Understanding Sound Card With Functions and How Sound Card Works

Of all the findings and human creations that are the fastest evolved and revolution is the computer. At first he was only seen as a tool to perform complex and complex calculations or computations. This kind of usefulness gets fresh air after Alan Turing declares that a device he calls 'Universal Computing Machine' is very likely to be realized, where the tool is able to perform various types of calculations through the existence of a sequence of executable commands aka stored programs. The existence of a program that can be stored is what is the starting point of the birth of modern computers. Why is that?

This is because when a program can be stored, it automatically has a 'container'; and at the same time can also be run by 'container' it. According to the present term, the program is nothing but software, while the container in which the program is stored is hardware. Well, what is called by the computer is a unity of work together between software and hardware. Both need each other.

Hardware requires a series of instructions contained within the software. In the meantime, the software will be meaningless if there is no hardware in it. Among so many types of hardware, the sound card is among the most recently born along with the graphics card along with the birth of multimedia computers. Is a sound card that makes the computer capable of making a sound. Thanks to the sound card, we can appreciate the tone and rhythm produced by the musicians. It's hard to imagine a world without the existence of a sound card that sticks to all of today's computer devices. More clearly about the definition of sound card and its functions and how it works can you refer below:

Understanding Sound Card

In general, computers are digital vehicles; a world where everything in it is in binary form. What is contained inside the computer is basically unreal; just a mere discrete mathematical 'game' form that produces everything digital. Well, in order to be able to 'enjoy' the beauty of this digital world, what is required is nothing but a converter, which converts the digital realm to analogue nuances so as to be enjoyed by living beings like us, humans, converters or tools called sound cards.

Sound card is one of the computer hardware that has the main function as a data processing type audio or sound. When you hear a song or speak through a headset connected on a PC or laptop, the sound you hear is processed by the sound card. So any matter of audio or sound is the responsibility of sound card.

Sound Card Function

As discussed in the above paragraph, the basic function of a sound card is to convert an audio file containing notably digital data (as all files inside the computer) into analog signals that can be captured by our sense of hearing. In this case, the sound card can be viewed as the translator of digital data into analog data, and vice versa. Types may be different, but all sound cards have more or less the same functions as:

1. As a sound producing alias synthesizer
2. As a MIDI interface
3. As an analog-to-digital converter; the most common case found is sound recording
4. As a digital-to-analog converter; the easiest illustration is the sound out when we talk through headsets or voice calls.

Well, in order to perform its function properly, a sound card generally has 4 (four) main parts, namely:

1. An interface connected to the motherboard, usually using Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)
2. A number of input and output connectors. Thus, the user can install headphones, speakers or microphone
3. Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) facility; which allows converting digital data to analog sound
4. Facilities Analog to Digital Converter (ADC); which makes it possible to make a digital recording of analog voice inputs

Along with technological advances, sound cards can exist in computers in various ways. The most 'ancient' technology usually puts the sound card into one with the motherboard or the so-called Integrated Sound Card. For computers with large memory, integrated sound card is not a problem. However, most users choose to have a sound card separate from the motherboard to get better computer performance and sound output more stable. Only, users need to pay extra for this one.

Later also rife marketed external sound card, which often become the target of computer users who crave audio solutions home theater quality. There are a number of sound cards that both converters, namely DAC and ADC integrated on a chip coder / decoder alias CODEC. Some of them also have a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), which notabenya is a built-in processing unit. However, this DSP increases CPU load when converting between digital and analog data.

How Sound Card Works

Broadly speaking, there are 3 (three) sound synthesis methods run by a sound card in carrying out its task:

1. Frequency Modulation (FM)
This type of sound synthesis is the least expensive but also less effective. Here, the sound is simulated using certain algorithms to create a characteristic sine wave as close as possible to the original sound.

2. Wavetable
In this one working mechanism, recorded sound samples are 'stored' in the sound card to produce the best sound quality.

3. Physical Modeling
This mechanism is quite complex, and is a new type of synthesis in which sounds are simulated by complex programming procedures. Judging from its function, the sound card looks simple. But, does this hardware work as simple as that? How does the real sound card work? The sound card working mechanism so that can issue sound is as follows:

1.The action the user performs creates digital data in the form of audio files or that contains audio content read from the hard drive and then forwarded to the CPU
2.The CPU passes the digital data to the DSP unit on the sound card
3.The DSP then extracts the digital data
4.The digital data stream extracted by the DSP undergoes a real-time process by the DAC chip circuitry, and creates an analog signal that users can enjoy via headphones or speakers

That is the definition of sound card along with the function and way of sound card on computer or other hardware. Why is a sound card important enough? Because in computer, digital data conversion function alias discrete become sound waves (which notabenya are analog) executed completely by sound card.