Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Captain Ned
bdwilcox wrote:You know, I asked this same question about the HDMI sound through my ATI video card and none of the baby geniuses around here knew, so it's not as dumb a question as you think. I believe the sound card isn't used. Try disabling the sound card in Device Manager and see if the sound still works through the headphones. If they do, no sound card needed. BTW, ATI's HDMI sound doesn't use the soundcard at all.
tanker27 wrote:What about the sound processor on the Mobo? Would it bypass that.
Really, what I am getting at is justifying purchasing a sound card. I currently have a Asus Sonar that have my speaker and headset plugged into.
DancinJack wrote:What were you trying to figure out here? If you use the sound over HDMI on an ATI card it has it's own driver and does not use the sound card you have installed.
tanker27 wrote:so really a dumb dumb question. If I have a soundcard like the Asus Sonar and I have speakers or a headset that is USB, is the sound card used at all? Or is all the processing handled by the OS/CPU?
ludi wrote:The basic question was already answered, but to clarify the "why", there is no such thing as a sound protocol over USB. When you plug in a USB sound device, it has its own internal soundcard hardware and identifies itself to the system as a USB sound device. If there are other sound devices set up in the system, you can still find all of these in the Control Panel applet and select which one should be used for which tasks. The one unique feature about any USB sound device is that when you unplug it, the system is smart enough to switch back to whichever device was previously set up as the default.
DancinJack wrote:Sorry, I am confused. Do you mean Asus Xonar?
ludi wrote:... the system is smart enough to switch back to whichever device was previously set up as the default.
tanker27 wrote:Really, what I am getting at is justifying purchasing a sound card. I currently have a Asus Sonar that have my speaker and headset plugged into.