The museum wing · 6 guides
Sound Cards
The museum wing — forty years of PC audio, from AdLib beeps to onboard chips, and the honest answer to whether you still need a card at all.
- 1981→The Sound Card: A Forty-Year StoryFrom AdLib beeps through Sound Blaster dominance to the chip on your motherboard — the full museum tour of PC audio.
- OPL2How PC Sound Cards EvolvedThe technical throughline — FM synthesis to wavetable to host-based audio — and what each leap changed for musicians.
- PCIeThe Best PC Sound Card TodayIf you genuinely need a card in the tower — for latency, for retro builds, for optical outs — here's what to look at and why.
- 2007Do You Still Need a Sound Card?Usually no — and the honest cases where the answer is still yes. Onboard audio, USB interfaces and where the money should go instead.
- 1989AdLib vs Sound Blaster: The War That Built PC AudioHow a Quebec teaching company invented the market and a Singapore upstart took it — the rivalry that put music in every PC.
- SNROnboard Audio vs a Dedicated InterfaceMotherboard codecs got good. Here's what they still can't do, measured in the things you can hear.