Sound Card

Now as a gamer, computer enthusiast and audio engineer this is a personal subject to me, but sound cards, or lack thereof in many of today’s systems, hurts me. Sound must be processed like any other data in a PC, and contrary to popular belief: IT WILL SLOW THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR PC!

I find nothing more enjoyable then surround sound engulfing me into a movie or game. It makes you feel like you are really there. I also understand that the majority of people don’t care

much about sound. So the question is, do you need a sound card in your PC? The answer, without a doubt, is yes. If you can afford it, a good sound card will speed load time of anything with an audio line of data and make anything with sound perform better. This answer is going to really mimic my argument about whether you need a video card or not. Therefore, I will skip to the statistics.

Statistics of a Sound Card

·         Max Sampling Rate: This is how well the card reproduces the digital sound. Sound is analog by nature, but getting that sound as pure as possible (or as pure as the original recording will allow) is the goal. Analog sounds are sampled at a rate of 44.1k per second and consist of 16 bits of data per sample. To reproduce those sounds in stereo, you would need two lines of data. 44,100 samples per second multiplied by 16 bits per sample multiplied again, by 2 tracks = 1,411,200 bits per second. This adds up to a lot of data you just relieved your processor of. 22k to 44k is the minimum to reproduce a full spectrum of sound. This is a key statistic to good clean sound, and fast performing audio cards.  

·         Signal to Noise Ratio: The amount of noise added to the original signal by this piece of equipment. So a 99 SNR would mean for every 99% of the original signal, 1% noise would be added.

·         Digital to Analog or Analog to Digital Converters: Using the same equation as shown in max sampling rate, this shows how fast the signal can be changed to and from digital to analog.

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