What is a sound card?




Sound Card

Sound card (sound card, sound card, Eng.
Sound card) - PC accessories, ability to handle audio (speaker output system and / or write). At the time of appearance of sound cards were a separate expansion card installed in the correct slot. Modern computers often presented in the form of an onboard hardware codec (according to the specifications of Intel AC'97 or Intel HD Audio).


Fortunately, the time when the work was accompanied by the squeak of a computer built-in speaker, has long ended. Modern sound cards can provide solid opportunities for signal processing and transform even an ordinary home computer in a very good and functional audiokompleksa. We also can not mention the fact that progress in this area will significantly reduce the price of sound cards - what was once considered the prerogative of the studio and it cost thousands of dollars, can now be purchased at any store for a fairly reasonable price.

Sound card converts the sound from analog to digital. To enter information using sound microphone that plugs into the sound card. Sound card has the ability to synthesize the sound (in its memory stores the sounds of various musical instruments that she can play).
Audio card (Sound Blaster sound card or) - a special electronic card that allows you to record sound, play it and create software with a microphone, headphones, speakers, built-in synthesizers and other equipment.

Audio card contains two transmitters of information:

• analog to digital, which converts the continuous (ie, analog) sound signals (speech, music, noise) in digital binary code and stores it on magnetic media;
• digital to analog, performing the inverse transformation is stored in digital form of sound into an analog signal, which is then reproduced by the speaker, synthesizer sound or headphones.

Professional sound cards allow you to perform complex processing of audio, with stereo, have their own ROM with data stored in it hundreds of timbre of different musical instruments.Sound files are usually very large. For example, a three-minute sound file with stereo sound takes about 30 MB of memory.Therefore, board Sound Blaster, in addition to its core functions, provide automatic file compression. Scope sound cards - computer games (many sound cards have a special Game-port to connect game pads), educational software systems, marketing presentation, "Voice Mail" (voice mail) between computers, sound different processes occurring in the computerequipment, such as lack of paper in the printer, etc. But the main, and often used the possibility of a modern sound cards - is the ability to play audio and video files stored on your computer.

What is the sound card?

On a typical sound card may be the following connectors:

Exterior:

1. Game, or MIDI-port. The largest and most significant 15-pin jack, for connecting the joystick, MIDI-keyboard or anything else that runs through the MIDI-interface: write a synthesizer. Recently, Microsoft c Intel and several other companies are actively attacking the port and say that in a modern computer it is not the place, but it obviously is not going to die.
2. Line input
3. Microphone input
4. Line out for connection to active speakers or an amplifier. It may not be one if the board is designed to connect more than two speakers.
5. Audio, which is supplied via the built-in past low-power card (2-4 watts per channel) stereo amplifier signal. As the quality of this amp, even on expensive boards leaves much to be desired, it is only suitable for small to connect headphones. Often this output is not present separately, and is chosen by changing the mode line out through the appropriate jumper on the motherboard. In this case you have not changed anything, the default output port is usually set corresponds to the line-out. More about this should be explained in the documentation to the board.
6. Digital output - it is designed for use with external digital devices such as digital receiver. Occurs only at a fairly expensive cards.
7. Digital input - even rarer than the digital output.

Domestic:

1. Internal input - typically used to connect CD-ROM.

2. Internal Output

3. Digital Input SPDIF. Typically used for digital connection with CD-ROM. If a connector is then connected to CD (DVD) only need to use it as a DAC drive usually has a very poor quality and sound card will cope with playing sound much better. True, this jack is only good boards.
4. Additional connectors for internal connection of devices such as modems, video editing card or TV-tuner, and more.


If you want to get a decent CD sound quality on your computer, this requires a sound card with digital input for connecting readers CD / DVD, and that should be used as part of the sound quality of CD-and DVD-ROM rather low. Usually (though not necessarily) supplied sound card is included for connecting cord CD-ROM. Unfortunately, almost always it is analog, so you (if the card is, of course, has a connector SPDIF) will have to buy digital cable separately. However, you can do without the cable and the respective input: you can take advantage of some players read CD-audio on the bus. Poor sound quality CD / DVD drive is well supported by the fact that even fairly cheap and shirpotrebnye card decode digital audio is much better than yourself drives. But with this method a little loaded processor and the bus itself, as compared to the fully independent reading is not very good, so it is still better to buy a more advanced card with the required connector, which in itself will sound better, although it will cost considerably more expensive.

