| Word | Description |
| Virtual Voice | A virtual environment where sounds and motion are managed and monitored by the sound engine, but no processing is performed. Objects move into the virtual voice when their volume levels fall below the volume threshold. |
| Voice | A separate or discrete playback instance, either audio or motion. |
| Voice Starvation | A type of error message that is displayed in the Capture Log when the sound engine cannot provide audio data to the platform hardware buffer in a timely manner. This type of problem occurs when there is excessive use of the host CPU. For example, when the platform CPU is trying to mix too many sources or is using too many audio effects simultaneously. |
| Volume Threshold | A certain volume level below which the behavior of sound, music, and motion objects can be specifically determined. For example, voices that fall below the volume threshold can either continue to play, be killed, or sent to the virtual voice list. These behaviors are defined on the Advanced Settings tab of the object’s Property Editor. |
| Vorbis | A perceptual encoding method that permits encoding of audio files at various bit rates while maintaining a very good perceived sound quality. The balance between data compression efficiency and perceived sound quality is controlled using the Quality Factor setting or by specifying the maximum, minimum, and average bitrates per channel. |