Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the terms used across the Audio Mixing and Streaming Setup guides.

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Frequency ranges

Sound is split into ranges by pitch, measured in hertz (Hz) and kilohertz (kHz — 1 kHz = 1000 Hz). Low numbers are deep, high numbers are bright. These are the everyday names for those ranges.

Name	Range	What lives there	Cut it if…	Boost it if…
Sub-bass	20–60 Hz	Kick drum weight, room rumble	Stand and handling noise, boom	Almost never on a church PA
Bass	60–250 Hz	Kick body, keyboard left hand, male voice warmth	Sound is boomy or muddy	Kick feels thin and flat
Low mid	250–500 Hz	Body of voices and toms	Sound is muddy or "cardboard boxy"	Voices sound thin
Mid	500 Hz–2 kHz	The core of every voice and the sax	It sounds honky or nasal	Rarely — this range is easy to overdo
High mid / presence	2–4 kHz	Consonants, clarity, slap of a conga	Vocals sound harsh or fatiguing	Words are hard to make out
Treble / brilliance	4–20 kHz	Cymbals, sibilance, "air" and sparkle	Hi-hats are splashy or hissy	Mix sounds dull or dark

Bass and treble are simply the names for the bottom and top of that table. They're the two ends of the tone control on any hi-fi, and on a mixer they're the knobs labelled LOW and HIGH.

Voice types are not EQ bands

This is the one that catches people out. Soprano, alto, tenor and bass are voice types — descriptions of a singer's range. They are not controls on a mixer and not names for frequency bands.

Voice type	Typical range	Roughly
Soprano	C4–C6	260–1050 Hz
Alto	F3–F5	175–700 Hz
Tenor	C3–C5	130–520 Hz
Bass	E2–E4	82–330 Hz

Two things worth knowing:

• "Bass" means two different things. A frequency range (60–250 Hz) and the lowest singing voice. Context tells you which. "Treble" and "soprano" are not a matching pair — treble is a frequency range, soprano is a singer.
• Those numbers are only the fundamental. A soprano singing at 800 Hz also produces harmonics reaching well past 10 kHz, and those harmonics are what make the voice sound like a voice. That's why boosting 3 kHz on a vocal channel adds clarity even though nobody is singing a 3 kHz note.

EQ controls

EQ (equalisation) — turning specific frequency ranges up or down. Every EQ knob is "leave it alone at 12 o'clock, turn left to cut, turn right to boost".

Term	Meaning
Shelving	Turns everything above or below a point up or down together. The LOW and HIGH knobs are shelves.
Bell / peaking	Turns a band up or down around a centre frequency, tapering off either side. The mid knobs are bells.
Semi-parametric	A bell band with a second knob that moves the centre frequency, so you can aim the cut or boost.
Fixed	A band whose frequency can't be moved — only the amount of cut or boost.
High pass filter (HPF)	Removes everything below a set frequency. On the Behringer this is the LOW CUT button — see Audio Mixing 3.5 for the frequency and slope.
Low pass filter (LPF)	The opposite — removes everything above a set frequency. Not used in this setup.

On the Behringer's mono channels (Ch 1–8) the EQ is: LOW a shelf at 80 Hz, MID a bell you aim with the FREQ knob anywhere from 100 Hz to 8 kHz, and HIGH a shelf at 12 kHz — each giving up to ±15 dB. Stereo channels have four fixed bands and no FREQ knob.

Level and gain

Term	Meaning
Gain	How hard the channel's preamp drives the incoming signal. Set first, before faders or EQ.
Fader	The sliding volume control that balances a channel against everything else. Set after gain.
Unity / 0 dB	The fader position where the channel is neither boosted nor cut — the marked detent. The normal resting place.
Headroom	The gap between your loudest peak and the point of distortion. Keeping headroom is why nothing should touch 0 dB.
Clipping	The signal exceeded what the equipment can carry and the tops of the waveform are squared off. Permanent, audible distortion — you cannot fix it later.
PAD	A switch that knocks a hot incoming signal down before the preamp, to stop it clipping the input.
Gain staging	Setting the level correctly at every stage in the chain so no stage is starved or overloaded.

dB (decibel) is a relative measure — "3 dB louder than what it was". Because it's relative, the same number means different things in different places:

Reading	Where you see it	What it means
dB on a fader	Mixer channel strips	Relative to unity. −6 dB means 6 dB quieter than unity.
dBFS	OBS and Cakewalk meters	Relative to the loudest a digital system can go, which is 0. Everything is a negative number.
LUFS	Loudness targets	Perceived loudness averaged over time. YouTube normalises to −14 LUFS.
LRA (loudness range)	Post-recording analysis	How far the quiet and loud parts sit apart across the whole recording.
True peak (dBTP)	Post-recording analysis	The real peak after digital-to-analogue conversion — it can exceed what the meter showed.

