Comptia A Ch.8

Question 1

Amplification

Answer 1

Increasing the strength of a sound. Amplification output is measured in watts. Sound cards usually have built-in amplification to drive the speakers. Many speakers have built-in amplifiers to boost the audio signal for a fuller sound.

Question 2

BD (Blu-ray disc)

Answer 2

An optical media with a higher data capacity than a CD or DVD.

Question 3

Blu-ray

Answer 3

A type of optical disk technology that uses a blue laser instead of a red laser (like the kind used in CD/DVD drives) to achieve the higher disc capacities.

Question 4

buffer memory

Answer 4

Memory installed in optical drives and hard drives used to reduce transfer time when writing data to the drive by securing more data than requested and placing the data in the buffer. It holds the extra data in the drive and constantly sends data to the processor instead of waiting on the drive.

Question 5

CD (compact disc)

Answer 5

A storage medium that holds up to 700MB of data, such as audio, video, and software applications.

Question 6

decoder

Answer 6

In DVD drives, hardware or software that converts the MPEG-2 video.

Question 7

DirectX

Answer 7

A Microsoft technology that integrates multimedia drivers, application code, and 3D support for audio and video.

Question 8

DVD (digital versatile disc or digital video disc)

Answer 8

A newer media technology than CDs but having less capacity than a Blu-ray disc.

Question 9

DXDIAG

Answer 9

A Windows command to access DirectX software that helps resolve DirectX display and sound driver problems.

Question 10

frequency response

Answer 10

The number of samples taken by a sound card.

Question 11

frequency response range

Answer 11

The range of sounds a speaker can reproduce.

Question 12

laser lens

Answer 12

A component of the optical drive that reads the data from the optical disc; susceptible to dust accumulation. Also known as an objective lens.

Question 13

MCBF (mean cycles between failures)

Answer 13

A performance comparison measurement which is found by dividing the MTBF (mean time between failures) by the duration time of a cycle (operations per hour). The lower the number, the better the performance.

Question 14

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)

Answer 14

An interface built into a sound card to create synthesized music.

Question 15

ODD (optical disk drive)

Answer 15

A collective term for CD, DVD, and BD because they use optical discs that are read from, written to, or both.

Question 16

power rating

Answer 16

A measurement expressed in watts-per-channel that represents how loud the speaker volume can go up without distorting the sound.

Question 17

random-access time

Answer 17

A performance comparison measurement, it is the amount of time a drive requires to find the appropriate place on the disc and retrieve information.

Question 18

region code

Answer 18

A setting on a DVD or Blu-ray drive or disc that specifies a geographic region. The drive’s region code must match the disc’s region code in order to play.

Question 19

scanner

Answer 19

An input device that allows printed documents to be brought into the computer and, from there, digitally displayed, printed, saved, or emailed.

Question 20

shielding

Answer 20

Cancels out and keeps magnetic interference from devices.

Question 21

Web cam

Answer 21

Short for Web camera, a small camera used for communicating via video across the Internet.