Music Glossary - W

Wah Pedal (Wah Wah)
Guitar effect device where the frequency of a bandpass filter is varied using a foot pedal control, giving a distinctive 'Wah Wah' sound.

Watt
Unit of electrical power equal to 1 Joule per second.

Wave File
A wave file is a PC audio file format.

Waveform
A waveform is the characteristic shape of a graphically displayed audio signal.

Wavelength
The distance over which a wave repeats itself exactly once.

Weber
Unit of magnetic flux.

Weighted Noise
Noise measured within the audio frequency range using a selective frequency measuring device.

White Noise
A random noise signal that has the same sound energy level at all frequencies.

Word Clock
The accurate timing of digital audio is critical to the synchronisation of interconnected digital audio equipment.

A 'Word Clock', or 'Wordclock', is the 'metronome' that controls digital audio timing. Tha word clock also identifies the start and end of each digital word or sample, and which channel (left or right) samples belong to.

Wow
Unwanted frequency modulation introduced by the recording/reproduction process. Normally Wow is used to describe frequencies between 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz.