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]
The term transient is used by military sonar operators to describe unexpected sounds emanating from another vessel such as operating machinery, a metal hatch being slammed, or the flooding and pressurization of torpedo or vertical launch tubes.[citation needed]
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has generic name (help)