Part of the reason for the rise in popularity of the IBM PC as a home computer was the ability to accommodate extra hardware to perform specialised tasks. The Apple II was the first desktop computer to offer expansion slots in 1977, and when the IBM PC was introduced in the early 1980s, it too offered an interface slot for I/O (input/output) cards.

The first significant soundcard was probably the Roland MPU401, which was a series of MIDI interfaces that allowed the PC to become the nerve centre of a MIDI system. At this point, the PC lacked the capability to record or play back music, until Creative Labs released the GameBlaster, a games soundcard which later became the SoundBlaster - a defining standard for the modern soundcard. [4]

As with most other computer applications, the process of PC music-making was revolutionised with the introduction of the Windows 3.1 operating system. The new Multimedia PC (MPC) standard avoided the need for external hardware to be compatible with the outdated Roland MPU401 (for MIDI applications) or the SoundBlaster (for digital audio), by incorporating the PC's music and sound capabilities into Windows" operating system. This allowed audio companies to develop new and improved hardware and software which was more suited to the needs of the PC musician and the digital storage and manipulation of sound data.

Though soundcards act as MIDI controllers and sound synthesizers, their greatest advantages to the online music industry is the ability to play back digital audio . A sound file downloaded from the Internet is stored on the hard disk drive and then converted into an analogue signal that is amplified by the soundcard 's circuitry. Playback of digital audio is the most common function of a soundcard since the quality of digitised sound is more reliable and predictable than MIDI files, the sound of which vary greatly depending on the type soundcard installed. Digital audio is also technically less demanding on the computer's processor than sound synthesis, since digital audio is played back by converting a digital number into a voltage, rather than having to perform the complex mathematics involved in translating MIDI control data and sound synthesis.

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