What is the sound card?

Any sound card is ultimately cost ADC / DAC. In the simplest form of analog electric sound looks like a variable signal (sine wave). The main difference between the actual sound is only in that it is the result of blending and interaction of a large number of oscillations of different frequency, phase and amplitude. So there are overtones that characterize, for example, voice. The digital representation of the analog signal changes its amplitude is a discrete and seemingly frozen in a fixed time duration, during which the measurements. That is, the measured 
values ​​describe analog (continuous) process, defining its state at fixed sequence of numbers.
In the analog-digital converter - ADC - after normalization by the amplitude of the analog signal is quantized and encoded in terms of (play performed in the same way, but in the opposite direction, so anything that refers to the record, it makes sense and in digital-analog conversion). That is, each point of measurement on the time scale is assigned a numeric value of instantaneous signal amplitude. Thus, the sound is now represented by a sequence of digital codes. Obviously, the shorter the time intervals between individual measurements, that is, the higher the sampling rate (Sampling Rate), the more accurately described, and then plays a beep. It is equally clear that the required frequency of measurements (sample) depends on the frequency range of the transformed signal.
It should be noted that some cheap sound card sampling rate during playback and recording may be different: as a rule, in which case it is respectively 44.1 and 22.05 KHz. Although if you're not going to write anything down, it is not so important.Especially the quality of the recording path in such unpretentious Chinese craft so it does not matter, except that the noise record still does not succeed.
 
The resolving power of sound cards
 
It is clear that the conversion of analog to digital code can only be made with a certain degree of accuracy. The accuracy or resolution, understanding the smallest change in analog signal, which will change the digital code. This is determined by the bit (bit depth) ADC (or DAC, when it comes to playing). Thus, 8-bit converter can quantize the signal amplitude by 256 (28) levels, and 16-bit to 65536 (216) levels, which leads to a very noticeable increase in quality. With the increase in ADC (DAC) increases its dynamic range. Each bit corresponds to about 6 Db. Sound cards may have a bit 8, 12, 16 and sometimes 20 bits (although the latter has practically no result, the quality has improved). Then the 8-bit conversion can provide a dynamic range of 48 Db, 12-bit 72 Db,
16-bit 96 Db (corresponds to CD) and 20-bit 120 Db. All modern cards are 16-bit. But it certainly does not mean that all sound cards have "CD Quality", because the quality depends on many other parameters.
At present, widely used applications (especially games) that use methods to create surround sound. These techniques are beyond the simple separation of channels and panning include things such as, for example, consideration of sound reflection from surfaces, uptake by various objects, passing through
obstacles and other effects. As in the case of three-dimensional graphics were created by the various programming interfaces (API). The most popular are created A3D and Creative EAX. In principle, all the necessary calculations can be executed by the CPU using software emulation, but even better, if your sound card supports hardware acceleration. True, the cards are not compatible with the 3D-sound, almost gone.
All calculations are located on the motherboard manufactures audio processor, called DSP (Digital Surround Processor). Of its capabilities and performance directly affects the quality and accuracy of sound effects.

Sometimes you can find sound cards with the promise inscribed on the package type of "Dolby Digital 5.1", "AC-3", etc. In the proof of the validity of this board has six outputs, as well as the accompanying software DVD-player that reproduces sound for six columns. And although nowhere does it say that decoding AC-3 hardware will be the map itself, the customer legitimately formed that impression. Indeed, a powerful DSP, six outputs, beautiful labels, and the price of such piece of iron, as a rule, no less beautiful ... It is already possible with all that rely on a hardware decoder surround sound. In fact, these cards do not exist (as if somewhere you can find them, it would be unrealistic to professional equipment cost), and decoding AC-3 by the supplied fully software player. Also, some manufacturers promised to reduce the load on the CPU when playing MP3. It also bears little resemblance to reality, the more so in the performance of modern processors to decode the MP3 hardware makes absolutely no sense.
Sound card can be used not only for the processing of sounds, but also for their generation. The need for this arose at the time of the first games with music. Since the performance of computers and the amount of media then was not allowed to use ready-made samples, had to assign the task to the music entirely on the sound card. Thus was created the standard MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), which is quite popular to this day. MIDI commands contain no record of music as such, and links to music, or rather their lektronny analog. When the card receives MIDI-command, she interpreted her synthesizer, and as a result, we hear a note. In fact the sound card that supports MIDI, is a common musical synthesizer. There are a lot of software for playing and to create MIDI-tethers. In the latter case is commonly used MIDI-keyboard, in appearance very similar to a keyboard synthesizer.

