Whether sound. How to choose a sound card for a computer and in general - why is it needed? Let's move on to checking the sound card

There was a time when the question of necessity sound card did not stand at all. If you need a sound in your computer that is a little better than the grunting of a speaker in the case, buy a sound card. Don't need it - don't buy it. True, the cards were quite expensive, especially while they were made for the prehistoric port of ISA.

With the transition to PCI, it became possible to shift part of the calculations to CPU and also use RAM for storing music samples (in ancient times, not only professional musicians, but also normal people had such a need, because the most popular music format on computers 20 years ago was MIDI). So soon entry-level sound cards became much cheaper, and then the built-in sound appeared in top-end ones. motherboards Oh. Poor, of course, but free. And this dealt a severe blow to sound card manufacturers.

Today, built-in sound is absolutely in all motherboards. And in expensive ones, it is even positioned as high-quality. That's right Hi-Fi. But in fact, unfortunately, this is far from the case. Last year I collected new computer, where I put one of the most expensive and objectively the best motherboards. And, of course, they promised high-quality sound on discrete chips, and even with gold-plated connectors. They wrote so deliciously that I decided not to install a sound card, to get by with the built-in one. And got around. About a week. Then I dismantled the case, put the card in and didn’t do any more nonsense.

Why is the built-in audio not very good?

First, the question of price. A decent sound card costs 5-6 thousand rubles. And it's not the greed of manufacturers, it's just that the components are not cheap, and the requirements for assembly quality are high. A serious motherboard costs 15-20 thousand rubles. Is the manufacturer ready to add another three thousand, at least? Won't the user get scared if they don't have time to evaluate the sound quality? It's better not to risk it. And they don't take risks.

Secondly, for really high-quality sound, without extraneous noise, interference and distortion, the components must be at a known distance from each other. If you look at the sound card, you will see how unusually much free space is on it. And on the motherboard it is short, everything has to be put very tightly. And, alas, there is simply nowhere to do it really well.

Twenty years ago, consumer sound cards were more expensive than any other computer, and they had memory slots (!) for storing music samples. In the photo, the dream of all computer scientists of the mid-nineties is the Sound Blaster AWE 32. 32 is not a bit depth, but the maximum number of simultaneously played streams in MIDI

Therefore, integrated sound is always a compromise. I have seen boards with built-in sound, which, in fact, hovered on top in the form of a separate platform connected to the “mother” only by a connector. And yes, it sounded good. But can such sound be called integrated? Not sure.

For a reader who has not tried discrete sound solutions, the question may arise - what, in fact, does “good sound in a computer” mean?

1) He's outrageously louder. An amplifier is built into the sound card of even a budget level, capable of “pumping” even large speakers or high-impedance headphones. Many are surprised that the speakers at the maximum cease to wheeze and choke. This is also a side effect of a normal amplifier.

2) Frequencies complement each other, and do not mix, turning into a mess. A normal digital-to-analog converter (DAC) “draws” basses, mids and highs well, allowing you to fine-tune them with the help of software to your own taste. When listening to music, you suddenly hear each instrument separately. And films will delight with the effect of presence. In general, the impression is as if the speakers used to be covered with a thick blanket, and then it was removed.

3) The difference is especially noticeable in games.. You will be surprised that the noise of the wind and the dripping of water do not drown out the quiet steps of rivals around the corner. That in headphones, not necessarily expensive, there is an understanding - who, from where and at what distance is moving. This directly affects performance. Sneaking up / driving up on the sly to you simply will not work.

What sound cards are there?

When this type of components became of interest only to connoisseurs good sound, which, unfortunately, are very few, there are very few manufacturers left. Only two - Asus and Creative. The latter is generally a mastodon of the market, who created it and set all the standards. Asus, on the other hand, entered it relatively late, but still does not leave it.

New models come out extremely rarely, and old ones are sold for a long time, for 5-6 years. The fact is that in terms of sound there is nothing you can improve without a radical increase in price. And few people are ready to pay for audiophile perversions in the computer. I would say no one is ready. The bar for quality is already set too high.

The first difference is the interface. There are cards that are designed only for stationary computers, and they are installed on the motherboard through the PCI-Express interface. Others connect via USB and can be used with both large computers and laptops. In the latter, by the way, the sound is disgusting in 90% of cases, and an upgrade certainly won’t hurt him.

The second difference is the price. If we're talking about internal maps, then for 2-2.5 thousand models are sold that are almost identical to the built-in sound. They are usually bought in cases where the connector has died on the motherboard (a phenomenon, alas, is common). An unpleasant feature of cheap cards is their low resistance to pickups. If you put them close to the video card, the background sounds will be very annoying.

