In: Categories » Computers and technology » Windows XP » Sound Card Features to Covet
The first stop on your audio-visual upgrade tour is your PC’s sound card (naturally). Shoppers, in this section, I show you what to look for when comparing sound cards.
3-D spatial imaging
Most PC owners think of 3-D sound as a pure gamer’s feature, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, today’s games are even more fun when you can use your ears as well as your eyes to locate your enemy, but 3-D sound comes in handy when you’re listening to audio CDs or playing digital audio files from your hard drive. With audio files and music, 3-D spatial imaging can add an auditorium or concert hall effect, where the stereo separation is enhanced.
Surround sound support
With a Dolby Surround sound card and the right speakers, your PC can deliver Dolby Surround sound while you’re listening to audio CDs or watching DVD movies on your PC. (For me, the biggest hassle wasn’t the extra cost or upgrading my PC’s sound card: It was finding the space for all five speakers around my already crowded computer desk!) High-end Surround sound cards such as the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 from Creative Labs can deliver Dolby Digital 6.1 Surround sound, 24-bit/192 KHz audio playback (which is far superior in quality than even a commercial audio CD), and 3-D imaging for your games and all for about $120 from most Web stores. In fact, this card even has an optional, front panel control that you can add to an empty drive bay, so you don’t have to move your PC to plug in all your speakers and other external sound hardware. Life is truly good.
MP3 hardware support
That MP3 hardware feature relieves your PC’s processor from the job of ripping and playing MP3 files so that you can rip music while you edit a digital photograph in Photoshop with nary a drop in performance. No stuttering audio or long delays, especially on older PCs. Many hardware MP3 sound cards also allow you to introduce the same concert hall environmental effect that I mention earlier to the MP3 files that you create . . . now your garage band can claim to have played Carnegie Hall.
Game and FireWire ports
Many sound cards are equipped with a little something extra: a FireWire port or an IBM game port, which was once a dear friend of any PC game player (because it used to be the only way to hook up most joysticks and external game controllers). Lately, most PC controllers have switched to the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, but it’s still a plus for a sound card to include a game port. Older game peripherals like many joysticks and flight throttles won’t work with USB, so it’s a legacy thing.
MIDI ports
Before I move on, I have to address musicians and their Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) ports. A sound card with standard MIDI ports allows you to connect synthesizers and many different electronic musical instruments, such as drums and keyboards, to your computer. With a MIDI instrument connected, your computer can play MIDI music files on the instrument, or you can play the instrument and record the music as a MIDI file on your computer. Note, however, that most of today’s sound cards can play MIDI music files without attaching an instrument, so it’s not necessary to buy a card with built-in MIDI ports just to play MIDI music files.
legal notice
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Web-articles is a free articles resource.
Suggestion: If you need fresh, daily updated content for your website, feel free to use our service. Click here for more information.
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above.
related articles
The Internet has become such an essential part of most people’s experience that it’s sometimes difficult to know where your own computer stops and the Internet begins. For most of us, it doesn’t matter if a particular resource is physically located on a local hard drive (one inside your PC or a network server) or a computer halfway around the world. Either way, it’s just a matter of keystrokes and mouse clicks to view it on the screen or listen to it through speakers plugged into your computer. ...
2. How to setup a local network in Windows XP
LOCAL NETWORK PROBLEMS Any time two or more computers and their related devices are under the same roof, they should probably connect to one another through a etwork. Networking allows users to share files and printers and to share access to the Internet through a common modem or broadband connection. Windows XP includes tools and wizards that make it relatively simple to set up a network, but a network is always more complicated than an isolated, stand-alone computer. Network problems don’t oft...
3. Windows XP activation and hardware problems
Not every computer failure is caused by a software issue. Many problems that appear to be related to Windows are actually caused by some kind of hardware malfunction or by a conflict between two or more incompatible hardware components inside the computer. This article describes many of the most common problems that you might encounter when you try to add, move, or change a component inside your computer. Most of these problems have relatively easy solutions if you know where to look. Finding and fixing hardware problems requ...
4. Installing a New Hard Drive on Windows XP Professional
Hard drives are a special case. On a cost- per-bit basis, drives are cheap and getting cheaper all the time. When a drive fails, the cost of replacing the physical device is relatively small, but the data stored on the old drive is often irreplaceable. So you shouldn’t throw away an apparently broken drive until you have done everything possible to recover the data, and you shouldn’t do anything to the drive that might erase or damage any more data. When your boot drive (almost always the C: dri...
5. How to recover data from a corrupted hard drive using Windows XP Pro
Recovering Your Data Unless the physical platters inside the drive are severely damaged, it’s probably possible to recover the data from a bad drive. In extreme cases, you might need to send the drive to a very expensive recovery service that will take the drive apart in a clean room environment and replace the damaged parts, but it can be done. Before you spend that money, try the techniques in this section to read your files with special recovery software. The most important thing to ...
6. How to move a hard drive to a new computer under Windows XP
Moving a Hard Drive to a New Computer Moving an old drive to a new computer is often the best way to continue using the same data after you start using the new machine. However, it’s often not possible to use the old drive as the boot drive (the C: drive) on your new computer. You can’t just drop the old drive into the new box and use the Windows software that you installed on the old computer. Unless the old and new computers are exactly the same make and model or they use exactly the same m...
7. Adding more RAM under Windows XP
Hard drives aren’t the only parts of a computer that can fail. Memory modules, the central processor, the motherboard, the power supply, and all of the peripheral devices that allow the computer to exchange data with the rest of the world can stop working properly. Obviously, troubleshooting a memory module is very different from trying to fix a mouse or a keyboard, so this article contains specific advice about fixing many of the most common devices and components in and around your computer. Memory ...
8. Mouse, Keyboard, Motherboard and Power Supply Problems
Replacing the Motherboard Installing a new motherboard is the computer equivalent of a brain trans- plant. It’s major surgery that replaces the central components that control everything the computer does. Obviously, you won’t perform a motherboard swap very often, but if you are a truly dedicated hardware geek and you’re not afraid to tear the whole computer apart, it can be done. Just follow the instructions that come with motherboard, take your time, and double-check all the li...
9. Using a printer on Windows XP Professional
Printer Problems Printers are mechanical devices controlled by computers, so they can suffer from the worst of both worlds: mechanical failures and bad data. When a printer fails to produce the document you expect, or the document doesn’t look the way you expected it to look, you should look for both types of problems. Restart the Printer Sometimes the printer’s options and configuration settings will return to the correct values after you turn off the printer ...
10. Windows XP Professional technical support
You’ve tried all the troubleshooting tech- niques in this article, but nothing seems to solve your particular problem. The computer still displays an unhelpful error message every time you turn the thing on, and you have replaced everything except the screws that hold the case together. There’s nothing about this problem in the user manual or the online Knowledge Base, and a Google search only produces pleas from other people who are facing the same problem. Now what? It’s time to ask for help...