History of sound cards for IBM PC

Since the IBM PC was designed not as a multimedia machine, but a tool for scientific and business problems, sound card, it was not foreseen and not even planned. The only sound that issued computer, there was a sound built-in speaker, who reported malfunctions. (On computers with Apple's audio was present initially.)
In 1986, the company selling the device has received Covox Inc.It was attached to the printer port IBM PC and allows you to play monophonic digital audio. Perhaps, Covox can be considered as the first external sound card. Covox was very simple and inexpensive device for (almost simple resistive DAC) and remained popular during the 90s. A large number of modifications, including - for playback of stereo sound.
In 1988, the company Creative Labs has released a device Creative Music System (C / MS, later also sold under the name Game Blaster) based on two chips sound generator Philips SAA 1099, each of which could play in 6 colors at once. Around the same time, the company released its AdLib card of the same name with the name of the company, based on chip YM3812 firm Yamaha. This synthesizer for generating sound using the principle of frequency modulation (FM, frequency modulation).This principle provides a more natural-sounding instruments than the Game Blaster.
Soon, Creative released a card on the same chip, fully compatible with AdLib, but its superior sound quality. This fee was based on the standards Sound Blaster, which in 1991 included in the standard Microsoft Multimedia PC (MPC).However, these cards have several disadvantages: the artificial sounding instruments, and large amounts of files, one moment of quality AUDIO-CD took about 10 Megabytes.
One method of reducing the volume occupied by the music is MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) - a way to write commands sent to instruments. MIDI-file (usually a file with a mid) contains references to notes. When MIDI-compatible sound card receives this link, it looks for its sound in the table (Wave Table).General MIDI standard describes about 200 sounds. Cards that support this standard, usually memory, which stores the sounds, or use this computer's memory. One of the first card was wavetables-Gravis Ultrasound, which received a Russian nickname "Goose" (an abbreviation of GUS). Creative, seeking to consolidate its position in the market, has released its own sound processor EMU8000 (EMU8K) and the musical charge on the basis of its Sound Blaster AWE32, which was undoubtedly the best card at that time. "32" - the number of votes MIDI-synth on the card.
With the increasing power of processors, gradually became a die bus ISA, which employed all previous sound cards, and many manufacturers have switched to issue cards for bus PCI. In 1998, the company makes a wide Creative again step in the development and production of sound cards Sound Blaster Live!Audio Processor for EMU10K, which supports EAX, mustache

Integrated audio system

AC'97
AC'97 (short for English.
Audio codec '97) - a standard for audio codecs developed by Intel Architecture Labs division of Intel in 1997, this standard is used mainly in motherboards, modems, sound cards and packages with front panel audio solution.AC'97 supports 96 kHz sampling rate using 20-bit stereo resolution and 48 kHz using 20-bit stereo for multichannel recording and playback.
AC'97 consists of built-in chipset South Bridge and a host controller located on board audio codec. The host controller (also known as the digital controller, DC'97; Engl. Digit controller) is responsible for the exchange of digital data between the system bus and an analog codec. Analog codec - it is a small chip (4 × 4 mm, case TSOP, 48 pins), which has analogotsifrovoe and DAC in the mode of program transmission, or DMA. It consists of a node, directly performing conversion - ADC / DAC (analogovotsifrovoy converter / analog converter; Engl. Analog digital converter / digital analog converter, abbr. ADC / DAC). From the quality of used ADC / DAC depends largely on the quality of digitization and digital audio decoding.

HD Audio

HD Audio (from the English. High definition audio - High Definition Audio) is an evolutionary extension of the specification AC'97, proposed by Intel in 2004, providing more channels playback with higher sound quality than using the integrated audio codec AC'97. Hardware-based HD Audio, supports 24-bit sound quality (up to 192 kHz in stereo, 96 kHz multi-channel mode - up to 8 channels).
The form factor of codecs and transmission of information between elements remained the same. Only changed the quality of chips and an approach to sound processing.

The main producers of

Creative Labs,
Diamond Multimedia System, Inc.,
ESS Technology (now only chip ADC / DAC)
KYE Systems (Genius),
M-Audio,
Turtle Beach Systems,
Yamaha Media Technology.


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