Audio
Brief History of the Sound Card.
A sound card Originally, when computers were first released, produced no more than various tones generated through the PC Speaker.
Because of the importance of audio, several manufacturers, such as Ad lib, Roland and Creative Labs, released several types of audio boards during 1984 to 1989.
It's been sixteen years since the original ISA-based Sound Blaster card arrived on the scene.
That card sported an 11-voice FM synthesizer and 8-bit monophonic digital audio capability.
During the years, the Sound Blaster cards by Creative Labs have emerged as the de facto standard.
Unfortunately, still today there has been no official standard for PC audio adapters.
Because of this, most cards and software applications will be marked as Sound Blaster compatible.
Sound cards have several uses and has become a standard option which comes with computers today. Below is a listing of some of the various functions of the sound card:
Audio CDs.
Audio conferencing.
Business presentations.
Creating and playing Midi.
Educational software.
Games.
Record dictations.
Voice recognition / Synthesizers
Watch movies.
What is MIDI?
MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface, developed in the 1980s, allows various musical instruments to communicate or play harmoniously.
MIDI is a limited method of playing sounds as it will only be capable of playing the instruments available to your sound card.
This is why MIDI files may sound better or worse on different computers.
Generally, most computer sound cards will have a MIDI port which allows for several musical instrument devices to be connected to the computer such as a MIDI keyboard or a synthesizer.
MP3
MP3 is a new technology using MPEG compression shrinking down that data by a factor of 12 and still gain CD-like quality.
Factors of up to 24 and more still allow for a quality significantly better than just reducing linearly the sampling frequency and the number of bits.
This is realized by "perceptual coding" techniques taking into account the limited resolution of the human ear.
Maybe you have already heard about MP3.
As interest in audio over the Internet increased, MPEG Layer-3 files, music files that are capable of storing long audio tracks with CD quality sound in a fraction of the space, appeared. With this ease of piracy, it's a shock to the entire music industry.
MP3 Applications
In general, MP3 should be used for all applications that need high-quality sound at very low bit rates to store or transmit music signals.
Examples:
High-quality music links via ISDN phone lines (basic rate).
Sound broadcasting via low bit rate satellite channels.
Music distribution in computer networks with low demands for channel bandwidth and memory capacity.
Music memories for solid state recorders.