 PPM (up to, of course), and inkjet printers vary between 2-4 PPM.

PREAMPLIFIER (PREAMP) - Also known as a control amplifier. This is the part of your audio system that takes in the source signals (TV, radio, CD, tape, whatever), and allows you to switch between them and 'colour' the sound with the tone controls. It's also the first stage of amplification, taking the signal and boosting it to a level the power amp can grab and run with.

PRESETS - Memory positions on a tuner (or whatever) that let you store favourite settings, like radio stations, tone configuration, etc.

RAM - Random Access Memory. This is the workspace on your computer, much like your desktop is your office workspace. The more RAM you have, the more you can do. Also, the more stuff you're doing at the same time (the more programs and/or files that are open at any one time) the more you're cluttering this "virtual desk" and this is why your system slows down. It's also why you should buy as much RAM as you can afford. 64 megabytes is the bare minimum now, but you should go for as amuch as you can. You can never have too much RAM.

RATED POWER OUTPUT - Watch this one! Usually expressed as "watts per channel" or more properly "watts per channel RMS," in simple terms it tells you how much bang for the buck you're getting from your amplifier. There's more to it, of course, but that's a general rule of thumb. Actually, some 50 watt amps sound a lot better than some with twice the power, but that has to do with other factors like current, quality control, etc. etc. etc. A reputable dealer will sell a 50 watt per channel amp as a 50 watt amp. Many dealers will sell the same amp as a 100 watt amp, adding the two stereo channels together. Likewise, if that bargain system is 200 watts, find out if its driving two channels, four channels, or what have you. There's a lot of "white lying" done here.

RIBBON DRIVER - Usually a tweeter, this is a driver that uses a flat metal ribbon as both voice coil and diaphragm.

RMS - Sounds naval, doesn't it. RMS means "Root Mean Square," and aren't you sorry you asked! Used in conjunction with power output ratings, that's all you need to know unless you're a technician, physicist, or incurable techie.

ROM - Read Only Memory. This is computer data storage that you can access, but can't change, like on a CD-ROM. Great for games, reference works and that type of thing. You can "read" from the disk, but you can't "write" to it. There are also "WORM" disks (Write Once, Read Many), and recordable CD's, but they're plenty expensive.

SCSI - "Scuzzy," and isn't that a disgusting sounding acronym? This is an interface that lets you hook a bunch of computer peripherals together in a 'daisy chain,' with one plugging into the other. It's supposed to be faster than your normal (IDE) interface and means you only need sacrifice one internal expansion slot in the computer (for the SCSI interface itself) to attach many different devices. Remember to buy SCSI versions of these devices, though.

SELECTIVITY - Another tuner term, this means how well the tuner receives a signal without interference from nearby signals.

SENSITIVITY - Sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? Sensitivity is the minimum input signal needed to produce a specific output signal with a specific signal to noise ratio. Okay, forget that. Just remember that the lower a sensitivity number, the better it is.