Sound
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Sound is never noticed by users, until it isn't there. It forms an integral part of the user feedback experience. For example, the beeps produced by Windows Explorer, KDE and other desktop environments when users click on the wrong thing. It is also becoming a far more dominant part of the gaming and multimedia experience; with many games and movies now featuring 5.1 channel soundtracks. As such, it is becoming more important for hobby operating systems to support sound playback, at the very least.
A Short History of PC Sound
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In the beginning, there was the PC Speaker. Next came Creative and Ad Lib. Then came AC'97. Then HDA. And finally cheap Realtek chipsets to be found everywhere. And we should talk about professional recording sound as well. And guess what? These are going to be their own sections.
The Sound Blaster
In terms of simple standards, the Sound Blaster Pro (from Creative) is the original de facto standard for audio on PCs. It was an ISA card that descended from the Sound Blaster, the first card to support both the Game Blaster (Creative's original card) and the AdLib sound card. The majority of cards today still have some backwards compatibility with the Sound Blaster Pro.
AC '97
Since then has come the Intel standard AC'97. This is more difficult to implement, due to the fact that some of it may be implemented in software as part of the 'chipset driver'.
The Sound Heirachy
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