When you push down a key, the mechanism inside (the action) makes a hammer go up (in a grand) or forward (in an upright) to strike the strings. The hammer is a round stick with a head on it (it looks something like a real hammer), and the head is covered with very dense wool felt. When the string vibrates it makes a musical sound; the string is con

If you are using the analog output of your PC - the headphone jack or other analog outputs - you will experience better audio from a dedicated card versus the motherboard's built-in audio processor. A sound card does a better job at converting that digital source material to an analog format, isolating the audio components from the motherboard

Surround sound is a term applied to several types of processes that enable the listener to experience sound coming from all directions, depending on the source material. To get surround sound, you need a component that can decode and reproduce surround sound from a source, such as a DVD. Most commonly, this component is referred to as an AV Receive