

Sound cards included on Windows machines utilize “ DIRECT SOUND“, “ WASAPI” or “ WDM” drivers. The sound card you receive with your computer is not a “pro sound card” and furthermore, doesn’t offer more than a single stereo output or surround sound. Got that? Yeah, a tad bit technical, agreed! The integrated sound system is often still referred to as a “sound card”.” The best plug-in cards, which use better and more expensive components, can achieve higher quality than integrated sound. Sound functionality can also be integrated onto the motherboard, using basically the same components as a plug-in card. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation, education and entertainment (games) and video projection.
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The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware inside the PC. “A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs.

In more detail, this excerpt from Wikipedia explains best: What is a Sound Card (or otherwise known as Audio Card)?įirst off, your computer already has one built in (laptops have integrated single stereo output or surround sound output cards included by default) A sound card essentially turns digital audio player output (audio files) into audio signals that can be amplified and played, just like when you amplify the signal from CD decks. Since our product specialists here at a PCDJ receive this question often from first-time callers, I figured it was worthy of its own blog post…
