Sound Card
Computers process digital audio and play audible sound through the Soundcard (Audio Interface).
The polyphonic ability of a sound card (a circuit board installed within the computer) refers to the ability of the sound card to play more than one note (also referred to as voice) at a time. Sound cards, and synthesizers, these days are capable of 32, 64 and 128 voice polyphony. A Multi-Timbral soundcard will also refer to is ability to reproduce more than one instrument sound simultaneously. The most recent soundcard professional upgrades will allow for internal processing a high quality 96KHz sampling rate and 24-bit (approximate) resolution which will create very good sounding compositions. Most off-the shlef sound cards have only two channels (stereo) although some professional upgrades will have as many as four to sixteen. An improved soundcard will also allow one to increase the options for data transfer with various connectors such as AES / EBU, S / PDIF, TOSLINK, XLR, RCA, pre-amplifier and Balanced / Unbalanced connections. Each one of these hardware connection standards also have a specific Protocol of data transfer interface.