The golden mean for built-in cards - 5-6 thousand rubles. It already has everything to please a normal person: interference protection, high-quality components and flexible software.

Per 8-10 thousand the latest models are sold that are capable of reproducing 32-bit sound in the 384 kHz range. This is right here top top. If you know where to get files and games in this quality, by all means buy :)

Even more expensive sound cards differ little in hardware from the already mentioned options, but they get an additional body kit - external modules for connecting devices, companion boards with outputs for professional sound recording, etc. It already depends on the actual needs of the user. Personally, the body kit has never been useful to me, although it seemed to be needed in the store.

For USB cards, the price range is about the same: from 2 thousand alternative to built-in sound, 5-7 thousand strong middle peasants, 8-10 high end and beyond that, everything is the same, but with a rich body kit.

Personally, I stop hearing the difference in the golden mean. Just because cooler solutions require high-end speakers with headphones, and I honestly don’t see much point in playing World of Tanks with thousand-dollar headphones. There are probably solutions for every problem.

Several good choices

Several sound cards and adapters that I tried and liked.

PCI-Express Interface

Creative Sound Blaster Z. Sold for 6 years, I have in different computers costs about the same, and is still very pleased. The CS4398 DAC used in this product is old, but audiophiles compare its sound to $500 range CD players. The average price is 5500 rubles.

Asus Strix Soar. If in the Creative product everything is shamelessly geared towards games, then Asus has taken care of music lovers as well. The ESS SABRE9006A DAC is comparable in sound to the CS4398, but Asus offers more fine tuning options for those who like to listen to "Pink Floyd" in HD quality on a computer. The price is comparable, about 5500 rubles.

USB interface

Asus Xonar U3- a small box, being inserted into the laptop port, takes the sound quality in it to a new level. Despite the compact dimensions, there was even a place for a digital output. And the software is surprisingly flexible. An interesting option to try - why do you need a sound card at all. The price is 2000 rubles.

Creative Sound BlasterX G5. A device the size of a pack of cigarettes (smoking is evil) is almost indistinguishable from the internal Sound Blaster Z in terms of characteristics, but you don’t have to climb anywhere, just plug the plug into the USB port. And immediately you get a seven-channel sound of impeccable quality, all sorts of gadgets for music and games, as well as a built-in USB port just in case you don't have enough. The presence of space allowed us to add an additional headphone amplifier, and once you hear it in action, it's hard to wean. The main functions of the software are duplicated by hardware buttons. The issue price is 10 thousand rubles.

Play and listen to music with pleasure! Not so many of them, these pleasures.

The cosmos is not a homogeneous nothing. Between various objects there are clouds of gas and dust. They are the remnants of supernova explosions and the site for star formation. In some areas, this interstellar gas is dense enough to propagate sound waves, but they are not susceptible to human hearing.

Is there sound in space?

When an object moves - be it the vibration of a guitar string or an exploding firework - it affects nearby air molecules, as if pushing them. These molecules crash into their neighbors, and those, in turn, into the next ones. Movement spreads through the air like a wave. When it reaches the ear, the person perceives it as sound.

When a sound wave travels through airspace, its pressure fluctuates up and down like sea water in a storm. The time between these vibrations is called the frequency of sound and is measured in hertz (1 Hz is one oscillation per second). The distance between the highest pressure peaks is called the wavelength.

Sound can only propagate in a medium in which the wavelength is not greater than the average distance between the particles. Physicists call this "conditionally free road" - the average distance that a molecule travels after colliding with one and before interacting with the next. Thus, a dense medium can transmit short wavelength sounds and vice versa.

Long wave sounds have frequencies that the ear perceives as low tones. In a gas with a mean free path greater than 17 m (20 Hz), sound waves will be too low frequency to be perceived by humans. They are called infrasounds. If there were aliens with ears that perceive very low notes, they would know for sure whether sounds are heard in outer space.

Song of the Black Hole

Some 220 million light-years away, at the center of a cluster of thousands of galaxies, hums the lowest note the universe has ever heard. 57 octaves below middle C, which is about a million billion times deeper than the sound of the frequency that a person can hear.

The deepest sound that humans can hear has a cycle of about one vibration every 1/20th of a second. A black hole in the constellation Perseus has a cycle of about one oscillation every 10 million years.

