How Do I Choose the Best Gaming Sound Card?

Sound card (Sound Card) is also called audio card (called by Hong Kong and Taiwan sound card), is the most basic component of a computer multimedia system, is a hardware to achieve the conversion of sound waves / digital signals. The basic function of a sound card is to convert the original sound signals from microphones, tapes, and optical discs, and output them to sound equipment such as headphones, speakers, amplifiers, and recorders, or to make synthetic instrument sounds through the digital interface (MIDI) of music equipment ^[1] .

The world's first sound card is called ADLIB Magic Sound Card. It was born in 1984 in the British company ADLIB AUDIO. It can be said that ADLIB is a veritable "father of sound cards". Of course, the technology at that time was still very backward, and there were many deficiencies in performance. Take this sound card, for example, it is mono, and the sound quality now seems to be extremely bad, but it is undoubtedly its Birth, pioneering computer audio technology ^[2]

The sound card is to process the digital audio signal of the microphone or linear input sound signal through A / D conversion to program the digital audio signal for data processing, and then to the analog signal after the D / A conversion. ^]

The sound card is composed of various electronic devices and connectors. Electronics are used to perform specific functions. Connectors generally have

Sound card gets sound from microphone

1. Digital sound files. Through the control of sound card and corresponding driver, collect data from microphones, recorders, etc.

Sound card development so far, mainly divided into

Because the on-board soft sound card does not have a sound card main processing chip,

The independent sound card is relative to the on-board sound card, and it was originally independent. along with

Linear

Computer sound card common failures 1: Sound card is silent ^[3]

Common reasons for this failure are:

1. The driver output is "Mute" by default. Click the small sound icon (small crotch) in the lower right corner of the screen, the volume adjustment slider appears, there is a "mute" option below, click the check box in front, clear the check mark in the box, you can pronounce normally ^[3] .

2. The sound card conflicts with other cards. The solution is to adjust the system resources used by the PnP card so that the cards do not interfere with each other. Sometimes, when I open "Device Management", although the yellow exclamation mark (conflict sign) is not seen, the sound card does not sound, but there is actually a conflict, but the system does not check it out.

3. The sound card can't make sound after installing Direct X. This sound card is not compatible with Direct X, you need to update the driver.

4. One channel is silent. Check whether the audio cable from the sound card to the speaker is disconnected ^[3] .

Computer sound card common failures two: the sound from the sound card is too loud ^[3]

Common reasons for this failure are:

1. The card is incorrect. Due to the insufficient manufacturing precision of the case and the poor manufacture or installation of the sound card outer baffle, the sound card cannot be tightly combined with the expansion slot of the motherboard. Visually, the "golden finger" on the sound card and the expansion slot spring are misaligned. This phenomenon is common on ISA cards or PCI cards and is a common fault. It can usually be corrected with pliers ^[3] .

2. The active speaker input is connected to the Speaker output of the sound card. For active speakers, it should be connected to the Line out end of the sound card, the signal it outputs

The noise is much smaller without going through the amplifier on the sound card. Some sound cards have only one output. Whether it is Line out or Speaker depends on the jumper on the card. The default method of the manufacturer is usually Speaker, so you need to unplug the sound card to adjust the jumper ^[3] .

3. Windows comes with bad drivers. When installing the sound card driver, select "Driver provided by the manufacturer" instead of "Windows default driver". If you install by "Add new hardware", select "Install from disk" instead of from the list box. select. If you have installed the driver that comes with Windows, you can select Control Panel System Device Management Sound, Video and Game Controller, click each device, and select Properties Driver Change Driver From Disk installation". At this time, insert the disk or CD attached to the sound card and load the driver provided by the manufacturer ^[3] .

