Sound Cards

In most cases the built-in audio cards of the host computer are good enough for playing the sounds required, and one does not need to get special audio hardware. The need for special hardware arises if:

• The built-in interface is not working correctly
• The built-in interface has too weak audio quality
• The built-in interface does not support enough audio channels

In general we recommend the use PCI/PCI-Express sound cards, if the built-in audio interface is not sufficient for the project.

As example of the kind of cards that one can use are:

• M-Audio Delta 1010/1010LT: 10/10 channel PCI sound card (8/8 analog in/out)
• RME 9652 HDSP: 26/26 channel all-digital sound card (3/3 ADAT in/out, 1/1 SPDIF in/out)

We discourage the use of USB sound cards, since they are often a cause of trouble. For example an 8-channel audio interface might be able to generate only 6 channels in some circumstances. Due to problems like this we recommend that you do not use USB audio devices.