Transient (acoustics) explained

In acoustics and audio, a transient is a high amplitude, short-duration sound at the beginning of a waveform that occurs in phenomena such as musical sounds, noises or speech.^{[1] [2]} Transients do not necessarily directly depend on the frequency of the tone they initiate. It contains a high degree of non-periodic components and a higher magnitude of high frequencies than the harmonic content of that sound.^[3]

Transients are more difficult to encode with many audio compression algorithms, causing pre-echo.^[4]

See also

• Prefix (acoustics)
• Impulse function
• Onset (audio)
• Transient response – a common electrical engineering term that may be the source of the idea of an acoustic "transient"

Notes and References

1. Book: Handbook of acoustics . 1998 . John Wiley and Sons, Inc. . 978-0-471-25293-1 . Crocker . Malcolm J. . Nachdr. . A Wiley-Interscience publication . New York, NY . 119.
2. Book: Gibson, William A.. The Ultimate Live Sound Operator's Handbook. 2007. Hal Leonard Books. NY. 978-1-4234-1971-6. 49.
3. Web site: Transient Detection and Editing.
4. Painter . Ted . Spanias . Andreas . Perceptual Coding of Digital Audio . IEEE . April 2000 . 88 . 4 . 471–474 . 10.1109/5.842996 . 1390521 .