Sound Cards: Introduction
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In the early days of personal computers the only sounds that the computers could produce were created by a small permanent-magnet loudspeaker connected to a simple tone generator. This facility was very limited, and afforded the programmer little more than the ability to produce a few 'beeps'.
To address the growing demand for more capable sound hardware, several manufacturers began to produce plug-in cards ('daughter boards') which contained more complex sound devices. The famous 'sound blaster' is one example. These plug-in cards were of course generally called 'sound cards' and, being 'daughter boards' they plugged into the computer's 'mother board'. Sound cards generally have no transducer (loudspeaker, microphone) capable of converting between electrical energy and sound energy. They rely on external devices, often connected through external amplifiers, to do that.
More recently, microelectronics has enabled greater integration, and it is now common to find fairly complex sound devices on the motherboard itself. Although these electronic devices are quite often not separate cards, they are still referred to as 'sound cards'.
In ALSA a soundcard can have several capabilities:
- It can be used as a pcm-playback/capture device (see pcm-device)
- It might have midi hardware
- And it might have a ctl-device (a mixer).
Different soundcards will have different hardware features. A basic soundcard might have the I/O ports shown in the figure. More sophisticated cards will support more channels, S/PDIF I/O, MIDI ports, or more analog speaker outputs for surround sound or woofers.
In the figure:
- Line In - analog input from external device
- Mic In - low-level, mono microphone input
- PCM playback - digital stream from software
- Synthesizer - stream generated from wavetable
- PCM Capture - digital stream output to software
- Line Out - analog output to external device
- Speaker - amplified analog output to external speakers
\ The 'Sound Card' unit usually consists of three sets of components:
- Connectors - Connect the card to loudspeakers, microphones and other devices. In the USA these connectors are usually called 'jacks'.
- Audio circuits - amplify and mix the audio signals, and convert audio signals between analogue and digital representations.
- Interface - connects the 'Sound Card' to one of the main computer buses.
The interface between the sound devices and the processor is usually through the computer's PCI (or PCIe) bus. The hardware which implements the interface is usually contained within the 'Southbridge', part of the 'chipset' produced by a manufacturer for motherboard designers. The name given to the 'Sound Card' is derived from any of the following:
- The model of the Southbridge chip's Audio Control subcircuit
- A PCI adapter chip that gets from the PCI bus to the audio circuits
- The model of the actual CODEC that converts from Digital to Analog and back
- The model of the daughter card that contains the PCI adapter and the CODEC.
The program alsamixer reports the names of both the 'sound card' and the 'audio chip'. As a result with a motherboard based on a NVidia chipset the output may be:
Card: NVidia CK804
Chip: Realtek ALC850 Rev 0
On another motherboard using a Via chipset, one might find:
Card: Via Via8235
Chip: Realtek ALC850 Rev 0
The audio CODEC chip, a Realtek ACL850, being the same in both cases. The low level command
cat /proc/asound/cards
provides the card name and chip number but leaves out the vendor name 'Realtek'. Unfortunately most high level programs only provide the card name.
Contents
Drivers
The audio cards used in most home computers are based on the Intel AC'97 standard (see below). This defines a set of standard controls on the audio chip and is sufficient for high level programs to find out what controls are available on each card and to then issue the correct commands.
Unfortunately, the PCI interface is not fully specified by AC'97 and so different ALSA drivers are needed for each type of PCI interface. As a result, in a running system, the command
lsmod | grep snd
will show the module snd_ac97_codec
which handles the AC'97 standard.
It will show that this is calling a second module to handle the PCI
interface. For the Via8235 above this would be the module snd_via82xx
.
For the Nvidia CK804 it will be snd_intel8x0
, as Nvidia and Intel use
the same interface standard.
The AC'97 standard has to a great degree been replaced by the Intel 'High Definition Audio' (HDA) standard. This defines both the circuits and the PCI interface and so needs only a single set of ALSA drivers.
AC'97
The Intel 'Audio CODEC '97' standard specifies audio components to be found in a mainstream PC, a standard way of connecting the components and a set of registers for controlling the components. It also defines related features such as voltages and timing characteristics.
Input can be analogue audio signals from a microphone, telephone, video, CD and other devices. Some will be mono, some stereo. Input also includes sound from the computer which is converted from digital to analogue before further processing. Upon input, each of these signals passes through an amplifier and a mute switch, both of which can be controlled by the mixer software on the computer.
Analogue output can be to stereo speakers and additional surroundsound speakers. Output of sound to the computer is provided by an analogue to digital converter. Again, all output streams can be amplified or muted, on command, from the computer. Later versions of the standard allow input and output using the Sony/Phillips Digital Interface (S/P DIF,) also frequently called IEC958 because of the international specification that subsequently standardised this format, to connect additional audio equipment.
Between input and output the standard defines two main pathways, one providing analogue output to the main stereo speakers, the other leading to the computer input. In the first, the different input streams can be combined and passed through an optional surroundsound filter, before being sent via a tone filter to the output. Digital input (PCM - Pulse Coded Modulation) can be added before or after the surroundsound step. The telephone signal is added after the surroundsound step.
For computer output the standard is somewhat different. Output to the computer is allowed from just one of the analogue inputs or from the main stereo output after the tone filter, or from a mono version of the main output. In ALSA the latter are often called the 'MIX' and 'MONO MIX' channels. Note that the digital input signal can only be captured using one of the two latter channels.
As well as the above outputs there is also a mono output channel and surroundsound channels. The mono output can be driven from the microphone input. Alternatively it can be a mono copy of the main output channel, tapped before the telephone input is added. This allows mono output to be used for telephone output without feedback developing.
The surroundsound channels can be driven by the surroundsound filter in the main pathway. Alternatively they can be driven by their own digital input stream from the computer. Additional switches are often available, for example to allow input from more than one microphone or to allow additional links between the audio channels.
High Definition Audio
This is a recent Intel specification for defining and controlling a much more sophisticated audio system. In this case the audio system is connected to a PCI or other system bus via a well specified 'HDA Controller'. This is then connected to one or more audio chips via a serial bus, the 'High Definition Audio Link'. Each audio chip (or CODEC to use Intel's terminology) can then contain a number of widgets. Typical widgets are:
- A computer audio output converter (DAC) widget
- A computer audio input converted (ADC) widget
- A mixer widget (including input and output amplifiers and mutes)
- A selector (multiplexor widget)
- A pin widget (detecting input/output devices)
- A volume widget
On startup, each codec sends the controller information about which widgets are present and how they are connected. This allows very complex systems to be developed and controlled.
External Links
- AC'97 Specification: http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/ac97_r23.pdf
- High Definition Audio: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/hdaudio.htm
See also
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Categories: Sound cards | Documentation | Introduction | Glossary