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Uniprocessor Computers
Published in Vivek Kale, Parallel Computing Architectures and APIs, 2019
The motherboard also typically contains expansion slots—the number of expansion slots in the motherboard determines its expandability. Expansion slots are sockets into which expansion cards such as a video card, sound card, and internal modem can be plugged. An expansion card has a card edge connector with metal contacts, which when plugged into an expansion slot socket, connects the circuitry on the card to the circuitry on the motherboard: A sound card contains circuitry to convert digital signals from the computer into sounds that play through speakers or headphones that are connected to the expansion ports of the card.A modem card connects the computer to a telephone system to transport data from one computer to another over phone lines.A network card, on the other hand, provides the circuitry to connect a computer to other computers on a local area network (LAN).
Test equipment and measurements
Published in Mike Tooley, Electronic Circuits, 2019
Sound cards can usually be configured for stereo or mono operation with either 16 or 24 bits and sampling rates of 44.1 kHz (CD quality) up to 192 kHz. Note that more expensive plug-in (e.g. PCI cards) and external (professional quality) sound systems can usually achieve higher sample rates than those provided by integrated sound cards. The stereo capability makes it possible to have two independent channels (as with most conventional oscilloscopes). In addition, the output capability of a PC sound card can be used to provide test signals within the audio and low-frequency spectrum and sound card oscilloscope software usually provides this function in addition to waveform display of signals applied to the stereo input channels.
Reconfigurable Binary Neural Networks Hardware Accelerator for Accurate Data Analysis in Intelligent Systems
Published in Kavita Taneja, Harmunish Taneja, Kuldeep Kumar, Arvind Selwal, Eng Lieh Ouh, Data Science and Innovations for Intelligent Systems, 2021
Acceleration is a term used to describe tasks being offloaded to devices and hardware, which are specialized to handle them effectively. They are suitable for any repetitive intensive key algorithm and also can vary from a small functional unit to a larger functional block like motion estimation and video processing. It helps to perform crucial functions more efficiently than possible in running on a general purpose computer. It offloads certain processes onto the hardware that can be best equipped for boosting the performance of a system. Hardware acceleration utilizes the power of graphical or sound processing units of a computing system to increase performance for certain applications. In most computers, by default, the CPUs may not be powerful to handle complex tasks, and this is where hardware acceleration comes into play. Sound cards in computers are meant for processing and recording of high quality sounds. Graphics cards can similarly be utilized by hardware acceleration to allow quicker higher quality playback of videos and mostly also used for gaming applications. They can also perform complex mathematical computations when compared to CPUs. Generally, processes or sequential instructions are executed one by one and are designed to run general-purpose algorithms controlled by fetching mechanisms. Deploying file hardware acceleration in these kinds of tasks improves the execution of a specific algorithm by allowing greater concurrency, by providing specific data paths for its data, and possibly reducing the overhead of instruction control. Modern processors are multi-core and they often feature parallel computation units.
Exploration of Head Related Transfer Function and Environmental Sounds as a Means to Improve Auditory Scanning for Children Requiring Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Published in Assistive Technology, 2020
John W. McCarthy, Jeffrey J. DiGiovanni, Dennis T. Ries, Jamie B. Boster, Travis L. Riffle
Sounds were presented through Etymotic ER-3A insert earphones with tips sized for young children. The earphones were connected to a Soundblaster Audigy EX® external sound card with a splitter allowing the researcher to listen to the stimuli children were hearing. The sound card was connected to the computer delivering the stimuli. The computer interface was programmed using MATLAB 2010 and delivered through an HP Touchsmart All-in-One PC running Windows 7 64-bit version. The most comfortable listening level for the sounds was determined by asking three of the 5-year-old children involved in sound stimuli validation (see above) to respond with an up or down signal to arrive at a standard to be used for all other participants with the directions, “Did you hear that sound? Would you want to turn it up a little louder so you could hear it better? Or was that too loud and you want to turn it down a little bit?” The procedure continued until they reported being comfortable (not too loud and not too soft). The touchscreen laptop and the slider bar for the system volume was adjusted up and down for this purpose. The relative decibel range of the slider in Windows 7 was reallocated to 100 steps for the sound card to provide a range of 0–100 with a step size of approximately 1.9 dB. The volume slider bar settings for Windows were set to specified values for average most comfortable level (MCL) prior to a given testing session based on the average reported ratings from the three children. All sounds were normalized via the RMS voltage. The MCL employed was equivalent to a 1.0 kHz pure-tone presented at 65 dB SPL.
Evaluation of smartphone sound level meter applications as a reliable tool for noise monitoring
Published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2019
Travis McLennon, Shivangi Patel, Alberto Behar, Mohammad Abdoli-Eramaki
Five different sound signals (white noise, pink noise, speech, occupational steelmaking, and conveyor belt) were used in the experimental setup. These mp3 sound signals were obtained from a sound library and had two audio channels with a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz. It is important to note that noise signals were cut and looped to provide a consistent sound signal for all measurements. An Apple MacBook Pro (containing all sound files) was connected to a Pioneer AV receiver (Model VSX-524-K) and five Polkaudio loudspeakers (four of which were of model RM6751 and the other model RM6752), with the local (two-channel) sound card on the laptop computer being used for digital to analog conversion of the signals.
On the relationship between land use and sound sources in the urban environment
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2020
Efstathios Margaritis, Jian Kang, Francesco Aletta, Östen Axelsson
The experiment was conducted in a soundproof listening room. The binaural soundscape excerpts were reproduced in headphones (Sennheiser HD 280 Pro) fed by a laptop computer (Dell Inspiron 7720) with an IDT sound card (24 bits, 48 kHz) and at the authentic sound pressure levels. This method of audio reproduction provides for a high degree of realism, preserving the spatial information in the audio signal. The video image was presented in full screen mode on the laptop screen (17”) at a distance of approximately 60 cm in front of the participant. The original audio signals were calibrated using a dummy head (B&K 4128-C) and 0.1” microphones (Knowles FG-23329-P07).