This came to light in 2003, when NASA's Chandra Space Telescope detected something in the gas filling the Perseus Cluster: concentrated rings of light and dark, like ripples in a pond. Astrophysicists say that these are traces of incredibly low-frequency sound waves. The brighter ones are the tops of the waves, where the pressure on the gas is greatest. The darker rings are depressions where the pressure is lower.

Sound that can be seen

Hot, magnetized gas swirls around the black hole, much like water swirling around a drain. As it moves, it creates a powerful electromagnetic field. Strong enough to accelerate gas near the edge of a black hole to almost the speed of light, turning it into huge bursts called relativistic jets. They force the gas to turn sideways on its way, and this impact causes eerie sounds from space.

They travel through the Perseus Cluster hundreds of thousands of light-years from their source, but sound can only travel as long as there is enough gas to carry it. Therefore, he stops at the edge of the gas cloud that fills Perseus. This means that it is impossible to hear its sound on Earth. You can only see the effect on the gas cloud. It looks like looking through space at a soundproof chamber.

strange planet

Our planet lets out a deep groan every time its crust moves. Then there is no doubt whether sounds propagate in space. An earthquake can create vibrations in the atmosphere with a frequency of one to five Hz. If strong enough, it can send infrasonic waves through the atmosphere into outer space.

Of course, there is no clear boundary where the Earth's atmosphere ends and space begins. The air just gradually becomes thinner until it eventually disappears altogether. From 80 to 550 kilometers above the Earth's surface, the mean free path of a molecule is about a kilometer. This means that the air at this altitude is about 59 times thinner than it would be possible to hear sound. It can only carry long infrasonic waves.

When a magnitude 9.0 earthquake shook the northeast coast of Japan in March 2011, seismographs around the world recorded its waves passing through the Earth, and the vibrations caused low-frequency oscillations in the atmosphere. These vibrations have traveled all the way to where the ship (Gravity Field) and the stationary satellite Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) compares Earth's gravity in low orbit with a mark of 270 kilometers above the surface. And the satellite managed to record these sound waves.

GOCE has very sensitive accelerometers on board that control the ion thruster. This helps keep the satellite in a stable orbit. 2011, GOCE accelerometers detected vertical displacement in the very thin atmosphere around the satellite, as well as undulating shifts in air pressure as sound waves from an earthquake propagate. The satellite's thrusters corrected for the offset and stored the data, which became something like an infrasound recording of an earthquake.

This entry was classified in the satellite data until a team of scientists led by Rafael F. Garcia published this document.

The first sound in the universe

If it were possible to go back in time, to about the first 760,000 years after the Big Bang, it would be possible to find out if there is sound in space. At that time, the universe was so dense that sound waves could travel freely.

Around the same time, the first photons began to travel through space as light. After that, everything finally cooled down enough to condense into atoms. Before the cooling took place, the universe was filled with charged particles - protons and electrons - that absorbed or scattered photons, the particles that make up light.

Today it reaches Earth as a faint microwave background glow, visible only to very sensitive radio telescopes. Physicists call this relic radiation. It is the oldest light in the universe. It answers the question of whether there is sound in space. The cosmic microwave background contains a record of the oldest music in the universe.

Light to help

How does light help you know if there is sound in space? Sound waves travel through air (or interstellar gas) as pressure fluctuations. When the gas is compressed, it gets hotter. On a cosmic scale, this phenomenon is so intense that stars form. And when the gas expands, it cools down. Sound waves propagating through the early universe caused slight pressure fluctuations in the gaseous environment, which in turn left subtle temperature fluctuations reflected in the cosmic microwave background.

Using temperature changes, University of Washington physicist John Cramer has been able to reconstruct these eerie sounds from space - the music of the expanding universe. He multiplied the frequency by a factor of 1026 so that human ears could hear it.

So no one will really hear a scream in space, but there will be sound waves moving through clouds of interstellar gas or in the rarefied rays of the Earth's outer atmosphere.

Question: is it worth buying a sound card if the built-in sound system
there is an optical drive. If the transmission is through optics, there is a difference with
built-in zvukovuhi, or a separate, cool sound card?

