Most of those who used a PC in which Windows is installed, can say that the system is great to use when it comes to installing a peripheral, which has multimedia components with possibilities for MIDI or CD-ROM. Adding hardware components and their operation often requires endless phone calls to the technical assistance, which will be trying to figure out where to place the various hardware and give instructions of how to work with the new boot files. The answer to this problem is Plug and Play, a standard developed by Microsoft.
The standard accepted Windows 95 so, we may say that this is an old application, which still does its job. Users who want to add a CD-ROM or a sound card, simply have to look for something compatible with Plug and Play. After installation, Windows can interact with this application after a minimum configuration, because it already accepted the necessary elements that make a PC a multimedia device.Windows system include tools to ease the recognition and setup of older non-Plug and Play, which should lead to a reduction in system conflicts.
The Device Manager allows you to easily view properties as graphics and multimedia resources from your computer. Instead of trying to reach to some software components of the computer or maybe hardware, if you are good at computers, components that might have weird names or configurations, such as IRQ configuration, you can double-click the Device Manager and see a familiar window that contains a list comprising the devices that can configure the IRQ. To open Device Manager, perform the following operations: open the Start menu and choose Settings, Control Panel. Double-click the System icon. When the System Properties sheet appears, click on Device Manager tag. You can view depending on the type the devices connected to your computer at a certain time. Not all of them should be connected to the computer, when you are performing this search. With the help of the option “View Devices by Type”, the devices appear depending on their type.
Microsoft Windows systems offer various possibilities for the use of audio media, including the ability to play audio from compact discs and a custom sound recording and playback. Playing the audio from a CD using a CD-ROM installed on your computer must use at its turn a CD Player, which is not the hardware part, but the software, the program that allows us to listen to music. If you have installed a sound card (I wonder what are the computers that don’t have), after you insert the CD in the unit, is enough to launch the CD Player: open the Start menu and choose the Accessories program. Select Multimedia and then select the CD player. Play the CD.
Windows can also automatically recognize audio CDs, when they are inserted into the CD-ROM, without you to intervene. If you want to start the audio CD, simply click on the CD player. Since the CD Player program operates in the background, you can listen to audio CDs while working on other applications on your PC.
Attached to this program, there is the option of sound control (volume control), which allows us to set the signal volume, in Wave, Syneth, CD or 3D effects. You can also record sounds for personal use with another feature called Sound Recorder. This feature allows the recording of Wave files and also their playing. While Sound Recorder is not as sophisticated as the best digital recorders, it is a good chance for your initiation into the field of digital recordings.
If you now have a Sony VAIO laptop, you can use all the applications that come directly from Sony and record MP3 files, not Wave anymore. Anyway, there are still people which do not afford a Sony computer and choose the cheapest variants, which allow them a limited chance of making good music and even listening.
The result is suitable for presentations and for creating small unprofessional voice files to be sent by electronic mail. Instead of sending plain text e-mail, you can record a short voice message that is distributed through the network at work. Another possibility, for example, is to record a short voice memo that you can run in a presentation intended for third parties.
We need a PC with enhanced sound possibilities, such as a good sound card and a microphone. The multimedia capabilities are included in most computers and also widely sold, that’s why when you buy a computer, you must ensure that it has included all the necessary sound possibilities, because otherwise you have to add them later for a great fee in general.11