Sampled sounds on sound card

Is it possible to add sampled sounds to a sound card?
My brother recently updated his equipment and the new integrated sound card lacks several samples he needs for his midis. He composes and is very particular about sound.
I told him that because midis rely on sounds preinstalled on his sound card it was unlikely that any could be added.
Was I right or is there a way?

Joel

 

Any sounds on a PC are not on the sound card or programmed into the sound card, regardless of whether it is on board sound or an add-in sound card. They are in Windows, and custom sound themes can be installed. A friend of mine has a theme installed that makes a toilet flushing sound every time he empties the recycle bin. The sound card simply plays the sounds it's told to play by Windows, and has no storage of it's own for sounds or anything else. Windows keeps all system sounds in the following location: C:\Windows\Media So any custom sounds you want to add must be stored in this folder and added to the event list in Control Panel > Sound and Audio Devices > Sounds. For more information, read this stuff:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/sounds.aspx
http://www.pctoday.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/2004/t0204/20t04/20t04.asp
Good luck! I hope this stuff helps!

 

You misunderstand me.
I am not speaking of system sounds, I am refering to the midi samples that are indeed programmed into the sound card.
A midi is a group of program instructions that tell the sound card what sound (violin, clarinet, guitar etc.) to use when playing the midi.
Every sound card plays midis differently, because the sampled sounds for various instruments are not standardized; rather they are installed by the sound card's manufacturer from their own private stock of sampled sounds.
The problem my brother is having is that he got a new computer and his old computer's sound card is an ISA.
His new computer only supports PCI cards, so he can not use his prefered sound card.
His new sound card's samplings are unsatisfactory to him and he wants to know if there is some way to replace them with the ones that are on his older sound card.
I don't think this is possible, but I thought perhaps someone here might know a solution that I didn't.

 

Ahhhhh... I see.... Thanks for clearing that up. I don't think that it's possible. The only things I can think of is to record the sounds from the old sound card and save them as audio files and then transfer them to the new PC, but that still doesn't so what you want. Maybe if you can contact the manufacturer of the original ISA card and see if they have a newer PCI card with the same properties, or try to find one with the same sound chipset. The main chip on the sound card will have some numbers on it, and possible a company or brand name that can be researched. I'm no expert in the sound card/midi arena, so maybe someone else will come along and offer some more helpful advice.
Good luck!

 

Thank you very much for your suggestions.
I will tell him to try contacting the card's manufacturer and see if a newer card is available with the older sample set.

I will try in the future to be clearer when posting.

 

A footnote for anyone who comes across this question in the future.
A sound card can indeed be updated with new sound samples.
It is a process similar to flashing a BIOS.
SoundBlaster sells a CD with the prerequisite flashing program and samples.