Did you hear the one about sound coming out of a computer? It's a good one and getting better
The only sound from the earliest computers was the popping of vacuum tubes. Sound was more or less an afterthought even when PCs began to reach office users' desks.
By John Breeden II
GCN Staff
The only sound from the earliest computers was the popping of vacuum tubes. Sound was more or less an afterthought even when PCs began to reach office users' desks.
Sound from the tiny speakers was hampered by enclosure in a case with the rest of the components. It had to get through the case to be heard and sometimes had to compete with cooling fans as loud as miniature helicopters.
These early handicaps limited computer sound to high-pitched beeps that meant something was wrong. Ingenious programmers did come up with ways to play good-quality sound through internal speakers, but too often these same speakers pumped out an overload of scratchy, incomprehensible tones.
Forced to do without good sound, users began to think of PCs as purely visual devices and to focus on video applications. Monitor resolutions increased, color depth became lifelike, video cards accelerated 3-D performance and streaming video started to evolve.
The first company to focus on quality computer sound was Creative Labs Inc. of Milpitas, Calif., a subsidiary of Creative Technology of Singapore. Creative Labs opened the ears of PC users with an expansion card that did nothing but generate sound. Speakers could be plugged into the Sound Blaster card.
For the first time, programmers had options for conveying real information via sound. Meanwhile, the Microsoft Windows operating system began to dominate the PC market, and adding high-quality sound to its visual interface made sense.
Because radio was invented first, TV viewers never had to settle for television they could not hear. In fact, for many viewers, good-quality sound matters more than a good-quality picture. In the TV market, sound and picture enjoy equal importance'a balance that consumers expect.
Listen up
In contrast, computer sound has taken a long time to get the attention it deserves. Nevertheless, it has become essential to getting the most out of high-end applications. Even users with basic computing needs can benefit a lot from good sound. It's difficult to find a system for sale without a sound card, and programmers continually come up with new ways to enhance their applications with sound.
Sound gives instant user feedback in an unobtrusive yet easily definable way. Different tones or sound snippets can mean different things, from the confirmation that a new window has opened, to a warning that a requested program will overflow the memory buffer.
In some cases, audio feedback conveys vital information not otherwise displayed on a screen.
One of the most popular applications on the Internet is streaming video. Government agencies use streaming video technology to initiate webcasts or to set up videoconferences with remote sites. As important as the video is, sound is equally important unless the participants restrict themselves to writing everything down.
Sound also makes computers accessible to some users who otherwise could not use them. Users with visual impairments can navigate their systems and read documents. In the past this required expensive proprietary hardware, but today sound software can be added to almost any system.
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Sound and fury
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