Sound Cards | Tech Info Home Page |

General Description

To purchase sound cards, or find drivers, or technical support links go to ...The "Sound Card Hardware" page.

For Help on problems with sound cards go to The "Troubleshooting Sound Cards" page.

Sound Cards are hardware cards that when used with the appropriate software your computer can reproduce sounds. The sound card is plugged into the motherboard and depending on the type of card can include additional connectors for CD-ROM drives or IDE drives. In most cards there is also a connector that allows you to plug in a wire which connects to the CD-ROM drive. This connection allows music CDs to pass the signal to the sound card and have the music play on your computer.

A typical sound card has on the back a microphone connector, a speaker output (or Line-out) connector, a Line-in connector and in many cases a DB-15 connector. It comes with RAM, typically in the 2MB range. It usually comes with either ISA or PCI style connectors. The ISA cards use Direct Memory Access (DMA) but the newer PCI cards do not use DMA and might not play some of the older software.

Sound cards also have the ability to support MIDI.

Sound is reproduced using FM synthesis or the more sophisticated Wavetable Synthesis.

Wavetable Synthesis is a feature supported by the more expensive sound cards. Actual recordings of instruments are used to reproduce the sounds. A typical wavetable card would provide 32 instruments.

The cards also have a signal to noise ratio rating which typically falls in the 70-90db range.

Sound Cards are also used in Voice Communications on the Internet. Programs such as NetMeeting and WebChat allow a connection to be made over the internet using modems and allow the two connected computers to communicate. The Chat programs can use half-duplex or full-duplex modes.

Duplex Mode

To change the duplex mode go to the Control Panel, Multimedia, the Advanced tab, click on the + sign in front of the Audio Devices, highlight the name of your sound card's driver and click on the properties button.

This method works on many cards. Of course be sure to check your card's manual. Everyone is a little different.

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