How Sound Cards Work

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A sound card allows a computer to create and record real, high-quality sound. See more computer hardware pictures. Before the invention of the sound card, a PC could make one sound - a beep. Although the computer could change the beep's frequency and duration, it couldn't change the volume or create other sounds. At first, the beep acted primarily as a signal or a warning. Later, developers created music for the earliest PC games using beeps of different pitches and lengths. This music was not particularly realistic -- you can hear samples from some of these soundtracks at Crossfire Designs. Fortunately, computers' sound capabilities increased greatly in the 1980s, when several manufacturers introduced add-on cards dedicated to controlling sound. Now, a computer with a sound card can do far more than just beep. It can produce 3-D audio for games or surround sound playback for DVDs. It can also capture and record sound from external sources. In this article, you'll learn how a sound card allows a computer to create and record real, high-quality sound. Analog vs. Digital Sounds and computer data are fundamentally different. Sounds are analog - they are made of waves that travel through matter. People hear sounds when these waves physically vibrate their eardrums. Computers, however, communicate digitally, using electrical impulses that represent 0s and 1s. Like agraphics card, a sound card translates between a computer's digital information and the outside world's analog information. Sound is made of waves that travel through a medium, such as air or water. The most basic sound card is a printed circuit board that uses four components to translate analog and digital information: An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) An ISA or PCI interface to connect the card to the motherboard Input and output connections for a microphone and speakers
Instead of separate ADCs and DACs, some sound cards use a coder/decoder chip, also called a CODEC, which performs both functions.

A sound card must translate between sound waves and bits and bytes. In the next section, we'll explore the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversions that take place on the sound card.

ADCs and DACs Imagine using your computer to record yourself talking. First, you speak into a microphone that you have plugged into your sound card. The ADC translates the analog waves of your voice into digital data that the computer can understand. To do this, it samples, or digitizes, the sound by taking precise measurements of the wave at frequent intervals.

An analog-to-digital converter measures sound waves at frequent intervals. The number of measurements per second, called the sampling rate, is measured in kHz. The faster a card's sampling rate, the more accurate its reconstructed wave is. If you were to play your recording back through the speakers, the DAC would perform the same basic steps in reverse. With accurate measurements and a fast sampling rate, the restored analog signal can be nearly identical to the original sound wave. Even high sampling rates, however, cause some reduction in sound quality. The physical process of moving sound through wires can also cause distortion. Manufacturers use two measurements to describe this reduction in sound quality:

 Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), expressed as a percentage Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), measured in decibels
For both THD and SNR, smaller values indicate better quality. Some cards also support digital input, allowing people to store digital recordings without converting them to an analog format.

Other Sound Card Components In addition to the basic components needed for sound processing, many sound cards include additional hardware or input/output connections, including: Digital Signal Processor (DSP): Like a graphics processing unit (GPU), a DSP is a specialized microprocessor. It takes some of the workload off of the computer's CPU by performing calculations for analog and digital conversion. DSPs can process multiple sounds, or channels, simultaneously. Sound cards that do not have their own DSP use the CPU for processing. Memory: As with a graphics card, a sound card can use its own memoryto provide faster data processing. Input and Output Connections: Most sound cards have, at the very minimum, connections for a microphone and speakers. Some include so many input and output connections that they have a breakout box, which often mounts in one of the drive bays, to house them. These connections include: Multiple speaker connections for 3-D and surround sound Sony/Philips Digital Interface (S/PDIF), a file transfer protocol for audio data. It uses either coaxial or optical connections for input to and output from the sound card. Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), used to connect synthesizers or other electronic instruments to their computers. FireWire and USB connections, which connect digital audio or video recorders to the sound card

How Speakers Work

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Speakers take electronic signals and turn them into sound. See more audio tech pictures. In any sound system, ultimate quality depends on the speakers. The best recording, encoded on the most advanced storage device and played by a top-of-the-line deck and amplifier, will sound awful if the system is hooked up to poor speakers. A system's speaker is the component that takes the electronic signal stored on things like CDs, tapes and DVDs and turns it back into actual sound that we can hear. In this article, we'll find out exactly how speakers do this. We'll also look at how speaker designs differ, and see how these differences affect sound quality. Speakers are amazing pieces of technology that have had a profound impact on our culture. But at their heart, they are remarkably simple devices.

Making Sound In the last section, we saw that sound travels in waves of air pressure fluctuation, and that we hear sounds differently depending on the frequency and amplitude of these waves. We also learned that microphones translate sound waves into electrical signals, which can be encoded onto CDs, tapes, LPs, etc. Players convert this stored information back into an electric current for use in the stereo system. A speaker is essentially the final translation machine -- the reverse of the microphone. It takes the electrical signal and translates it back into physical vibrations to create sound waves. When everything is working as it should, the speaker produces nearly the same vibrations that the microphone originally recorded and encoded on a tape, CD, LP, etc. Traditional speakers do this with one or more drivers.

Making Sound: Diaphragm

A typical speaker driver, with a metal basket, heavy permanent magnet and paper diaphragm A driver produces sound waves by rapidly vibrating a flexible cone, or diaphragm.

 The cone, usually made of paper, plastic or metal, is attached on the wide end to the suspension. The suspension, or surround, is a rim of flexible material that allows the cone to move, and is attached to the driver's metal frame, called the basket. The narrow end of the cone is connected to the voice coil. The coil is attached to the basket by thespider, a ring of flexible material. The spider holds the coil in position, but allows it to move freely back and forth. Some drivers have a dome instead of a cone. A dome is just a diaphragm that extends out instead of tapering in.

The wire that runs through the speaker system connects to two hook-up jacks on the driver. This is exactly what a stereo signal does -- it constantly reverses the flow of electricity. If you've ever hooked up a stereo system, then you know that there are two output wires for each speaker -- typically a black one and a red one. Essentially, the amplifier is constantly switching the electrical signal, fluctuating between a positive charge and a negative charge on the red wire. Since electrons always flow in the same direction between positively charged particles and negatively charged particles, the current going through the speaker moves one way and then reverses and flows the other way. This alternating current causes the polar orientation of the electromagnet to reverse itself many times a second.

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