

We have put together this guide that will aid you in choosing the best PC card for all your needs. Of course all of this is done under the control of some software.With the upgrade in high-end gadgets like gaming consoles or even PCs, you might be thinking of getting an audio card for a better sound experience. The sound wave is digitized and then it may be stored as a file using data compression algorithms which make the file smaller.


an mp3.Ī typical sound input device is a microphone, connected to the red/pink jack socket. The result is a nice waveform of our favorite digital medium, e.g. Afterwards, signal is sent to a jack (in modern audio cards it has the green color) where the speakers are connected. Up in there, a special chip, called digital-to-analog converter, changes the binary code into the analog sound. For example, stored on a hard disk digital code is transferred under a control of some application (for example Winamp) to the sound card. What we hear in speakers is an analog ( current, voltage or electric charge) output of the signal. Earlier sound cards used the ISA computer bus, which was half-duplex, so the sound cards could not record and play simultaneously. Modern expansion sound cards use the PCI computer bus standard. For more features like MIDI ports for connection of musical instruments and low latency requirements (so that the sound does not come distorted under heavy system usage) sound cards as expansion cards can be used. When thinking of computer architecture, the integrated circuit sound cards occupy less space and thus became very popular and practical, especially for laptop computers. They only offer line-in, speaker, and microphone connections. In other words, it is not an expansion card anymore. That means they are built into a mainboard and can not be removed. Nowadays, most of the audio cards are integrated with the motherboard. This means that the card can be added to the motherboard. A sound card is what is known as an expansion card. Creative Sound Blaster Live!, a PCI sound cardĪ sound card (or audio card) is the part of the computer hardware that controls the input and output of the sound signals.
