AC97 Sound Drivers

AC’97 has been around since 1997 when it was developed by a company named Intel Architecture Labs. AC’97 is a short name for Audio Codec ’97 an was adopted as the standard for Intel Corporation’s Audio Codec. This codec was designed for use with sound cards, motherboards, and modems. Signals that are encoded or decoded from analog audio to digital audio or form digital audio to analog audio are encoders/decoders that Intel refer to as audio codec. This is also known as an audio AD/DA-converter.

Before the introduction of AC’97, the only viable sound output option PC users had was Stereo. Dolby Digital and DTS were the first successful multi-channel audio output. These sound formats were mainly for DVD video at the time. This led to the development of AC’97. AC’97 now offers high quality and high definition audio output and is capable of output on both six or eight channels. AC’97 uses a 16 or 20-bit audio signal with surround sound support. Up to 96,000 samples per second in 20-bit stereo is made possible by AC’97. With AC’97, audio cards are capable of offering LINE_OUT, AUX_OUT, and MONO_OUT sound ports. LINE_IN is the input port for analog stereo signals and the MIC_IN is used for input of mono signals.

The AC’97 Digital Controller is what each manufacture company uses to implement AC’97 drivers. The controller communicates with AC’97 via an AC-Link. The Codec is read from and written to by the controller. The AC-Link is a serial Pulse Code Modulation or PCM digital stream. The AC-Link is bidirectional and runs at a fixed rate using a TDM or Time Division Multiplexing scheme. An AC-Link is composed of 5 wires. These 5 wires are for the 12.288Mhz clock, 1 for data input, 1 for data output, a sync signal, and also a reset signal.

Common Problems Associated with AC’97 Sound Drivers

1) Install problems may cause snapping, crackling, and popping in audio playback.

2) Incompatibility with hardware or OS resulting in no sound or loss of sound card features and function ability.

3) May cause Operating System instability or crashes.

4) May result in conflict with integrated game controlers.

Troubleshooting AC’97 Sound Drivers

Always get the newest updated drivers from the website of the hardware manufacture. Secondly check all audio cables to ensure they are snuggly inserted into audio ports. If still having problems, check the OS device manager to verify that the OS recognizes the device using the AC’97 sound drivers. In case of driver install glitch, uninstall drivers and then reboot PC before reinstalling AC’97 sound drivers. Sometimes a reboot is required to completely remove an install. If all else fails, run Dxdiag then select the sound tab after the DirectX diagnostic is finished running. Set Hardware Sound Acceleration to Basic acceleration.