briefly Explain how a sound card works.?

Question

briefly Explain how a sound card works.?

Answer 1

I will give you three answers that depend on your level of involvement in computers.



Mild: It talks and listens to the rest of the computer, to translate computer code into sound that people can understand. It can be used for many purposes such as play music, record your voice, voice recognition input with help of a mic. etc...





Hot: A sound card works by transfering and receiving digital and analog data as input/output device, that sits in the mother board to help processing of sound. It can be built in, external caled expansion card, or internal and sits on any of this busses isa/pci/usb.





Wild: I/O device, that uses An analog-to-digital converter (ADC)

A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to convert sound waves.

A sound card must translate between sound waves and bits and bytes.





A very general answer would be:

Sound card listens to radio waves, )) ) ) )

and records the size of the waves.

Then creates bits and bites for the computer to understand.



Takes a sound wave sample and it splits it in sections.

this sections have diferent levels of sound.

For example a high level would be 10000, and a very low one would be 1.



it saves this values, in a process called SAMPLING RATE and it is measured in MHZ.



At this point the sound can stay in the computer untill you want to hear it again.



So you click play somewhere, and the computer inverts the process so you can understand the binary code.



One way it does it is by using FM synthesis by overlaping many of this recordings to create more complex sound waves such as the ones music and voice make.



And sorry for the spelling mistakes, the check spelling button was just hanging.

Answer 2

Close-up of a sound card PCB, showing electrolytic capacitors (most likely for AC coupling), SMT capacitors and resistors, and a YAC512 two-channel 16-bit DAC.A typical sound card includes a sound chip, usually featuring a digital-to-analog converter, that converts recorded or generated digital waveforms of sound into an analog format. This signal is led to a (typically 1/8-inch earphone-type) connector where an amplifier, headphones, or similar sound destination can be plugged in. More advanced designs usually include more than one sound chip to separate duties between digital sound production and synthesized sounds (usually for real-time generation of music and sound effects utilizing little data and CPU time).



Digital sound reproduction is usually achieved by multi-channel DACs, able to play multiple digital samples at different pitches and volumes, optionally applying real-time effects like filtering or distortion. Multi-channel digital sound playback can also be used for music synthesis if used with a digitized instrument bank of some sort, typically a small amount of ROM or Flash memory containing samples corresponding to the standard MIDI instruments. (A contrasting way to synthesize sound on a PC uses "audio codecs", which rely heavily on software for music synthesis, MIDI compliance and even multiple-channel emulation. This approach has become common as manufacturers seek to simplify the design and the cost of the sound card itself).



Most sound cards have a line in connector where the sound signal from a cassette tape recorder or similar sound source can be input. The sound card can digitize this signal and store it (controlled by the corresponding computer software) on the computer's hard disk for editing or further reproduction. Another typical external connector is the microphone connector, for connecting to a microphone or other input device that generates a relatively lower voltage than the line in connector. Input through a microphone jack is typically used by speech recognition software or Voice over IP applications.

Answer 3

It basically lets your direct sounds from your PC to speakers, etc

Answer 4

it allows your computer to send sound to what you chose. be specific and what do you want to play smusic on?

Answer 5

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/sound-card.htm