Best sound cards on the market

If you find yourself faced with the need to install a sound card on your computer or upgrade the sound card you already have, you have several options. A large number of specialized audio PC sound cards are available to choose from. For this reason we have made a brief guide to find  the best sound cards on the 2019 market.

What is a sound card

The sound card is a component of your computer that deals with the input or output of all sound elements : voice, music, sound system. Generally when we buy a motherboard they already have a sound chip as standard. Its power and capabilities are limited, but still large enough to power PC speakers as part of basic computer use. although fans usually buy them separately and it is possible to find three main variants:

• MP3 Card: If you’re an MP3 fanatic with a hard drive with digital audio files, you’ll appreciate one of these specialized audio cards. An MP3 card contains a hardware encoder/decoder, which speeds up your PC for ripping (the process of creating MP3 files from digital audio CDs) and MP3 playback performance.
• 24-bit card: For the best audio reproduction, choose a 24-bit card (that’s 192 KHz, for your headsets), which is far superior to the sound produced by virtually all audio CD players.

• Surround Sound Card : These cards are specifically designed for ambient 3D audio within games and full Dolby surround sound when watching DVD movies on your PC. Naturally, more than two simple speakers from a discount store are needed to enjoy all the effects, which is why a pair of speakers is usually included with these cards.

Aspects to consider

SPDIF output

SPDIF ( Sony-Philips Digital Interface ) output allows output to a digital amplifier via coaxial (RCA) cable.

MIDI interface

MIDI is the communication interface standard that allows multiple electronic musical instruments to work together. This is for driving the soft synth sound on your computer with an external keyboard . These connections are mainly present externally. They are the best sound cards used by musicians.

microphone input

Allows you to connect a microphone to your computer. Particularly useful for VoIP .

The resolution

This regulates the sound quality . Resolutions are expressed in bits. The best sound cards these days offer 16-bit or 24-bit resolution most of the time. The higher the resolution, the better the sound.

Sampling

This is the frequency defined in hertz (sampling hz or khz, a good example being the number of samples you produce every second). The higher the frequency, the higher the quality.

Connection type

The options are diverse when it comes to connecting our sound card to our editing devices, so pay attention to the list:

• USB 2.0:very efficient in a home environment with a communication capacity of up to 16 simultaneous inputs and outputs of audio channels.
• USB 3.0:It is much better than 2.0 but this also adds a capacity that we would miss in a home environment. If what you are looking for are sound cards for recording studios or advanced work, this is yours.

• Firewire: These days it can be quite a feat to have Firewire on motherboards or laptops. The USB has come to the industry to replace this type of port but depending on the equipment we can still find them.
• PCI-E: PCI Express is based on a fast serial communication system that uses current programming concepts and communication standards, especially used by Intel.
• PCI-X: The next version to PCI-E features a frequency up to 32 times faster. Unfortunately if we add more than one device the base frequency is reduced and transmission speed is lost.
• Thunder Bolt – This type of connector uses high-speed optical technology. We currently go for the Thunder Bolt 3 and it is one of the fastest connections. To develop this guide  we have made a distinction  between the two ways in which sound cards can be presented to us:  internal and external .

Better internal sound cards

These cards are obviously designed to occupy one of our equipment’s internal PCIe slots, so they should be used in desktop PCs or, where appropriate, expansion boxes.