Digital Audio Tape Recorder. Short for RDAT , which stands for Digital Audio tape recorder with rotating heads. Digital Audio Workstation. Usually a computer with dedicated hardware and software for editing and processing digital audio. I have defined four levels of DAW sophistication in my article .
Full scale is the highest signal which can be recorded.
Positive going signals with a value of 32767 or negative with a value of -32768 at 16 bit are at the maximum. Levels below those are translated to decibels, with 0 dBFS being full scale. For example, -10 dBFS is a level 10 dB below full scale. Dither is absolutely required for good digital audio recording and processing. See The Secrets Of Dither.