[plunar]

hey, question. my roommate just got a new sound card for his pc, and of course i had to jump about how macs don't need sound cards, and then our convo kind of stalled cuz we suddenly both realized the only thing he uses his card for is games, and we don't really have any clue how the hell the thing works ! what is the purpose of a sound card, and why do pcs need them and macs don't??? isn't everything just run off cd audio or mp3???

[xyber233]

Most sound cards have front and rear outputs which allows for 3d surround sound. Some even include Dolby decoding. It really sux because the Soundblaster card for Mac has crappy drivers and most games can't even use it. The only Mac game I can think of that uses OpenAL is Deus Ex. I sure wish that Creative gets their act together and make decent drivers. The fact that there arent many sound cards for Mac IMO is not a good thing.