Common faults of computer sound cards 3: The sound card cannot be plug and play ^[3]

1. Try to use new drivers or alternatives. I used to have a sound card. Under Windows 98, I couldn't install the driver using the original driver disk. I had to use the Creative SB16 driver instead, and everything worked fine. Later, it was upgraded to Windows Me, and then it was abnormal, and then it was normal to use the sound card driver that comes with Windows 2000 (full version). ^[3]

2. The most headache problem is that a plug-and-play device is detected under Windows 9X, but it is self-proclaimed to help you install a driver. This driver is unusable. In the future, this will be repeated every time you delete and reinstall. Problem and cannot be solved by "adding new hardware". The author leaked a unique trick here: Enter the Win9xinfother directory, delete all * .inf files about the sound card, and restart it manually. This is a hundred percent proof, and has saved countless sound card lives ... Of course, modify the registration Tables can also achieve the same purpose ^[3] .

3. PnP sound card installation is not supported (also applicable to PnP sound cards that cannot be installed using the PnP method mentioned above): Enter "Control Panel" / "Add New Hardware" / "Next", when prompted "Do you need Windows to search for new hardware?" ", Select" No ", and then select" Sound, video and game controllers "from the list to install with a driver disk or directly select the sound card type ^[3] .

Common fault four: CD is silent ^[3]

1. Completely silent. The CD player in Windows 98 is silent, but the "CD player" works normally, which means that the audio cable of the optical drive is not connected properly. Use a 4-core audio cable to connect the CD-ROM's analog audio output and the CD-in on the sound card. This cable will be included with the purchase of the CD-ROM ^[3] .

2. Only one channel sounds. The optical drive output port generally has two left and right wires, and the middle two wires are ground. Since the four lines of the audio signal line are generally different in color, one-to-one corresponding interfaces can be found from the color of the lines. If there is only one interface on the sound card or each interface does not match the audio cable, you have to change the wiring order of the audio cable, usually only two of them can be swapped ^[3] .
Common fault five: PCI sound card pops ^[3]

Generally, it is because the PCI graphics card uses Bus Master technology that causes the background noise to be amplified during operations such as hard disk reading and writing, mouse movement, etc. that are hung on the PCI bus. Solution: Turn off the Bus Master function of the PCI graphics card, replace it with AGP graphics card, and change the PCI sound card to the slot ^[3] .

Common fault six: Recording is not normal ^[3]

First check whether the microphone is plugged into another jack by mistake. Second, double-click the small speaker and select "Properties Recording" on the menu to see if the settings are correct. Next, adjust "Mixer Device" and "Line Input Device" in "Control Panel Multimedia Device" and set them to "Use" status. If the "Recording" option in "Multimedia Audio" is gray, that would be bad. Of course, there is no room for saving. You can try adding "ISA Plug and Play bus" in "Add New Hardware System Devices" , Simply installed the sound card with the card tool software and restarted ^[3] .
Common fault seven: Wav music, Midi music cannot be played ^[3]
The phenomenon of not being able to play Wav music is very rare, often because there is more than one "audio device" under "Multimedia" "Device", it is sufficient to disable one; if the MIDI file cannot be played, there may be the following 3 possibilities ^[3] :

1. Early ISA sound cards may be caused by the incompatibility of MIDI playback due to the incompatibility between 16-bit mode and 32-bit mode, which should be solved by installing software wavetable ^[3] .

2. Most of the popular PCI sound cards nowadays use wavetable synthesis technology. If the MIDI part cannot be played, it is most likely because you have not loaded the appropriate wavetable sound library ^[3] .

3. The MIDI channel in the Windows volume control is set to silent mode ^[3] .
Common failure eight: PCI sound card is not used properly under WIN ^[3]

Some users report that everything is normal during the sound card driver installation process, and there is no device conflict, but under WIN98, there is no sound or other failures. This phenomenon usually occurs on a PCI sound card. Please check which PCI slot you inserted the PCI sound card into during the installation process. For the sake of heat dissipation, some friends like to insert the sound card in the PCI slots away from the AGP slot and close to the ISA slot. The problem often arises here, because Windows98 has a bug: sometimes it can only correctly identify sound cards inserted in the PCI-1 and PCI-2 slots. On the ATX motherboard, the two PCIs next to AGP are PCI-1 and PCI-2 (the opposite is true on some ATX motherboards, and the PCI-1 is next to ISA), so if you do nt install the PCI sound card in the correct The problem will occur on the slot of the computer ^[3] .