Sine Wave

In terms of sound, a sine wave (a smooth, repetitive oscillation of air moving through space) represents a single frequency with no harmonics. The lack of harmonics makes the sine wave sound particularly clear to the human ear, similar to the sound of a crystal glass rubbed around its rim by a wet finger or the sound of a clarinet.

A sound that is made up of more than one sine wave may sound like noise or, in the case of a frequency accompanied by detectable harmonics, result in a sound that can be described as having a different timbre.

Reference tones placed at the head of program are sine waves.

This definition/image is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html . It uses material from the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_wave.

Reference tones used in audio post production are sine wines.

Graphically, a sine wave looks like this.