The vocabulary of a local music library

DSDalso Direct Stream Digital, DSF, DFF

DSD (Direct Stream Digital) stores audio as a single-bit stream sampled millions of times per second — 2.8 MHz for DSD64 — rather than as the multi-bit samples PCM formats like FLAC and WAV use. It is the format behind SACD, and it usually arrives as .dsf or .dff files.

FLACalso Free Lossless Audio Codec

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an open, royalty-free format that compresses audio without discarding any of it — a decoded FLAC file is bit-for-bit identical to the original recording, typically at 50–60% of the size of the equivalent WAV.

Gapless playbackalso Gapless

Gapless playback is a music player's ability to move from one track to the next with no inserted silence and no audible seam, so albums recorded as continuous performances play the way they were mastered.

LRC filealso .lrc, Enhanced LRC, Lyric file

An LRC file is a plain-text lyrics file in which each line is prefixed with a timestamp, letting a music player scroll and highlight lyrics in time with the audio. Enhanced LRC extends the same idea to individual words.

WebDAValso Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning

WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is an extension of HTTP that lets a client browse folders, read files and write them back on a remote server — turning a web server into something that behaves like a drive, over the same ports and TLS as a website.

Missing a term you were looking for? Tell us and we will write it.