Jargon and lingo glossary - C to G.
Cartridge
In recordable media : A media format that contains 1 reel that is enclosed in a protective casing of some sort and the media (tape or wire typically) rolls from one end of the reel to another. The opposite to a Cassette. In gramophones : Alternative name for phonographic Pickups, mostly used in USA and Australia and should only be used for a user replaceable pick-up separate from the tonearms headshell, for instance an electric reproducer is a pickup but it's not a cartridge.
Cassette
A media format that contains 2 reels that are enclosed in a protective casing of some sort and the media (tape or wire typically) rolls from one reel to another. The opposite to a Cartridge.
CAV = Constant Angular Velocity
On disk based media format the rotational speed remains constant, this means that the inner you get on the disk the smaller the groove get leading to a loss of quality. As opposed to CLV, note that some formats, notably Laserdisc allowed for both variants so that producers of media could choose between the trade-offs each system has.
CE = Consumer Electronics
Literally all electronics and most electric products that are built for sale to consumers for personal usage as opposed to built for use for professional purposes only, this includes household products such as White Goods and Brown Goods in addition to portable and "toolshed" products such as power tools designed for consumer usage and so on, so forth.
Chapter 11
A part of USA bankruptcy law that gives companies that go into voluntary bankruptcy a limited protection from debtors in order to give them time to reorganise their finances, in most cases companies that go into Chapter 11 protection end up in full bankruptcy proceedings, but there have been some notable exceptions. Very popular with audio companies.
Clipping
A phenomenon that can happen in any sort of an amplification stage were the circuit is driven beyond it's capabilities and thus either all excessive energy is discarded to a greater or lesser degree or the circuit cannot supply the required amount of energy, in the case of an audio signal the end result is that all transients and/or extreme edges of the Dynamic Range are cut off (or clipped) the signal and this will lead to a greater total harmonic distortion as the signal gets sharp edges and acts as a square like fundamental, generating overtones across the audio spectrum. The technical reasons that cause clipping vary, in the case of power amplifiers it's usually not the active electronics themselves that are the cause of clipping but rather that the power supply is unable to supply the required amount of energy to the speakers, in preamplifier stages this can be the other way around, i.e. the device cannot handle the amount of energy.
CLV = Constant Linear Velocity
As opposed to CAV.
Coax = Coaxial
Most commonly seen used in reference to Coaxial cable which is a signal cable (usually solid wire) that is electrically insulated with dielectric material, usually plastic, and then shielded by a tightly woven wire mesh that is also used as a signal return. Interestingly the tightly woven shielding is usually a better conductor than the signal cable due to electron jump (i.e. the mesh can handle higher bandwidth than a solid wire given the same amount of material), this is not by design and was only noted after this type of cable had become commonplace. Audio cables that use this type of wire are SPDIF interconnects that terminate in Cinch plugs and analogue interconnects that terminate in BNC plugs, these are typically found in high end audio products only but also popular as a DIY mod, this type of cable and connector configuration actually comes from the computer world and was the most popular method of network wiring prior to the introduction of IBM's Twisted Pair. The best known example of Coax wire however is the good old aerial cable that is used to carry information from an aerial to a receiver, this type of cable can found terminated in just about any type of connector but by far the most abundant example is the TV lead.
Codec = Encoder/Decoder
Simply put, a system or a device that can both encode and decode a signal.
Compander = Compressor/Expander
A device such as a Noise Reduction Systems that performs both compression and expansion to a signal at the same time.
Crosstalk
The separation (or rather the lack thereof) between channels in audio equipment, measured as a crosstalk rejection in dB, note that this is usually only an interesting measurement in analogue tape recorders and mixers. Caveat : Japanese manufacturers and in particular American manufacturers of tape recorders usually only publish crosstalk figures for 1 specific frequency and thus gain a better specification since they avoid the more problematic high and low frequencies, European manufacturers however quote a crosstalk figure tested within a frequency range (usually 60Hz to 15KHz or so) giving a significantly lower, but more realistic figure.
CRT = Cathode Ray Tube
American slang for a Braun Tube.
Cryogenic
The process of freezing things to very low temperatures. Interesting things start to happen to materials that are subjected to temperatures below -190 or so, the atomic structure gets slightly reorganised and small impurities in the structure even out. Although many theories are abound as to why this happens, no one is really sure. This process has been used commercially since the 60's by the Gillette company which uses it to prolong the life of certain types of metal blades, but in those sort of applications the difference between treated and untreated blades is quite pronounced, recently a number of wire manufactures have started to offer cables treated with this process.
C37 = Carbon 37
A theory on the response of your body to aural and other vibrational stimuli put forward by Austrian inventor Dieter Ennemoser, his theory is in reality a better worked out version of the various "Om" theories that have been doing the rounds courtesy of Occultists in the last couple of centuries but you can read more on the theory here here and make your own judgement. Having said that, a couple of the products emerging from his research have been interesting, first and foremost is a type of lacquer that is intended to be used on a variety of surfaces available in a number of versions classified by the operational temperature of the material it's meant to be used with, but while the inventor intends the paint to be used on almost any surface it is mostly used on loudspeaker cones. This has been decried as an outright scandal by some self proclaimed "scientific thinkers" in the audio community on the basis that a lacquer cannot have any effect on the sound of a product, you can read one of the more often cited page here. One has to question if those gentlemen are not in need of a little brushing up on material theory, you should note that the writer of the page in question is not even familiar with the practice of lacquering transducers such as microphone elements and loudspeaker cones. Applying lacquer to loudspeaker cones is common in the loudspeaker industry in fact paper cones cannot be used in countries with high humidity with out treatment and lacquering is the most common of them, this trick has also been used since the 50's at the least in an attempt to change the resonance characteristics of other items such as turntable platters and pickups, albeit with a varying degree of success. The main problem with evaluating theories of this kind in the is that if you read both the writings of the proponents and the detractors, neither side appears quite erm... balanced .... Anyway, the fact that the most successful product to emerge from this is a lacquer may have a more mundane explanation than the one voiced in the C37 theory, Herr Ennemoser is a master violin maker, violins are covered in multiple layers of lacquer, not just for looks and wear and tear but also to change the acoustical properties of the instruments and one of the best kept secrets of the trade is the composition of it's lacquers..... Oh... and C37 is a registered trademark BTW.
