Hardware Acceleration on ISA and PCI Cards

In the past few years, sound cards have moved from the ISA bus to the PCI bus. This design change has fundamentally altered the way DirectSound-accelerated cards handle audio data. In addition, DirectSound has introduced voice management, which enables applications to make more efficient use of limited hardware acceleration resources.

This section discusses some considerations in allocating buffers and using voice management on the two kinds of sound cards. The following topics are discussed:

• DirectSound Buffers on ISA Cards
• DirectSound Buffers on PCI Cards
• Voice Management on ISA and PCI Cards