1. Software and hardware:

If we are not talking about the built-in AC97 and HDaudio soft codecs, then a sound card in a PC is needed mainly to implement numerous sound algorithms like EAX (Creative, for example), which add realism, volume, take into account the real-time characteristics of the visual environment and correct the corresponding them sound parameters. For example, you are walking in some kind of horror story along the corridor and the sound corresponds to the characteristics of reflection from concrete walls, literally walks and is tangible. Then go out into the big hall and the reverb changes, the EQ characteristics shift, etc. etc. This is not as noticeable as the visual effects, but in games with a high-quality soundtrack, it adds a significant amount of drama. Specialized gaming audio cards process all these effects at the hardware level with chips like EMU10K, EMU20K, etc., freeing the CPU from additional effects calculations. If the game engine does not detect such a device in your PC, then it exposes a simplified sound effects scheme, which may not differ in actual parameters from EAX, or be inferior to it. It is up to you to decide whether it is necessary, although you can output sound in games through the ZK, and music through an external USB DAC by switching in the sound device manager or directly in the software player (some have this option);

2. Sound quality. Modern top-end (and expensive) GAMING sound cards (there is also a category of professional sound cards like those produced by LYNX, M-AUDIO, etc.) in principle sound on musical material at the level of cheap external USB DACs. To some extent, they are saved by ASIO drivers, if there are any for your sound card model, which allow the audio stream to bypass the Windows software meat grinder (Asio4all is a software crutch that does not solve this problem). As for the sound output through the outdated optical interfaces SPDIF (sonny-philips interface), TOSLINK (toshiba link), etc., their only advantage is the limitedness and completeness of any options. How would it be more correct to describe it: "You can buy an advanced food processor with a bunch of lotions and adjustments that require at least an understanding of the process to use, or you can load everything into one cup and press one button, where the knives will shred your vegetables into some guaranteed mass, but you can immediately forget about any neat "cubes", "straws". In fact, these interfaces are a condom connection option, which guarantees that the digital stream will reach the DAC, and the amount of losses "along the way" will be minimized. This type of connection has been used for decades, all possible problems have been resolved for a long time and in general it is easier and cheaper to implement. With a DAC of an outdated design or in a DAC where the manufacturer saved on a quality USB receiver, this type of connection sometimes shows the best result. But there is a very big BUT: the speed of these optical interfaces is very limited and you can’t even talk about any DSD or serious high-res (usually the speed is limited to 24 bit 48 kHz). USB connection has many implementation possibilities, this is a topic for a large separate article, on a Windows PC it requires at least an understanding of the process and some user actions to programmatically configure the PC-USB DAC interface to provide the so-called. bit-to-bit transmission quality (some DACs even have a special indication of confirmation that this transfer mode has been reached). It is also important which USB receiver is installed in the DAC, and the number of "losses" of digital fragments along the way depends on it. The trick is that it is the USB audio stream that is transmitted in the outdated PCM format, which completely lacks such advanced features as data transfer by transaction, transfer of checksums of data packets, etc., and therefore in this case it makes sense as in high-quality USB receivers, as well as high-quality cables, ways to implement data transfer (for example, top-end motherboards have specialized USB outputs for connecting to external DACs, in which the +5 Volt power supply line is OFF, and the signal range of the logical zero and one is increased (in fact, zero and one in USB differ only in voltage)). As for the DAC chips specifically, you should pay attention to them at the very least! It doesn't matter if you have a cheap wolfson WM8741 or a top-end chip from Asahi Kasei in your device, the implementation and the environment are important first of all, which characterize the final sound by 90%. When they write about cool DACs and that "cheap" A produces a miserable signal-to-noise ratio of 107 dB, and advanced DAC B produces as much as 120 dB, it becomes ridiculous, because in most digital masters everything that lies below the level of 40 dB is simply castrated ! Those. there is no musical information at all in this area. Of course, this does not apply to high-quality high-res made from analog media on high-quality hardware with direct hands, but you still need to look for such ones. Specifically, the Cambridge CXA80 is a worthy device that sounds in the usual intelligent "British manner" (although this is a delusion and the so-called "British sound" is also a lot and very different), implying in general understanding timbre accuracy, as close as possible to the sound of the original, good spatial characteristics , provided by high-quality circuitry, acceptable dynamic and rhythmic performance. Cambridge and Arcam are some kind of all-rounders for "all times", which may not cause a storm of emotions with each phonogram, but they will deliver pleasure from listening. The USB DAC in this amp is built on the WM8740 chip, which was one of the most popular 10-15 years ago and received a lot of good reviews(IMHO well-deserved) due to neutrality, lack of digital sharpness, moreover, in this amplifier it is implemented at least humanly, and not as a poor relative who is only invited to a funeral. Those. in a setup based on this amp, it is quite suitable for connection and adequate to the level of equipment. If you want more emotions and drive, less versatility - look in the direction of Atoll 100SE. It has no DAC, no phono stage, no tone controls, but for the price it's one of the best-sounding amplifiers on the market. You can look for YBA - also excellent devices. Again, there are worthy competitors in the face of Rega Elex, Naim 5si (I would advise Micromega, but the price for them now is just kind of sick in the head). In short, the choice is quite extensive. From the "Japs" you can pay attention to a good Denon 1520.

