Complete that Audio Visual experience with a Sound Card

Although not strictly essential these days, sound cards find there way into most PCs. After all it would be a little like watching silent movies without one wouldn't it? I can't really imagine watching "The Matrix" with no sound.

If all that you are interested in is basic PC sound, them most any cheap sound card will do the trick. The chances are that your motherboard has sound capability onboard and this will suffice.

However if you have bigger ambitions, a modest sum will get you a sound card capable of surround sound.

Multi speaker surround sound set-ups consist of a base speaker plus up to seven surrounding speakers.

However there are other facilities offered by sound cards. You have to decide what you want from your computer sound system.

Facilities Available
Basic sound – A cheep basic card, or motherboard sound facilities, will be all that is required.

Music synthesiser – A good sound card with a descent MIDI synthesiser available on medium priced cards.

Surround sound - For gaming or DVD play back, found on medium to top end cards. What Is ?
MIDI – Musical Instrument Digital Interface is the interface used to connect the computer to say a piano/organ keyboard. It enables multiple musical tracks to be recorded and laid down in the computer for playback later. By the use of FM synthesis or the much better wave-table synthesis, a sound card can play back the tracks reproducing any musical instruments you can think of.

Dolby Digital Surround Sound (AC3) – The sound card has the capability of driving many loud speakers to give that surround sound effect. You may see cards referred to as Dolby Digital 4.1, 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1. This refers to the number of surround loud speakers plus a base speaker.

Notes Base sounds do not have the same directional properties as the higher frequencies and so only one speaker is required for this purpose.

Dolby Digital 7.1 will only be available from those games written to support it.

Dolby Digital 5.1 has a base speaker plus a front left, right and centre speaker with rear left and right speakers. This is the standard used for DVD surround sound playback.

Non of these should be confused with Pro-logic surround sound, which is a five speaker system derived from a stereo source, used on TV sets.

The above sound facilities are available as PCI expansion cards.

Card Connections
Typical connections to the sound cards will be a combination of the following.

• Stereo microphone input
• Stereo line input
• Stereo output sockets. From one to four giving stereo to Dolby Surround 7.1 output.
• Digital output socket. All of the channel outputs are available on one serial lead, but this will require an amplifier capable of decoding this digital serial feed into the separated channels.
• A joystick or MIDI port. A 9 pin d-type connector.