Digital Commons at Penn State

Capturing audio, meaning taking audio from an analog source such as an audio tape or microphone, requires a sound card. A sound card plugs into an internal slot and has audio-in, audio-out, microphone, and speaker jacks. The card contains chips that compress incoming audio data and allow your computer to save the audio data to disk. All Macintosh computers and most Windows computers have built-in sound cards. Sound stored on a CD is already in digital format, and it can be copied to an internal hard drive, external hard drive, uploaded to the internet, or back to a CD. With such programs like iTunes (installed on all Macintosh computers and many PCs) one can play all types of digital audio files.