Dynamics

Term	Meaning
Dynamic range	The distance between the quietest and loudest parts of a performance.
Compressor	Automatically turns down anything louder than the threshold, evening out a performance.
Threshold	The level above which a compressor, gate or limiter starts acting.
Ratio	How hard it acts once past the threshold. 5:1 means 5 dB in above threshold becomes 1 dB out.
Attack	How quickly it reacts once the threshold is crossed. Slow attack lets drum transients through.
Release	How quickly it stops acting once the signal drops back.
Knee	How abruptly compression starts at the threshold. A soft knee eases in and sounds more natural on voices.
Limiter	A compressor with a very high ratio, used as a hard ceiling so nothing clips.
Noise gate	Mutes a channel when the signal falls below the threshold, so silent mics don't add hiss.
Expander	The gentle version of a gate — pushes quiet signals further down rather than muting outright.
Gain reduction	How much the compressor is actually pulling the signal down right now, shown on its meter.

Routing

Term	Meaning
Channel strip	The vertical column of controls for one input, from input socket at the top to fader at the bottom.
Main mix	The mixer's primary stereo output.
Subgroup	A bus that several channels feed into, so one pair of faders controls the whole group.
Bus	Any path that several channels are mixed onto and sent somewhere as one signal.
Aux send	A separate mix taken off the channels, used for monitors and effects. Each aux send is its own independent balance.
Pre-fader	An aux send taken before the channel fader, so the send level doesn't change when the fader moves. What monitor mixes need.
Post-fader	An aux send taken after the channel fader, so the send follows the fader. What effects sends need.
Insert	A socket that breaks into a single channel to patch in outboard gear.
Pan / BAL	Places a signal between the left and right speakers.
Mute	Silences the channel without moving the fader.
PFL / solo	Listens to one channel in isolation, usually on headphones, without changing the mix.
DI box	Converts a high-impedance instrument output into a balanced mic-level signal a mixer can take over a long cable.
Balanced / unbalanced	Balanced cabling (XLR, TRS) rejects interference over long runs. Unbalanced (TS, RCA) picks up hum past a few metres.
Phantom power (+48V)	DC sent up the mic cable to power condenser microphones. Dynamic mics don't need it and aren't harmed by it when wired balanced.
FOH	Front of house — the mix the congregation in the room hears.
IEM	In-ear monitor — a personal mix sent to a performer's earpieces.

Recording and streaming

Term	Meaning
Sample rate	How many times per second audio is measured. 44100 Hz is CD standard.
Bit depth	How finely each measurement is stored. 24-bit gives more headroom than 16-bit.
WAV	Uncompressed, lossless, large. The format to keep masters in.
MP3	Compressed, lossy, small. The format to share and upload.
Bitrate	How much data per second a compressed file or stream uses. Higher is better quality and a bigger file.
ASIO / WASAPI	Two Windows audio driver types. Which one each app uses decides whether they can share one interface — see Audio Mixing 5.2.
Latency	The delay between sound going in and coming out. Caused mostly by the audio buffer size.
RTMPS	The protocol OBS uses to send the stream to a platform.
VST	A plugin format for effects. ReaEQ and ReaComp are VSTs loaded inside OBS.

Reading the guides

• "9 o'clock", "12 o'clock" — knob positions described as clock faces. 7 o'clock is fully anticlockwise (off or minimum), 12 o'clock is straight up (centre or neutral), 5 o'clock is fully clockwise (maximum). For EQ knobs, 12 o'clock means no change.
• "Cut to 9 o'clock" — turn that knob anticlockwise to the 9 o'clock position, which reduces that band.
• "Pressed in" / "ON" — the button is engaged. Behringer buttons latch when pressed.

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Adding to this page: keep entries to one or two lines, group them under an existing heading where one fits, and link out to the guide section that uses the term rather than repeating the settings here.