The Sound Card

When sound cards first appeared on the market, most came in a multimedia pack, together with speakers and CD ROM drive. Every pack was different and games authors had lots of fun keeping up with all the different system (or lack of). Then Creative Labs offered the SoundBlaster card to the games world and not before long all sound cards that appeared on the market were SoundBlaster compatible. Until today, all sound cards are SoundBlaster compatible and Creative Labs still make the best ones of the lot.

For a long time sound cards came on a 16bit ISA/EISA expansion card, but with the ISA/EISA standard finally giving way to PCI and AGP, fewer and fewer motherboards support those trusty old black sockets. Most sound cards have therefore moved over to PCI, which is just as well, because sound cards have come a long way since the first ISAs.

Unless you want something cheap and nasty, the sound card of your choice will be an advanced wave table card (AWE) with at least 64 voices, i.e. AWE64. There are better cards appearing on the market all the time, but an AWE64 will give you all the sound bits you'll ever need. One of the best sound cards on the market today (at the time of writing) is the Creative SoundBlaster 256 Live! There are 'Value' and 'Gold' editions available, of which the 'Gold' is aimed at the musician. For us other mortals, always go for the 'Value'.

When you put your sound card into your computer, don't forget to connect the CD audio cable that leads to your CD ROM, otherwise you won't be able to hear your audio CDs playing. If you've got two CD ROMs or a CD Writer, you can connect that one to the AUX socket of the sound card so you can use both CD devices to play your audio CDs. And if you have a DVD, you also need to connect the SPDIF cable that provides the digital sound for your DVD movies.