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| Finished installation of sound card drivers |
What are sound card drivers and how do they work?
Sound cards needs drivers to fully function with the processor and pass instructions through the motherboard. Once the sound card has been installed into a system before it can be used the instructions for the card need to be downloaded/recovered and installed onto the system so that the processor can make sense of the card and allow it to channel sounds and output them. They're many types of sound cards available which all have different types of instructions sets in correlation to the processor which is being used, however with more basic sound cards and adapters the drivers needed are already pre-installed onto the motherboard or processor.
The driver itself allows the processor to provide the hardware with the ability to interrupt the processing so that the audio can be channeled out through the speakers. When the processor is processing information with the driver it place it can then interrupt the processing stage meaning that sound can then be outputted in between other processes. Without the use of a sound driver it is not possible for sound to be channeled out through the speakers.
Typical versions of sound card drivers are channeled through the motherboard with the motherboard drivers which are normally Realtek High Definition Audio drivers or C-Media Audio Drivers as these work with most sound cards and adapter developed and designed today. More advanced sound cards use their own drivers as they need more instructions for what they provide such as 3D sounds, surround sound 7.1 or sound effects through software, each mode or effect needing its own instruction to allow it to work.
Types of sound cards available:
- Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional
- Xenta 8 Channel PCI Soundcard
- Asus Xonar Essence STX Soundcard
- Xenta 6 channel PCI Soundcard
- Xenta 8 Channel Soundcard C-media 8768 Chipset
