java and the "other soundcard"...
 

Hey all you beautifull people!!!

Okay, I've gotten my eye set on an other PC, that one has two sound cards, one internal one extra (better sound and such, you know the motivations) so, upon plugging the other card in, I suspect the BIOS to have disabled the internal one in favor of the new one. I ran Runescape (of course) and "see" the sound output in the mixer (the graph hops with the sounds) but...no sound, neither from the internal as te other one. Possibly, Java sends the sound to the (disabled) internal soundcard and...leaves it there.
Can Java be "persuaded" to use the other card?
Thanks for meditating along with me!

Thor

Noep, plugging a sound card in will not disable the onboard sound. At least I've never seen it or even heard about it happening, ever.

Go into your BIOS and shut the onboard down.

It should be possible to get the new card going with shuting the onboard down, but I think disablign it in the BIOS is a much better way to do things.

BTW, a sound card wont always be better than onboard. They almost always are, but not always. It depends on what card you are using and what the onboard sound is.

Hmm, touché, in fact, the new one may not even be a "brand" like Sound Blaster or so...so, plopping it out may even save me some power in the end...after all...
it strikes me that only Java is silent, I use this box as a soft synth, so...sound does work...weird innit..

Thor

Creative 'Sound Blaster' cards can be worse than the name and market share might make you think.

Some of them are OK..the older ones are in many cases worse than onboard, if only for some tasks/files. Eg, all sound blaster 'live' cards resample to 48KHz. Which is fine when you use a 48KHz source, if you are playing CD sourced 44.1KHz files itcreates extra load on the card, and doesnt sound as good.

That asides, most of the better sound cards will use more power than onboard. Maybe of the chpeaer sound cards are the same chips as used in some onobard sound setups, and should actaully use a little less power than in card form than if they are onboaord. The power 'savings' are likely to be minimal though, maybe 0.1 watt ;)

Many of the unknown brand sound cards can be great. It all depends on the sound chip and DACs (digital to analog converter) used. I used to own a Chaintech AV-710. Sound quality was pretty much the same as all the other cards usingthe same chipset (Envy24HT-S). Very good sound, very cheap, I paid $30 + some shipping for mine. I wish I'd enver sold it, but when I did I had no idea they were out of production....