Cabinet (Speaker Cabinet) – An enclosure containing one or more loudspeaker drivers, commonly used with guitar and bass amplifiers to shape tone and project sound.
Calibration – The process of adjusting or verifying audio equipment so that its levels, measurements, and responses meet a known reference standard.
Cardioid – A microphone polar pattern that primarily captures sound from the front while rejecting much of the sound from the rear.
Ceiling – The maximum output level set on a limiter, typically used to prevent peaks from exceeding a specified digital level.
Centre Frequency – The frequency at which an EQ band or filter is centred. It is often the main frequency adjusted when boosting or cutting a particular tonal characteristic.
Chamber Reverb – Reverberation created by playing sound through a loudspeaker into a reflective acoustic chamber and recording the result with microphones.
Channel – A single signal path in a recording or mixing system, such as a vocal channel, an input on an audio interface, or on a mixing console.
Channel Strip – A collection of processing tools arranged in a single signal path, typically including gain, EQ, dynamics processing, and sometimes filters or effects.
Chorus – An audio effect that combines the original signal with slightly delayed and modulated copies to create a thicker, wider, or shimmering sound. Popular effect on guitar and vocals.
Clarity – The perceived ability to distinguish individual sounds and musical details in a recording or mix, often influenced by frequency balance, dynamics, arrangement, and spatial separation.
Click Track – A metronomic pulse used to keep musicians in time during recording or performance, commonly generated by a DAW, and fed into their cue mix.
Clipping – Distortion that occurs when a signal exceeds the maximum level a system can represent or reproduce. Digital clipping typically produces harsh distortion when the waveform is truncated, occurring when digital audio hits 0dB.
Clocking – The process of synchronising digital audio devices so their samples are timed consistently, helping prevent clicks, pops, and timing errors caused by incompatible digital clocks.
Close Miking – Placing microphones close to a source to capture a direct sound. Could be anything from practically touching, to a handful of inches back.
Coherence – The level to which audio signals maintain a consistent phase relationship at particular frequencies. An important thing to consider when combining microphones or analysing correlated signals.
Comb Filtering – A frequency-response effect caused when a signal combines with a delayed version of itself, creating a series of peaks and dips resembling the teeth of a comb.
Compression – Dynamic processing that reduces the level difference between louder and quieter portions of a signal by applying gain reduction above a threshold.
Condenser Microphone – A microphone that uses a capacitance-based transducer and typically requires power, commonly phantom power (+48v), to operate its electronics. It is often valued for sensitivity and detailed transient capture.
Convolution Reverb – A reverb process that uses an impulse response captured from a real acoustic space or hardware device to reproduce its reverberant characteristics.
Crossfade – A transition in which one audio region fades out while another fades in, creating a smooth transition between clips, takes, or sections, which stops audible issues when changing from one to the other.
Crossover – A filter network that divides an audio signal into frequency bands and directs them to different speakers or processing paths, such as the low- and high-frequency drivers in a speaker system or bands in a multi-band compressor.
Crossover Frequency – The frequency at which a crossover divides the signal between two or more frequency bands or loudspeaker drivers. This is often adjustable.
Cue Mix – A customised monitor mix provided to a performer, usually through headphones, so they can hear themselves and other musicians at appropriate levels while recording.
Cut-off Frequency – The frequency at which a filter begins or is defined to attenuate a signal, depending on the filter type and its design.
Cut-off Slope – The rate at which a filter attenuates frequencies beyond its cut-off point, commonly expressed in decibels per octave, such as 12 dB/octave or 24 dB/octave.
Cutting – In EQ, reducing the level of a selected frequency range. More generally, it can also mean editing or removing a section of audio.
Crosstalk – Unwanted leakage of a signal into another channel or signal path, such as one channel appearing faintly in another. Could sometimes happen on tape, or with mixing consoles.
Colouration – A change to a signal’s tonal balance or character introduced by equipment, acoustics, microphones, or processing.
Comping – The process of selecting the best sections from multiple recorded takes and combining them into one final performance, commonly used for vocals and instruments.
Control Room – The studio space where engineers monitor, record, edit, and mix audio using speakers, headphones, and studio equipment.
Crunch – An informal tonal description, often applied to distorted electric guitars, indicating a gritty, aggressive sound with pronounced midrange, around500Hz – 2.5kHz, and harmonic content.
Cycle – One complete repetition of a periodic waveform, consisting of a full sequence of its positive and negative excursions. The cycle of 1Hz is a single repetition, whereas 1000Hz is 1000 repetitions. You may here some people use Hz and Cycles synonymously
Cycle Length – The duration of one complete waveform cycle, inversely related to frequency. Often also called Wave Length. Lower frequencies have longer cycle lengths than higher frequencies. 20kHz has a cycle length of 1.715cm, whereas the cycle length of 1Hz is around 343m.