Really basic soundcard question! 
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Posted by Neil Grafton on June 29, 2008, 6:41 am
Please log in for more thread options just had my eyes opened as to what a soundcard does, and I feel an utter buffoon! This is what I, rightly or wrongly, used to think:- 1. A soundcard is needed to produce all those beep and pings etc. that Windows does on certain actions (starting up and so on). 2. It doesn't matter if your PC doesn't have speakers, 'cause there's some kind of little speaker on the soundcard. 3. When you play a MIDI file, the soundcard has 128 or whatever pre-set sounds which it can play because something on the soundcard is built to handle them. 4. When you play a music CD in your CD-ROM drive, that's a different kettle of fish - because you have to do millions of different "human" sounds, the soundcard is no good. Consequently, the sounds all come from hardware in the CD-ROM unit (like hi-fi equipment in fact). I've just started using mp3s though, and it's made me realise what a load of cobblers the above must be! The mp3s deal with ANY sound, yet are not remotely connected to the CD-ROM. Doh! So - my question is this : do ALL sounds emanating from a PC always come from the soundcard? Thanks! | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by ~misfit~ on June 29, 2008, 8:18 am
Please log in for more thread options No. > Thanks!
You're welcome. -- Shaun. DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it. If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-) | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by kony on June 29, 2008, 2:51 pm
Please log in for more thread options On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:41:56 GMT, neil.grafton@tivoli.net
(Neil Grafton) wrote: >Please don't knock me for asking such a simplistic question, but I've
>just had my eyes opened as to what a soundcard does, and I feel an >utter buffoon! This is what I, rightly or wrongly, used to think:- > >1. A soundcard is needed to produce all those beep and pings etc. that >Windows does on certain actions (starting up and so on). Yes, but certain error beeps can come from the motherboard buzzer (or case speaker if motherboard has one attached by a pin header). >2. It doesn't matter if your PC doesn't have speakers, 'cause there's
>some kind of little speaker on the soundcard. No sound card that I'm aware of has a speaker on it. Rarely some very old (ISA?) soundcard modem combo cards had a speaker because there was a modem, but it was not used for anything other than modem phoneline sounds. >3. When you play a MIDI file, the soundcard has 128 or whatever
>pre-set sounds which it can play because something on the soundcard is >built to handle them. Yes, the soundcard driver handles were the midi sounds come from and sound card outputs it to the speakers plugged into the sound card output jack. >4. When you play a music CD in your CD-ROM drive, that's a different
>kettle of fish - because you have to do millions of different "human" >sounds, the soundcard is no good. Consequently, the sounds all come >from hardware in the CD-ROM unit (like hi-fi equipment in fact). Either: A) CDROM's internal circuitry outputs an analog or digital audio signal, to either the CDROM's front headphone jack through an opamp onboard, through an analog pin header on the back to the analog input on the sound card, or through a digital output on the back of the CDROM to the sound card digital input. B) Sound card streams digitally, data over the bus (ATAPI/ATA, SATA, SCSI, etc) which the operating system and audio player software play using the sound card driver, and the sound card then outputs this to the speakers (or a digital output to an external amplifier with a digital input which then converts it to analog to external speakers. If you plug headphones into the CDROM drive itself then A) is true. If you plug headphones into a case front jack then B) is true. If you listen over speakers or external amp + speakers plugged into the rear sound card jack then B) is true. So in general your statement in #4 is false, usually in a system that is old the CDROM's analog output goes to a sound card input as already file-decoded analog sound but the sound card itself still handles output to external amp or speakers. In newer systems the data usually goes over the CD drive's data bus and is decoded by the playback software and OS directs this to driver to sound card to output speakers or amp + speakers. >
>I've just started using mp3s though, and it's made me realise what a >load of cobblers the above must be! The mp3s deal with ANY sound, yet >are not remotely connected to the CD-ROM. Doh! CDROM onboard circuitry can only decode (AFAIK) a standard audio CD to produce an analog output. Otherwise any media files like MP3, WAV file, a DVD, etc, are data streamed over the data bus to the player which decodes and sends it to driver for soundcard which sound card outputs as digital to an amp which converts to analog to speakers, or sound card converts to analog onboard and outputs to amp analog input or directly drives speakers and/or headphones. >
