Today's computers make all sorts of noises, from blurps (blurps?!) and beeps to concert-hall quality music. Your computers ability to produce sound is dependent on its sound card. When discussing Sound Cards their can often be a great deal of technical information that can be both confusing and unnecessary to many people. For the sake of clarity we have kept the discussion to containing as many "real" words as possible. This may seem overly simplistic to "Audiophiles" (if you don't know what an Audiophile is then you aren't one), and for that we apologize.

A sound card is a device that enables your computer to output sound through speakers, record sound with a microphone, and manipulate sound stored in files or on disk. If your computer monitor doesn't have built-in speakers, you will need separate external speakers in order to produce audio or you can use headphones. You use the Sound Card to hear sound effects and music from just about everything connected to your computer today. A good sound card and speaker system heightens your multimedia experience, making it more electrifying, compelling, and fulfilling.

GET A SOUNDBLASTER COMPATIBLE CARD -There is no official standard for Sound Cards, (therefore theoretically certain programs are able to run on some Sound Cards and not others) the closest thing to an industry wide standard is the SoundBlaster line of Sound Cards made by Creative Labs. If a Sound Card is SoundBlaster compatible, you can be certain that it will run on virtually every program.

GET A CARD WITH WAVETABLE SYNTHESIS - Basically there are two ways of converting the little pieces o data flying around your computer into sound. FM synthesis and Wavetable synthesis. Wavetable synthesis sounds better and is relatively cheap (so you don't have to be).

MAKE SURE YOUR CARD IS PCI - There are lots of slower ISA cards out and about these days. Forlorn dinosaurs held over from a far more innocent (but oh so frustrating) period. While you can get away with using an ISA card on your system, it is a terrible resource hog, and takes up too much of your Processors valuable energy to justify not spending the twenty bucks you can get a cheap (but perfectly adequate) PCI card

Cool stuff you don't need to have but you really should consider getting since it won't set you back a whole lot and will make your Multimedia experience infinitely (OK maybe a little less than infinitely but you get my point) more enjoyable.

3D SOUND

This technology makes sound seem as if it's coming from different directions (not just stereo's right and left, but up, down, and in back of you as well). Even in a cramped space with small speakers, 3D achieves the aural "illusion" of a vast landscape and multiple sources. This effect is particularly impressive with 3- or 4-piece speaker sets.

VOICES

The more the merrier as far as voices are concerned. Sound Cards have the ability to transmit more than one sound at a time. Each sound is called a voice. A sound card that can produce 64 seperate sounds at any given time would be known as having 64 voices. If you are a gamer or musician then get as many voices as you can, otherwise get as many voices as you can afford.

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)

MIDI files are a type of file made specifically for music. They are extremely compact and take up much less memory space then other sound files such as WAV. Your card should be MIDI compatible.