As with any other type of hardware for your computer, there are many different models of sound cards and they come available with many different levels of features, usually depending on their price. A sound card is an expansion card that has the ability to input and output sound through various computer programs, especially computer programs such as multimedia players and video games.

Most sound cards will include a sound chip, which usually has a digital to analog converter built into it. This is used to convert recorded digital information into analog voltages used by speakers to reproduce sound. Most sound cards will also have a line in plug where input signals from cd players, mp3 players or other sources can be input. The sound card then has the ability to record this sound and store it in a digital format on the computer’s hard drive. Another input connector that is often found is for a microphone. This is usually used for speech recognition or Voice over IP applications.

As with any other type of hardware that is installed on a computer, a driver is required to properly control a sound card. With most sound cards, the operating system usually requires a specific driver that is written for that exact model of sound card. Some operating systems will have drivers included with them for sound cards. In this case you will not need to install the driver yourself. However, other cards will come with the drivers supplied on a CD or diskette and other cards have drivers that are available for download from the manufacturer’s websites.

DOS programs in the IBM PC often would have to use universal driver libraries which included the drivers for most common sound cards that were available at the time since DOS itself did not have any real concept of a sound card. Some manufacturers would provide a middleware TSR-based driver with their sound cards, but this was often times inefficient. Other programs simply had driver/middleware source code built into them for the sound cards that were supported by that particular software application.

Windows on the other hand, uses proprietoary drivers that are usually written and supplied by the sound card manufacturers. Many of these sound card developers will give their drivers to Microsoft so that they can be included with the next release of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Some drivers are also supplied by individual vendors for download and installation by the customers that have purchased their products. Any updates to the driver or bug fixes are also likely to be available faster using the download method as Windows CDs are not updated as frequently as a web or FTP site.

Several different versions of the UNIX operating system use the portable Open Sound System. Drivers are seldom created by the manufacturers of the sound cards for these operating systems.

Mockingboard support on the Apple II systems are usually incorporated into the programs themselves since many of the programs for this system are booted directly from a disk.