[plug] ESS Audio Card and Real Encoder

[Nick Bannon]

On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 02:09:09PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
[...]
> that had sound capability, was sure to have a driver for them. But, from
> what I understand, 16 bit sound has gone the same way as black and white
> television, just a step on the way, that has come and gone.

16 bit sound is very much the norm, though when doing sound
processing inside a DSP you might use 24 bit to preserve accuracy.

Alternatives are mostly 8 bit (linear is a bit sucky, log, ie mu-law
or a-law is perfectly decent) or 1 bit (the PC speaker...).

This has nothing to do with the bus the card is on, or how many
"voices" it can play at once, or anything like that, which is where
the 32/64/96/128 and so on numbers you might see come from.

We've reached the point where 16 bit stereo sound is a very cheap
and perfectly decent standard and the possible improvements (3D
sound processors or 5.1 Dolby, etc) are optional fluff.

Nick.

-- 
  Nick Bannon  | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal