ENCORE ENM232-8VIA 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Surround Sound Card

Pros: It works about 75% of the time absolutely perfectly

Cons: The 25% of the time that it doesn't work are when you go crazy.
Occasional super loud screaming from speakers requiring PC reset
One speaker goes muffled as heck sometimes (not speakers fault, literally tried two brand new speaker set ups)

Other Thoughts: Either there is SUPER loud screaming from the speakers or poor muffled from one speaker.
I even bought TWO new sets of speakers to try to fix this problem. But to no avail.

Pros: i nothing to say good about it

Cons: sounds bad no tech support not worth sending bye time you pay shipping

Other Thoughts: yea in last month i build 2 comp bought all parts from new egg had acouple bad parts but not worth sending back but all and all happy with most of order wish give dicount after you spending like 1000.00 bics..lol

Pros: Cheap and easy to install. Great sound quality for the price.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I only use a 2 speaker setup for business use. Cannot speak to any quality beyond that.

Pros: The price point -- was looking for an affordable alternative to the onboard sound card for a Dell Dimension 2400 which is almost 10 years old if not more. I took the recommendation of another reviewer and installed the drivers for the card from the website rather than with the provided mini CD.

Cons: Seemed easy enough to install, XP recognized it, had its own bundled software to control audio settings (Audio Deck or something like that). Went to go plug in the RCA cable from the 7.1 Yamaha stereo to the line out as well as any other jack only to hear sound coming from about 1 1/2 speakers extremely muffled. I tried many variations and tried manipulating sound settings to no avail. Extremely disappointed with this, very unfortunate considering it was just under $13 with shipping. I guess sometimes you get what you pay for.

Other Thoughts: Not even sure if it's worth attempting to return seeing as it is so cheap. Absolutely not worth any restocking fee or the cost if any to ship this piece of PCI plastic back. Seek something else. Even SoundBlaster has cards starting at $25, maybe I'll try that instead next time.

Pros: works with linux, very affordable

Cons: not for what I use it for

Other Thoughts: I have only used it to play analog stereo out through a line-out jack
to a 2.1 speaker set. It works fine for that. I have not tested surround,
7.1, spdif out, Dolby out to an external amplifier, recording, phone mike,
etc. Linux kernel 3.3.8, ice1724 device driver, alsa only (no oss emulation),
no /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc needed for this use of the card.

Pros: Works as expected, no problem with installation and drivers, win7 did everithing

Cons: not

Pros: Cheap, easy install

Cons: According to previous reviews, the drivers that come with it will cause problems with windows 7

Other Thoughts: After downloading proper drivers from the website, installed easy on windows 7 and works great! Only subtracted 1 star because there aren't included drivers for windows 7.

Pros: Works, sounds normal, really cheap.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Audio port on my motherboard went out, bought this to replace it. There's really no difference, so I'm happy. I'm using really old speakers, that were pretty cheap when bought though, so its not like I was expecting an improvement. Just a replacement.

Pros: - Sounds bloody amazing
- Price!
- 7.1
- Works like a dream (WHEN YOU GET IT TO WORK)

- A real quick fix

Cons: Spent five hours trying to install the HORRIBLE drivers. I tried using the disc, tried using the drivers from the website. Nothing worked! It took pure will and a little magic to get this to work.

I got the CD to work by plopping it in, running it, getting it to fail, taking it out, putting it back in, running it again, getting it to WORK, restarting the computer, ran it again, got it to "Work" again, another restart, another run of the installer, PC freezing then crashing, then restarting once more.

Other Thoughts: Well, after I got the card to work, I almost cried. Also had a nice little blasting of David Glen Eisley. "Sweet, sweet, sweet victory (yeah)" was had today.

Pros: Inexpensive

Cons: Included software is poorly written. The CD freezes the computer on install, several times, and downloading it from the manufacturer takes over 4 minutes on a LAN connection because the file is huge. It will malfunction or freeze even so. Once installed, the system will not read it as default and it will only function for one application at a time, not even allowing control panel testing because it is "in use", and it needs to be reconfigured on every restart. While in use the sound quality is varied and will cause the program it's used with to fail.

Uninstalling the included software and allowing Windows to recognize it on it's own made it much easier to use, but the sound quality was poor, and it still only functioned with one application at a time.

Other Thoughts: This product cost so little that it is not worth returning, but I find I regret purchasing it in the first place. The software and functionality need badly to be upgraded by the manufacturer.