Before you suspect a broken sound card on your computer, carefully inspect the existing PC connectors for external damage. You should also check the performance of the subwoofer with speakers or headphones through which sound is played - try connecting them to any other device. Perhaps the cause of the problem lies precisely in the equipment you are using.

It is likely that reinstalling the operating system will help in your situation. Windows systems, be it 7, 8, 10 or the Xp version, as the necessary settings could simply go wrong.

Let's move on to checking the sound card

Method 1

The first step is to deal with the device drivers. For this you need:

After that, the drivers will be updated and the problem will be solved.

This procedure can also be carried out if current version software on removable media. In this situation, you need to install by specifying the path to a specific folder.

If the audio card is not in the device manager at all, then go to the next option.

Method 2

In this case, a complete diagnosis is required for its correct technical connection. You need to do the following in a particular order:

Please note that this option is only suitable for discrete components that are installed as a separate board.

Method 3

If, after visual inspection and checking the speakers or headphones, they turned out to be in working order, and reinstalling the OS did not bring any results, we move on:

After the sound card test is completed, the system will inform you about its status and if it turns out to be inoperative, you will understand this based on the results.

Method 4

Another option is how to quickly and easily check a sound card on Windows OS:

Thus, we will start diagnosing sound problems on the computer.

The program will offer you several options for problems, and also indicate the connected audio devices. If , the diagnostic wizard will allow you to quickly identify it.

Method 5

The third option, how you can check if the sound card is working, is the following:

In the "Driver" and "Details" tab, you will receive additional data on the parameters of all devices installed on your PC, both integrated and discrete. Also, this method allows you to diagnose problems and quickly identify them through software verification.

Now you know how to quickly and easily check your sound card in several ways. Their main advantage is that for this you do not need online access to the Internet, and all procedures can be carried out on your own, without contacting a specialized service.

If we talk about objective parameters that can characterize quality, then of course not. Recording to vinyl or cassette always involves the introduction of additional distortion and noise. But the fact is that such distortions and noise do not subjectively spoil the impression of music, and often even vice versa. Our hearing and the sound analysis system work quite complicated, what is important for our perception, and what can be assessed as quality from the technical side, are slightly different things.

MP3 is generally a separate issue, it is a clear deterioration in quality in order to reduce the file size. MP3 encoding involves the removal of quieter harmonics and blurring of the fronts, which means a loss of detail, "blurring" of the sound.

The ideal option in terms of quality and honest transmission of everything that happens is a digital recording without compression, and the quality of a CD is 16 bits, 44100 Hz - this is no longer the limit, you can increase both the bit depth - 24, 32 bits, and the frequency - 48000, 82200, 96000, 192000 Hz. The bit depth affects the dynamic range, and the sampling rate affects the frequency range. While the human ear hears at best up to 20,000 Hz and, according to the Nyquist theorem, a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz should be enough, but in reality, for sufficiently accurate transmission of complex short sounds, such as drum sounds, it is better to have a larger frequency. Dynamic Range it is also better to have more so that quieter sounds can be recorded without distortion. Although realistically, the more these two parameters increase, the less changes can be noticed.

At the same time, you can appreciate all the delights of high-quality digital sound if you have a good sound card. What's built into most PCs is generally terrible, Macs with built-in cards are better, but it's better to have something external. Well, the question is, of course, where do you get these digital recordings with a quality higher than CD :) Although the worst MP3 on a good sound card will sound noticeably better.

Returning to analog things - here we can say that people continue to use them not because they are really better and more accurate, but because high-quality and accurate recording without distortion is usually not desired result. Digital distortion, which can come from poor audio processing algorithms, low bit or sample rate, digital clipping - they certainly sound much nastier than analog ones, but they can be avoided. And it turns out that a really high-quality and accurate digital recording sounds too sterile, there is not enough saturation. And if, for example, you record drums on a tape, this saturation appears and remains, even if you later digitize this recording. And vinyl also sounds cooler, even if tracks made entirely on a computer were recorded on it. And of course, external attributes and associations are invested in all this, the way it all looks, the emotions of the people who do it. It is quite possible to understand the desire to hold a record in your hands, to listen to a cassette on an old tape recorder, and not a recording from a computer, or to understand those who now use multi-track tape recorders in studios, although this is much more complicated and costly. But this has its own specific fun.