It is recommended by many professionals, as well as myself that when you are installing a sound card, you remove all of your other hardware, such as a modem, video capture card, other miscellaneous cards and the software drivers that support them. You must leave your video card, however. Sound cards take up many of your system resources (IRQs, DMAs and I/O Addresses) so they should be allowed to take all they need first. Later, after the installation, you can put in the rest of your hardware.

You must firstly read your manuals that come with the sound card. Some sound cards, especially the older ones require you to set jumper settings, including jumpers for the IRQ, and DMA settings. Some combo sound card/modems even have a jumper setting for the COM port. The standard IRQ and DMA settings for a sound card are IRQ 5 or 7 and DMA 1. If you use these settings, you are less likely to run into problems. The newer sound cards are Plug-and-Play, which means that the IRQ and DMA settings are software controlled. This means that you do not have to manually set jumper settings. Again, like with the jumper settings, you should use the sound card drivers or utilities to set the IRQ to 5 or 7 and DMA 1. One thing to consider when buying a sound card is whether it is PCI or ISA. Some DOS games have trouble with the PCI cards, so if you are use DOS for games frequently, I recommend an ISA card, but if you do not intend on using DOS games and are running Windows '95 or later, a PCI sound card will work fine.

Now that you have the jumper settings set, or you are waiting to do the Plug-and-Play settings, you can carefully, but forcefully insert the sound card into the appropriate slot (ISA or PCI depending on the card). If you watch our video, we will demonstrate this.

After you put the card in the slot, if you have a CD-ROM drive, you must hook up the audio cable. This small cable goes from the analog audio output of the CD drive to the CD-Audio input on the sound card. If you are making the audio cable yourself, you MUST crossover two of the wires, because on the CD-Drive, the pins go Right, Ground, Ground, Left, and on the sound cards the pins go Ground, Right, Ground, Left. If you have a CD-ROM that uses an alternative interface to IDE or SCSI, you must also connect the interface cable to the card.

After you have installed the hardware for the soundcard, you must install the software. Typically, sound cards come with drivers and some mixing, MIDI, Waveform, and Voice Recognition software. The first thing you will need to install is the driver software. Windows '95 and later typically auto-detects your hardware when you turn on the machine. It typically prompts you to insert either the Windows '95 or later CD-ROM or the disk that came with your sound card. Simply follow the instructions. In order for your DOS programs to work properly with sound, it is a little harder. If you have a card that you have to set jumpers, you have an easier time. If you have a Plug-and-Play card, you need to load the TSRs that sets the IRQs and DMAs. After that, no matter if you have a Plug-and-Play or older card, and it is SoundBlaster Compatible, you have to type SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4, if your IRQ is set for a different number, change the I5 to a Inum same thing with the DMA. Your sound should work after that. You should add the two things I described, the TSR and the SET BLASTER, to your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

There are many different types of soundcards, but they all basically work the same. A soundcard is used to play back digital recordings and synthesize reconstructed recordings. A sound card converts the digital data it receives into analog data that you can use with speakers. The soundcard receives basically two types of data: waveform and MIDI. Waveform audio sounds nearly the same on all soundcards, except the newer cards which modify the waveforms to sound more realistic. Waveform audio is digitally recorded and played back, whereas MIDI, the other type is synthesized. MIDI sounds different on basically all cards, especially the cards which use wavetable synthesis. In wavetable technology, when a soundcard receives MIDI data which it is to synthesize, the card instead takes preloaded waveform data (digital recordings), which it changes the pitch to simulate how it would actually sound. If you have a MIDI file, which is supposed to sound like a piano, it will sound realistic on a waveform card, whereas on a regular card which the sound is synthesized, it doesn't.