DASH
A Standard for writing a PCM digital audio data using an S-DAT Recorders onto an open reel tape, the standard was worked out by Sony and Studer in the early 80's and these 2 companies are the only ones that currently manufacture machines that conform to it. This standard has better error correction and detection that consumer systems such as DAT and ADAT and due to the use of a stationary heads is much less susceptible to dropouts and alignment problems.
Decimal
The representation of number in powers of 10, this is the basis for most (but not all) number systems used by humans in day to day operations for obvious reasons. Notable exceptions are/were the Etruscans who used base5 (Roman numerals are actually Etruscan numerals adapted to the decimal system, hence X is 2 V's facing each other), Babylonians and Scandinavians prior to the 12th century used base60 (hence 60 min to the hour, base60 is divisible to both base10 and base12 thereby uniting 2 common traditions, in Scandinavia there where for a time 3 or possibly 4 meanings for the word hundred including 60, 100, 120 and 144, hence references in the Sagas for big and small hundreds), trading arithmetic was usually base12 (and in the packaging world still is to a degree, you can only divide 10 into itself, 1,2 and 5 while you can divide 12 into itself, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, hence preferred by traders, in hundreds base12 becomes even more flexible), Boffins use base2 (néé binary) etc..
Delaware = Delaware registered company
This term is probably unknown to most people outside the USA, but over there some aspects of company and business law are Federal (i.e.. the same across all states and commonwealths belonging to the federal superstate), other aspects such as company registrations and tax laws are fully or partially controlled by local governments. The tiny agricultural state of Delaware has by far the most relaxed regulations when it comes to corporate law and hence is popular for registering companies in even when the actual company is operating elsewhere, USA based investment shells and other companies that trade mostly in paper money are invariably registered there. Most of the peculiarities of the Delaware registrations are quite similar to what is knows as offshore company registrations (i.e.. Cayman Islands, Manx (Mön) and Guernsey etc.) but others are quite novel such as you are allowed to incorporate with paper money (i.e. the declared initial value of a share is arbitrary and needs not have any relation to reality). Large number of USA based CE companies are primarily trading and branding companies that have no manufacturing or even warehousing facilities of their own, so it makes sense for them to incorporate in Delaware since they thereby pay lower taxes and enjoy other benefits of simplified regulatory structures.
DIN = Deutsches Institut für Normung
In General : The German industrial standards body, more influential than the size of Germany might suggest and often has developed standards were no others really exist or were existing informal or international standards are not exact enough, many of those have since become ISO standards and others have become de-facto even though they have been rejected or ignored by international or national bodies. In connectors : A round multipin connectors, the most often seen variant in audioland is the 5 pin one, superior as an interconnect to the more commonly used Cinch/RCA variant since it carries earth in addition to the signal. Official homepage.
DIY = Do It Yourself
The manufacture or modification of equipment done by the end user rather than a specialist or a concern, typically done using soldering irons and power tools by the sort of people that you would not give a matchbox to except under duress.
Disk Megabyte
Any multiple of bytes done by someone that does not understand the difference between binary and Decimal, usually the marketing department of any given company or a Wikipedia editor. The bytes are multiplied in 1000's rather than 1024's so a Megabyte becomes 1000000 rather than 1048576 bits, and so on and so forth. In some highly competitive markets this has become the norm since a device with 8,6 GB's does look better from a marketing standpoint than plain 8 GB, hard drive manufacturers being the most notable offenders.
Dither
A technique were noise is injected into an signal, mostly useful in intermediate stages of a DAC were it is used to mildly modulate the otherwise square signals, but can be used in anywhere in a signal path. In PCM based systems the dithering threshold lies above the 24 bits, ergo, all currently available PCM based digital audio equipment theoretically or practically improves with the injection of noise.
Dual Mono See --> Mono
Dynamic Range
In Hi-Fi : The difference between the highest and lowest volume that a piece of equipment is capable of reproducing, measured in decibels. In Music : The difference between the loudest and the quietest passage of music, measured ditto, as modern pop music is compressed to death in to make it more "radio friendly" this is meant to be as close to 0 as possible.
FFT = Fast Fourier Transforms
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Firewire See --> 1394
Flywheel
A design feature seen on high end belt/string driven turntables although it has cropped up on a few ultra high end belt driven CD players. Instead of having motor connected to the platter via the belt, the motor actually drives a flywheel that in turn drives the platter, pulley is usually on the flywheel (although I have seen another arrangements such as a flywheel directly connected to the motor). This arrangement can reduce motor vibrations and timing incorrections.
Gigabyte
1024 Megabytes of data or 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 8 bits.
Gns = Guineas
Since all historical prices on this site are given vertabim RRP for UK made hi-fi's is sometimes show in this currency in particular from manufacturers that made "musical reproduction equipment for the discerning gentleman" (i.e. bloody expensive). A Guinea is 1.05£ sterling or 21 shillings and was sometimes just abbreviated as G. or Gs., this form of currency was discontinued in 1971 when the UK government decimalised the Pound in anticipation of the UK joining the EU.
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