At first they just beeped. Then they sang, in a way.
And then computer sound exploded in the early 1990s with the first dedicated sound cards and, miracle of miracles, CD-ROM drives. Suddenly we had multimedia (an old term with a new meaning) personal computers, and mostly what we meant by that was sound.
From MIDI music to WAV files to MP3s, sound and particularly music has been at the heart of contemporary computing. Nothing quite moves the PC from the functional to the aesthetically pleasing than sound. And nothing can be quite so frustrating when something goes wrong.
Sound cards die. They do, it’s just a fact of life, particularly cheap ones. But surprisingly, a lot of sound card difficulties arise from conflicts and corrupted drivers, making sound drivers some of the most crucial aspects of our personal computing world.
Sound drivers tell our computers how to make beautiful music, but they can also be the most fragile programs on our hard drives. Fortunately, problems with sound drivers are usually easy fixes, and should be the first move in any troubleshooting effort. Reinstalling sound drivers from an installation disk often will solve the problem, and as with other drivers, making sure you have the most recent updated sound drivers is a must. Silence isn’t always golden.
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