Sound Card Advances

Until advancements in the past several years with sound cards, audio from PCs was very limited. Older chips lacked an important feature of today’s: polyphony. This meant that the audio capabilities of computers were so limited that they could not support multiple simultaneous sounds independently since they only had one channel for output. If they carried three sounds they would be mixed together onto one channel. Today’s audio cards allow for these sounds to be represented at the same time but independent of one another. The result is audio that is clearer and each sound fully represented. Today’s lower end sound cards will have fewer channels than higher end ones, so they still mix some sounds together. To maximize polyphony and have the clearest sound, you would need to buy a higher end card, or even a professional level sound card. However, professional cards are not designed for home use. For gaming and multi-media machines the higher-end cards would be ideal. For average home users, a mid-tier card would be more than enough.