Hello Michael,

17 March, 2000, 20:14:51, you wrote:

ME> I am trying to choose a sound card that I could connect
ME> to my stereo receiver/amplifier and use with my JBL 2600
ME> bookshelf speakers.

I'd say 90-95% of sound cards currently on the shelves can be
connected to your amp.

ME> Sound Blaster PCI 128 Wave-table 3d SB3100         $37
ME> Sound Blaster Ensoniq 128 PCI PnP CT4811           $23

Aren't those the same thing? They're both by Creative...

ME> I am in the dark as to what wave-table cards do that
ME> non-wave-table cards don't. Do I need a wave-table card
ME> for playing music from computer to stereo?

1) You need a WT card only when playing MIDI files (*.mid). Even then,
there are programs that emulate a WT and produce equivalent sound, on
expense of CPU utilization.

2) WT is a memory chip that contains "samples" of a MIDI set of
instruments, including drums, bells and whistles :), and some sound
effects. It can be sized 512k-8Mb or even more.

WT can be on-board (hardware, best) or loaded into main memory (like the
cheapos SB64PCI or SB128PCI). The main memory ones decrease your
estate by 2 to 8 Mb depending on the bank loaded, so if you've only
32Mb, this is not your best choice. Moreover, there is an overhead of
loading the table from the disk (even if it is loaded by driver at
startup, it will be eventually paged out unless you are a happy owner
of 256 MBytes of RAM) _and_ some drivers do a WT emulation (with this
table) and eat CPU time.

3) IMHO, currently the best price/features card is SB Live Value. A SB
Live (or Live Platinum) has additional I/O, but the hefty price addon
is too much. BTW, the January 2000 (?) Elektor had the schematics for
a SB Live Value! addon board that adds all the features of a SB Live
(inputs/outputs) for a fraction of the cost -- only for electronics
savvy, I'm afraid.

Last one - some of my experience. (who doesn't like bragging about his
cool hardware? :) I have a low-end card, a SB 64 PCI. It plays all
music in very good quality; MIDIs are played with wavetable located in
memory like I described before. It has a line-out, so anything can be
plugged in.

The only problems are old DOS games and DAMP since the SB64 only
emulates a SB PRO instead of SB 16 (why?), and the PRO is a 8-bit
card, so DOS applications don't get 16-bit sound.

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