October 2004
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
7h 44m
English
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Hack #15. Configure Sound Cards
Make your sound card sing amidst the variations of limited PC resources by finding and using alternative settings.
Sound cards were among the first optional devices to be added to the old ISA PCs. When Windows 3.x became available, and with gamers demanding a more immersive experience, demand rose for a richer audio environment than the mere beeps and boops offered by the PC speaker. Users needed sound to complete "the experience." Companies like Creative Labs and MediaVision thrust sound from PCs into users' ears.
To accomplish this meant borrowing from emerging technologies, creating a few new technologies, and stuffing all of this into what there was of a 16- and then 32-bit PC computing platform.
The default settings for PC sound cards became address 220, IRQ5, and DMA channel 1. While there was seldom a conflict with I/O addressing, sound cards could be reconfigured to use an IRQ other than 5 and a DMA channel other than 1 to avoid other devices that could be present in the system. The DMA channel was needed to avoid stutter and skipping of data streams.
The most common symptom of a misconfigured sound card is a stuttering or choppy effect to otherwise smoothly streaming sounds. If Plug and Play is not solving a conflict and the sound card supports alternative configurations, try changing the IRQ to 7, 10, 11, or 15, or the DMA channel to 3 or 5.
You can determine the settings of your present sound card configuration using Windows Device Manager ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.