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A side profile sends a sound wave into a wide funnel, where it emerges as three separate blue, pink, and green wave bands.
Reviewed visual · version 1

RS Glossary

Audio

Audio is the modality that handles sound, including speech, music, noise, and other acoustic signals that AI systems can analyze or generate.

Review state
Reviewed in POC
Freshness
Current
Version
2
  • Audio
  • Audio AI

Remember it this wayAudio is the sound signal; speech is one kind of content inside it.

In plain language

Audio is sound represented so a system can record, transmit, analyze, or generate it. It may contain speech, music, environmental sounds, silence, or noise.

Why it matters

Treating audio as its own modality helps teams account for sampling, background noise, speakers, timing, consent, and accessibility rather than treating sound as text with a different file extension.

Example

A meeting assistant receives an audio stream, separates speakers, transcribes speech, and flags a fire alarm heard in the background.

Common misconception

Audio is not limited to speech. A speech transcript can omit tone, music, noise, timing, and other information present in the original signal.

Related terms

Sources

Learn more

  • Compare [[speech-ai|Speech AI]], [[multimodal|Multimodal]], [[video|Video]], and [[natural-language-processing|Natural Language Processing]] to place Audio in the surrounding system.
  • Follow the cited source material above for the method, standard, or research context behind this draft.

Public history

23 recorded events · 23 public summaries

  1. A potential shared concept was discussed and selected for initial glossary drafting.

  2. The captured candidate received a complete initial draft and entered section-level human review.

  3. Radar reviewed the initial definition draft for human consideration.

  4. Radar reviewed the initial plain-language-explanation draft for human consideration.

  5. Radar reviewed the initial why-it-matters draft for human consideration.

  6. Radar reviewed the initial example draft for human consideration.

  7. Radar reviewed the initial common-misconception draft for human consideration.

  8. Radar reviewed the initial remember-it-this-way draft for human consideration.

  9. Radar reviewed the initial related-terms draft for human consideration.

  10. Radar reviewed the initial sources draft for human consideration.

  11. Radar reviewed the initial learn-more draft for human consideration.

  12. Definition review recorded as approve.

  13. Plain-Language Explanation review recorded as approve.

  14. Why It Matters review recorded as approve.

  15. Example review recorded as approve.

  16. Common Misconception review recorded as approve.

  17. Remember It This Way review recorded as approve.

  18. Related Terms review recorded as approve.

  19. Sources review recorded as approve.

  20. Learn More review recorded as approve.

  21. Sources review recorded as replace.

  22. Radar verified the learner-facing sources after personal origin provenance was removed.

  23. All nine current wording approvals were reconciled to Approved term status.

Source: vault/Glossary/terms/audio/term.md · sha256:a92d043be9079ef9c272302fd28a26cf3477b2b0f6d613ce60fcf05ff9a64586 · Release: rs-glossary-glossary-team-poc-0.5.5-2026-09-02