In the early 90's, if you wanted audio you had to buy a card. Of course, you compared and you wanted the best for your bucks, so instead of the cheapest $30 you

In the early 90's, if you wanted audio you had to buy a card. Of course, you compared and you wanted the best for your bucks, so instead of the cheapest $30 you could get a Sound Blaster for $50 with full duplex and a MIDI port, it sounded like a great deal. Never used the MIDI, rarely the mic. We bought cards with capabilities we never needed, so when motherboards came with integrated audio that allowed us to plugin the headphones, we forgot about audio cards. It's now a product for pros. I remember buying extra cards for ethernet, for interfacing SATA drives, for USB ports... All of them got integrated in the motherboard. The only card that seems to hold strong is the graphics.