The Amiga could do what a PC couldn’t, it could produce multi-channel stereo sound at near CD Quality in the mid 1980’s. However despite the pictured machine’s A500 moniker it contained the same hardware as the A1000 and introduced the world to something extraordinary for the era. Additionally all other processing on other tasks had to stop while the PC hardware was used in this fashion.Īlthough I have pictured the 1987 model the Amiga’s earliest rendition surfaced in the form of the A1000 released a couple of years beforehand. Needless to say the resulting ‘Audio’ was barely functional and suffered from low volume that could not be adjusted, severe distortion and signal degradation. In the early days several companies developed techniques for digital sound reproduction over the PC speaker the most notable of these companies was Access Software. The speaker however, is limited to square waveforms.
With the most sophisticated sound it could produce being the beep it made when it started. PC’s were not considered viable audio platforms for much of their early years.
This top of the range audio device is the culmination of many years of trial and error and like all technology it is built on the foundations of earlier devices that preceded it.
This card is THX TruStudio Pro and ASIO certified. This card can also deliver a 7.1 signal to drive the most sophisticated home theater audio systems available currently. it also sports analogue input’s and outputs as well and supports a linear resolution of 24 Bits and output a dynamic frequency range of 192Khz. This card boasts digital inputs and outputs in the form of Optical TOSLink/SPDif connections. The ZXR is not simply one card, but two, although the device itself only requires a single occupied slot within a computer since the secondary (smaller) daughter board/card is connected to the main one via a provided signal cable and not by a PCIe slot.Įach of the two boards contains it’s own audio processor, each card employs significant EMI shielding to isolate the audio signal from the background noise of the other electronics in the computer which can be significant. This PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect express) sound card represents the creme de la creme of high end studio grade consumer computer audio. Some motherboards actually feature proper audio hardware integrated into the motherboard circuitry, the boards that do feature an actual sound processor tend to be more expensive and there are only a handful of them available. Having said all that many people will allude to them being ‘good enough’ (however mistaken those individuals are). Additionally because of the lack of shielding, samples and recordings made on or by these devices are of a much lower standard than can be achieved with an audio card. Also most of these devices do not feature an actual audio processor meaning that the real work is carried out by the CPU. Most also fail to implement the AC97 (Audio Codec 97) standard which allows you to record ‘what you hear’ through a loopback device/feature that is not present on most motherboard devices. Generally referred to as on-board audio cards, motherboard devices lack EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) shielding and carry all the noise of the motherboard over their unshielded connectors.
These devices used to be dreadful and though they have improved over the years they are by no means a substitute for a proper audio card. Now however, most modern PC’s carry audio devices built into the motherboards of the machine. It was the advent of the dedicated sound card that finally brought PC audio in to the modern era of audio reproduction.