What is a computer sound card

When we hear the word sound card, we can think of some sound equipment, such as: Listen to music, watching video, all need to have a sound card support, then the computer sound card in the end is what?

The sound card is also called the audio card (RTHK called sound Effect card): The sound card is the most basic component of the multimedia technology, and it is a kind of hardware that realizes the acoustic/digital signal conversion with each other. The basic function of a sound card is to convert the original sound signals from microphones, tapes, and discs to sound devices such as headphones, speakers, amplifiers, recorders, or to make a musical instrument sound through a musical device Digital interface (MIDI).

The sound card works mainly by using the analog signal that will be obtained from the microphone, and then converts the acoustic amplitude signal sampling into a series of digital signals through a analog-to-digital converter, which is stored in the computer. When replayed, these digital signals are sent to the analog converter (DAC), which is reduced to analogue waveform at the same sampling speed, amplified and delivered to the speaker, which is known as pulse coded modulation (PCM) technology.