Despite appearances and press coverage, there is much, much more to music on computers than .mp3 files. Computers have radically changed the landscape of how both hobby and professional recordings are made, and the head snapping gaming box you just put together using the Sharky Extreme Buyer's Guide is capable of some rather extraordinary things when it comes to sound. Of course, it's also good for playing .mp3s.

I've been writing about making music with computers for some time now, and the question I get much more than any other is "what sound card should I buy?" That question is not what we are going to be answering today, for a couple of reasons. First, it's too much to cover, a soundcard can be a $50 SoundBlaster Live Value OEM card, or a $20,000 Pro Tools Mix system with upgraded DSP cards. There's no way I could cover all of that here. Second, I think for PC soundmakers in particular, drivers are often at least as important as features on the card.

Understanding what kind of drivers are out there, and what they can do for you, is critical to making the right choice in audio hardware and software. The biggest downside of making music on a computer is that computers break, and when the computer breaks, you have to stop playing and writing and programming and fix the damn thing. If you're lucky, you still remember what you were working on and aren't so frustrated that it's painful to play. Often, you're not so lucky, and that tune or idea or beat is gone.

Nothing insures lack of productivity with audio software more than buggy and unreliable drivers. It's also one of the toughest things to figure out when you are buying a card, because of the potential variables involved. Every computer will have different quirks-the CPU, the supporting chipset, the video card, and so on. Any one of these things can potentially create problems for working with high quality audio and MIDI on a PC. This leaves you, the consumer, best served by gathering LOTS of information before you make a choice of what software to use with what card. This, by the way, is one of the advantages of some of the more expensive systems that include hardware locked to certain software. It sort of blocks out the entire issue of drivers, because the software only works with one piece of hardware, and it can be hand tweaked to perform properly.