>So - my question is this : do ALL sounds emanating from a PC always >come from the soundcard? In loose terms for the purposes of your speculation, yes they all do. When you observe that a CDROM can output analog or digital sound streams, it is something it can do without the PC being involved, only as a standalone CD player from an audio disc. It could do this if you had no PC and just the CDROM drive on a live power supply and pressed front panel playback buttons. Since most consumers don't use one like this, many CDROMs omitted these buttons to cut costs and that would make it necessary for the PC to send the commands for playback to the drive IF someone wanted to use it like this, but still most consumers (I would assumed) choose to output the sound through the sound card since the CDROM output can only do audio CDs but the sound card can handle the audio CDs plus everything else (except certain error beeps as mentioned above and those are (hopefully) rare). I'm sure there are other scenarios I haven't covered, but these are the most common ones typical to all PCs. | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by RobertVA on June 29, 2008, 8:40 pm
Please log in for more thread options Neil Grafton wrote:
> Please don't knock me for asking such a simplistic question, but I've
> just had my eyes opened as to what a soundcard does, and I feel an > utter buffoon! This is what I, rightly or wrongly, used to think:- > > 1. A soundcard is needed to produce all those beep and pings etc. that > Windows does on certain actions (starting up and so on). Not anywhere near as true as in the past. These functions are now included in many tower system and notebook motherboards. > 2. It doesn't matter if your PC doesn't have speakers, 'cause there's
> some kind of little speaker on the soundcard. No speakers on any of the several sound cards or motherboards I have owned. There's a stereo headphone jack that was originally designed to be compatible with extension speakers for the pocket cassette tape players that were popular before portable CD players were widely available. Some computer displays now include equivalent speakers. > 3. When you play a MIDI file, the soundcard has 128 or whatever
> pre-set sounds which it can play because something on the soundcard is > built to handle them. Wave forms can be loaded into memory. The MIDI file contains pitch and duration information that a sythysisor chip uses to reconstruct the musical notes, typically insturmental. > 4. When you play a music CD in your CD-ROM drive, that's a different
> kettle of fish - because you have to do millions of different "human" > sounds, the soundcard is no good. Consequently, the sounds all come > from hardware in the CD-ROM unit (like hi-fi equipment in fact). A music CD contains a numerical representation of the performance's (music or voice) audio waveform as generated by the microphone(s). At one time most computers were equipped with a cable to transmit these signals from the CD drive to the sound card, but most current models utilize the CD's data cable and the computer's data buss to transmit the raw digital data to the sound card or the equivalent circuitry on the motherboard. > I've just started using mp3s though, and it's made me realise what a
> load of cobblers the above must be! The mp3s deal with ANY sound, yet > are not remotely connected to the CD-ROM. Doh! MP3s are a form of the raw digital audio recording that's compressed to reduce the amount of memory or hard drive space necessary to store it. At some loss of quality a significantly longer playing program of MP3s can be stored on a single CD than the uncompressed standard wave files. there are even many DVD players that are able to play MP3s through the speakers of the attached stereo TV. > So - my question is this : do ALL sounds emanating from a PC always
> come from the soundcard? > > Thanks! The Power On Self Test (POST) beeps that occur when a computer is initially started usually come from a tiny speaker on the motherboard or the interior of the tower case. Some internal Fax Modems also utilize a mini speaker to relay the sound of dial tones and synchronization tones during the connection process. | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by ~misfit~ on June 30, 2008, 2:23 am
Please log in for more thread options Somewhere on teh intarweb "RobertVA" typed:
> No speakers on any of the several sound cards or motherboards I have
> owned. > The Power On Self Test (POST) beeps that occur when a computer is
> initially started usually come from a tiny speaker on the motherboard > or the interior of the tower case. ? -- Shaun. DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it. If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-) | ||||||||||||||||
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> just had my eyes opened as to what a soundcard does, and I feel an
> utter buffoon! This is what I, rightly or wrongly, used to think:-
>
> 1. A soundcard is needed to produce all those beep and pings etc. that
> Windows does on certain actions (starting up and so on).
> 2. It doesn't matter if your PC doesn't have speakers, 'cause there's
> some kind of little speaker on the soundcard.
> 3. When you play a MIDI file, the soundcard has 128 or whatever
> pre-set sounds which it can play because something on the soundcard is
> built to handle them.
> 4. When you play a music CD in your CD-ROM drive, that's a different
> kettle of fish - because you have to do millions of different "human"
> sounds, the soundcard is no good. Consequently, the sounds all come
> from hardware in the CD-ROM unit (like hi-fi equipment in fact).
>
> I've just started using mp3s though, and it's made me realise what a
> load of cobblers the above must be! The mp3s deal with ANY sound, yet
> are not remotely connected to the CD-ROM. Doh!
>
> So - my question is this : do ALL sounds emanating from a PC always
> come from the soundcard?