Computer sound card optimization skills (1)

Prepare your system

For the entire computer system, the performance of a hardware depends on the proper configuration of all hardware, and it is especially important to install the latest stable drivers for the hardware. Among them, the motherboard chipset driver and BIOS update can often solve many problems in the process of using the sound card, such as popping, crashing and so on. For the same reason, for the sound card, the driver update is just as important as the graphics card. In addition to adding some new functions and improving certain performance to the sound card, the new version of the driver can often solve many problems in the application. How can a sound system with such a compatibility problem emit a sound of nature?

In addition, we should update the version of DirectX with the times, such as today's DirectX 9.0. why? Because DirectX includes more than just our familiar Direct 3D, it also includes Direct Sound and Direct Music for the sound system, and every new version of the update adds a lot of new features. The latest multimedia software such as Windows Media Player requires DirectX 9.0 support, and more and more games are joining the ranks. Therefore, in order to get more audio experience, we still have to abandon the principle of “can use it”.

Option setting one by one

Take Windows XP operating system as an example, click "Start → Settings → Control Panel", find the "Sound and Audio Devices" icon, double click to open "Sound and Audio Device Properties settings window. Click on the "Volume" tab above, the window below provides a lot of setup options, we divide it into two parts. FIG

a high open

FIG. 2 is necessary to adjust the selected item playback

selected recording source 3

1. In the middle of the master volume lever adjustment, we recommend setting the volume to about 70% of the maximum value, because the greater the gain of the sound card, the greater the distortion. Clicking the "Advanced" button below the lever will bring up the "Play Control" panel, then click on "Options→Advanced Controls", so we will open the advanced properties settings of the sound card (Figure 1). Click “Options→Properties” and select the playback item you want to adjust in the volume control panel in the pop-up window (Figure 2). Similarly, select “Recording” and click on the recording source (see Figure 3). After the selection is completed, press "OK" to close the dialog box and return to the "Play Control" panel to mute the unusable audio sources such as Line-In, Microphone, etc., so as to minimize the interference of the sound card output. Click “Advanced” under “Play Control” to adjust the gain of the high and low sounds in the pop-up window, which can greatly improve the quality of audio playback (Figure 4). Friends who use digital speakers must check “Digital Output Only” to hear the sound. In addition, click on "Advanced" under "Microphone" to add 20dB of gain to the microphone.

Figure 4 Adjusting the bass and bass gain can improve the audio playback quality
2. Click on “Speaker Volume”, where we can adjust the volume of the left and right channels separately. Many friends are limited by space, and the speakers cannot be placed symmetrically on both sides of the display. At this time, we can adjust the sound of the individual channels to achieve the left and right channel sound is always centered on the display. Click on “Advanced→Speakers” and select your sound system in the drop-down menu at the bottom of the screen. This step is very important, for example, you are using a 5.1-channel speaker system. If you use the default settings here (2.1 channels), then when you use WinDVD, you need to call DirectSound software to play DVDs. Your 5.1 channel output option will be grayed out and not selectable.
Click on the "Performance" tab and there are 4 levels from left to right in the "Hardware Acceleration" option. If your sound card is all right, you can use the system to "Full Hardware Acceleration". If your sound card finds a lot of static electricity, noise, or skipping, and the updated driver can't be solved, you can try the following method. Change the system's default "Full Hardware Acceleration" to "Basic Acceleration", which is the second level. But this method wastes the performance of the sound card. If you are sensitive to the sound, I recommend you to change a good sound card or do some electromagnetic shielding on the sound card.

Figure 5 Sample Rate Conversion Quality Options
"Sample rate conversion quality22" (Figure 5) This option determines the quality of your sound card's sampling and can affect performance. Of course, if your sound card is good, you can choose the best sampling rate to achieve excellent results. Equipment

Figure 6 Audio tab to select sounds to play

click on the "Audio" tab (Figure 6), you can choose what you in the dialog box that appears The device you need is the default device for sound playback, recording, and MIDI music playback. When you have only one audio device in your system, you can select the “Use only default devices” item. However, if you have multiple sound cards in your system and you need to specify a device, you can also turn this option on.

In addition, click "Start → Run", type "dxdiag" in the pop-up dialog box, then click the "Sound" tab in the "DirectX Diagnostic Tool" dialog box. Unless your sound card does not support DirectSound well, set the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" to "Full Acceleration". Don't forget to click the "Test DirectSound" button after testing to test if the sound card is working properly.

Sound plug-ins are indispensable

In addition to the optimization of the settings on the hardware, we can also improve the quality of audio playback by installing sound effects plug-ins.

Figure 7 DFX plug-in

It is well known that due to hardware technology and electromagnetic interference inside the chassis, the playback effect of PC multimedia cannot be compared with the home audio system, and it is more incompatible with Hi-Fi. Above. Especially for friends who use relatively low-end sound cards and speakers, listening to music on a computer is a "sweet" pleasure. In addition to the above methods, is there any way to improve the sound quality? The answer is yes! DFX is a sound plug-in developed by NullSoft for famous players such as Winamp, Windows Media Player, and RealPlayer. For computer users who are listening to MP3, adding DFX audio plug-ins can make a bad change in the quality of playback. Through in-depth study of the MP3 file compression algorithm, DFX compensates the sound effects of the sound card output from various aspects, which makes the MP3 playback effect have a qualitative leap. Of course, since it is a plug-in for the player, it is good for playback of other audio formats such as CD, WAV, etc. Properly adjusting Fidelity, Ambience, 3D Surround, Dynamic Boost, and HyperBass will surprise us (Figure 7).

Figure 8 Select the speaker mode according to the actual situation

With the popularity of broadband access, friends can easily download high-definition MPEG-4 format movies from the Internet. There are many boutiques with Dolby Digital AC3 audio format. However, since most sound cards do not support the hard decoding of Dolby AC3, many friends can only enjoy such MPEG-4 format movies in a silent form. In fact, we can implement soft decoding by adding a Dolby AC3 audio decoder. First, we will download and install the Dolby AC3 audio plug-in at www.cce.com.cn. Then, run playback software such as ZoomPlayer and play MPEG-4 files with Dolby AC3 sound. Right-click on the play window, click on “InterVideo Audio Decoder” under the “Filter Properties” menu, and select different modes according to the respective speaker system in the pop-up settings dialog (Figure 8). In this way, we can feel the realistic effect brought by Dolby AC3.

In addition, users of innovative Live and Audigy can also upgrade the function and sound quality of the original sound card by installing the Audigy 2 driver and supporting software. In short, through our careful training and appropriate software, even a common sound card can also play a beautiful melody!