To most people noise might just be noise, but in the audio world there’s more than one type of noise. The various types are named after colors, such as white and pink. According to Wikipedia, the color names for these different types of sounds are derived from a loose analogy between the spectrum of frequencies of sound wave present in the sound and the equivalent spectrum of light wave frequencies. That is, if the sound wave pattern of “blue noise” were translated into light waves, the resulting light would be blue, and so on.

The rest of this article (with a lot of technical explanations) can be found on this Wikipedia page.

The commonly accepted colors are white, pink, blue, brown, purple and grey. Sometimes the names differ, and some wants to add other colors to the list as well.

A de-esser (or DeEsser) is a dynamics tools for dealing with high frequency sibilants, such as s-sounds, thus the name. When recording the human voice some sounds can be especially troublesome, this includes s, p and t. The de-esser is basically a compressor that’s sensitive to higher frequency sounds like “esses”.

A limiter is basically a compressor that works at high ratios. There is no set rule as to what the ratio needs to be for it to stop being a compressor and start being a limiter. Some suggest 10:1, other 20:1, and others something else altogether. The high compression ratio is often combined with a fast attack to stop any sound getting past the set threshold. This is often useful for stopping clipping to occur. When the limiter is set to behave this way (i.e. stop the entire signal from reaching a set threshold) it is usually referred to as a “brick wall limiter”.

Ducking is an effect often used by DJs and in all kinds of broadcasting. It’s often achieved by the use of side-chain compression. Side-chaining is when you use the dynamic levels of one source to control the compression of your signal. It’s best described in example, for instance, it’s common to use this for the bass and kick drum. Compressing (thus lowering the levels) the bass when the kick drum enters to have them both fit together.

Reverb is a term used for describing the simulated effect of a sound taking place in a room. A lot of people confuse this with echo, or a more common type used in audio production - delay. The difference could be described like this: An echo or delay is a reproduction of a sound, while a reverb emulates the actual room, that is, the sound actually bouncing against all those walls back and forth several times. Think about it, if you’re standing in a church and yelling at the top of your lungs (do try this!) you will not only hear the echo of your voice, you will hear that it actually takes place in a building like that because that is what a church sounds like.

Fading in or fading out are essentially increasing or lowering the volume gradually. While it can be done by just using the volume control, it is handled differently in most modern audio editors. Most often you decide how long the fade should be (i.e. how long it should take for it to reach the full volume), and in some cases also the fade curve. The curve decides the behavior of the fade, for instance if it perhaps should reach a high volume quickly and fade in the last bit slowly or vice versa.

A crossfade is a fade between two signals (”pieces of audio” if you will) that fades out from one and into the other. It can be used for cool transitions form one signal to another, but it is also very common to use as a editing tools for cleaning up noise.

DAW is short for Digital Audio Workstation. The exact description of the term is somewhat vague as it can refer to a complete system consisting of both audio interface, controller and software, or just the software only. The most common features for a DAW is multi-track recording, editing and mixing possibilities. Some of the most popular systems out there are Digidesign Pro Tools, Steinberg Cubase and Apple Logic.