SAME stands for Specific Area Message Encoding. Basically, it's a system that allows you enter the code for your county (or any county, actually) and your weather radio will only "turn on" and announce warnings that pertain to that county (or counties, since many radios allow multiple counties to be programmed). If you've ever been driving in a car with a fast moving thunderstorm sweeping through a region, you'll hear warning after warning on the car radio as the storm moves through the region. You have no control over which warnings you hear on the car radio, even if the storm is quite far from you. SAME encoding allows you to only hear the warnings for geographic locations you want.

SAME encodings and NOAA frquencies are totally different things, however, your SAME settings will apply to any NOAA frequency you are listening to. Every National Weather Service broadcast warning will include a burst of digital info that may sound like static and I believe that burst is what tells your radio which counties a particular warning applies to, and if it matches your SAME settings, your radio will blare out the appropriate message, otherwise it will stay quiet.