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Hardware Goodness October 2000 • Vol.8 Issue 10 Page(s) 116-117 in print issue |
Sound Cards Great Gaming Sounds Are Only A New Card Away | ||
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With so much computerized audio around these days, users want their computers to sound as nice as possible. The quality of your computer's sound is a function of three components: the audio source, the speakers, and the sound card. Audio sources include Internet radio, MP3 files, games, and DVD (digital versatile disc) movies, as well as the various sounds played by your software and many Web sites. These vary widely in quality and no combination of sound card and speakers can make a low-quality sound source sound good. In general, most MP3 files, newer games, and DVD movies have great sound, while older games and other sound sources are questionable. Speakers have perhaps the biggest impact on sound quality. Most of the speakers that come with new computers are of low quality. For more information on speakers, see "Speakers" in this issue. Pretty much every computer sold in the past few years has a decent sound card. It will generally be at least a Sound Blaster 16 equivalent. This means that it can play digitized sounds with 16 bits per sample at a 44.1KHz (kilohertz) sample rate. However, if you are looking for great music or a 3-D game experience, you are going to have to upgrade your sound card. First, you should take a hard look at your speakers. You will hear a much bigger improvement by upgrading your speakers than your sound card. However, you need balance. It does not make sense to hook great speakers to a cheap sound card nor does it make sense to use a great sound card to drive cheap speakers. Not long ago, you had to pay more than $100 for almost any sound card and, even then, it would not sound that great. However, recently there's been a real revolution in the industry. Sound cards are cheaper, easier to install, and higher quality. Most importantly, sound cards have moved from the slow ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) slots to the fast PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots. This speeds its access to the CPU (central processing unit) and memory, and it makes the sound card a snap to install. Do You Need A Sound Card? Before deciding which sound card and speakers to buy, you face a fundamental question: Do you want a sound card at all? You can now by digital speakers that bypass the sound card altogether and plug into the USB (Universal Serial Bus) port. The computer sends digital audio to the speakers, which convert it to analog sound. The big advantage of USB speakers is they free up a PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slot and do not use an IRQ (interrupt request) line or DMA (direct memory access) channels. And since the signal is converted to analog outside the computer, there is less opportunity for interference.
While USB speakers make sense on business machines running Windows 98, users with more demanding audio needs should stick with traditional audio. What To Look For. What to look for in a sound card depends on how you use your computer. Gamers. Modern games sound best with 3-D sound and lots of amplification. You need a sound card that can drive four speakers plus a subwoofer. Many sound cards, especially those targeted at gamers, come bundled with games and that may offset the cost of the sound card. Games and sound cards communicate with each other using the A3D, DirectX, and EAX APIs (application program interfaces); however, games vary in their support for these. You want to get a card that provides the best support for the API that works best with the games you play. Home Theater. Home theater is more commonly played through a television and is just starting to become popular on computers. Since smaller monitors do not provide the image of a big-screen television, home theater is always going to look better on a television. Nevertheless, for computers with a built-in DVD (digital versatile disc) player, adding good sound gives you a smaller home theater for little money. Home theaters require surround sound and AC-3 Dolby Digital, so your sound card will need to support these. Because of the extra equipment that you will need for a home theater, your best bet is to buy the sound card and speakers at the same time in order to make sure you get everything you need and that everything works together. Music. Your sound card does not have much impact on the sound quality when you play a CD, since the player generates the analog sound. If you play MP3 (Moving Pictures Experts Group, Audio Layer 3) files, your sound card will have the duty of converting the digital information in the MP3 file into analog sound, as well as taking on the job of amplifying it. With that background in mind, we will look at a value-priced and a top-of-the-line sound card. By looking at both ends of the spectrum, you can get a good idea of the range of options and performance you can expect. Value Card. The Fortissimo sound card ($50) from Guillemot (http://www.guillemot.com) is a significant step up from most built-in sound cards, especially for music listeners on a budget. While it supports four speakers, only the front two speakers (and subwoofer) play when listening to a CD. With games, it supports Microsoft's DirectSound 3D, Creative Labs' EAX, and Aureal's A3D 1.0 but not the more advanced A3D 2.0. For home theater it has an S/PDIF digital output with optical connector. The software bundled with the card is light, but as we went to press, Guillemot announced an upgraded software bundle. The XL version will include the PowerDVD software DVD player, Music-Match Jukebox 4.4 for playing MP3 files, Liquid Player 5.0 for playing MP3 files and burning CDs, Maxman Studio Demo for creating professional music, and a demo of UbiSoft's RAYMAN 2: The Great Escape game. Top-Of-The-Line Card. Sound Blaster Live Platinum is the latest and most powerful sound card from Creative (http://www.creative.com). The sound it produces is top-notch. The Sound Blaster Live Platinum is two separate pieces of hardware. The first is the typical PCI sound card. The second is a panel the size of a CD player that mounts in a drive bay on the front of your computer. This panel adds six jacks and two controls to the front of your computer. The jacks are: S/PDIF in and out (RCA/coaxial jack), headphone out (1/4 inch stereo jack), line in with shared microphone in, and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) in and out (standard DIN). The controls on the front panel are volume and microphone gain. Having the controls on the front makes them easier to access, but it does require a free drive bay and plugging cables into the front of your computer makes it look sloppy. The Sound Blaster Live Platinum has one of the best audio engines going. It supports every type of input you can imagine and features Dolby Digital Output. The difference in listening to digital CD audio, rather than analog, is truly amazing. It also supports multiple audio streams, so you can listen to music while playing a game and hear them both. Sound Blaster Live is actually a line of sound cards. There are two versions, the X-Gamer and MP3+, that retail for $100. Both omit the front panel and digital output and both come with a skimpier software bundle that is targeted at their respective audiences, but both have excellent audio. The Platinum is the top-of-the line model that retails for $200. It has all the hardware along with a massive software bundle.  by Ronny Richardson
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