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A typical sound card includes a sound chip usually featuring a digital to analog converter that converts recorded or generated digital waveforms of sound into an analog format. This signal is led to a ( earphone-type) connector where a cable to an amplifier or similar sound destination can be plugged in.

Also, a sound card has a "line in" connector where the sound signal from a cassette tape recorder or similar sound source can be connected to. The sound card can digitize this signal and store it (controlled by the corresponding computer software) on the computer's hard disk.

The third external connector a typical sound card has, is used to connect a microphone directly. Its sound can be recorded to hard disk or otherwise processed (for example, by speech recognition software or for Voice over IP).

One of the first manufacturers of sound cards for the IBM PC was AdLib, who produced a card based on the Yamaha YM3812The Yamaha YM3812 also known as the OPL2 (OPL is an acronym for FM Operator Type-L is a sound chip (i. integrated circuit) created by Yamaha Corporation and famous for its wide use in IBM PC-based sound cards such as the AdLib and Sound Blaster. It is bac sound chip, aka the OPL2. This set the de factoDe facto is a Latin expression that means "in fact" or "in practice", commonly used as opposed to de jure (meaning "by law") when referring to matters of law or governance or technique (such as standards), that are found in the common experience as create-standard until Creative Labs produced the Sound BlasterThe Sound Blaster family of sound cards was for many years the de facto standard for audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, before audio has been commoditized. The creator of Sound Blaster is the Singapore-based firm Creative Labs. The pre-Sound card, which had a YM3812 plus a sound coprocessor (presumably an IntelThe following article is about the multinational corporation; intel is also an abbreviation for intelligence, used in reference to military intelligence and espionage. Intel Corporation is a US-based multinational corporation that is best known for design microcontroller) which Creative creatively called a "DSP" which suggested it was a digital signal processorA digital signal processor (DSP is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time. DSPs can also be used to perform general-purpose computation, but they are not optimised for this function. Rather; several years passed before Creative released a card which could even record and playback sound at the same time, without even speaking about applying any real-time processing to it. The Sound Blaster, in tandem with the first cheap CD-ROMThe CD-ROM (an abbreviation for " Compact Disc Read-Only Memory" ( ROM) ) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. A CD-ROM is a flat, plastic disc wit drives and evolving video technology, ushered in a new era of computer capabilities, in which they could play back CD audio, add recorded dialogue to computer gameA computer game is any sort of game that is played using a computer. General Although often associated, computer games are not necessarily video games although all but the earliest video games (such as Pong, which used dedicated analogue circuitry) are cos, or even play movies (but only short clips and in a very low quality form, incomparable with modern digital video).

Early soundcards could not record and play simultaneously. Most soundcards are now full- duplex.

In the late 1990s, many computer manufacturers began to replace plug-in soundcards with a codec integrated into the motherboard. Many of these used Intel's AC97 specification. Others used cheap ACR slots.