Creative 70SB109500008 5.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz USB Interface X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro

Pros: Flawlessly routes 5.1 audio over a single USB connection, saving you the trouble of installing a card inside your case, while also making it really easy to switch between devices.

Cons: Bloatware in the installation disc. Do a custom installation and uncheck everything that doesn't say "driver".

Overall Review: This thing is awesome!! My speakers are alive. Audio tracks, games, everything - I can hear things that just weren't there before on an integrated sound card. If you don't have a dedicated sound card, but have a surround-sound system hooked up to your PC, Do yourself a favor and pick one of these things up. Your ears will thank you!

Pros: -Bass no longer drops out like it did with on-board audio on my laptop (Asus G73JW). -Audio quality in games is much clearer. No more muddy mids and over saturated lows. -Overall superior increase in audio quality. It just makes all the sounds on all levels mesh nicely. As for software, there's a lot you DON'T need to use, but its nice they included it. The EQ is nearly perfect, and the extras to help even out volume on all levels, really helps out. Lots of little tweaks and peaks you can make to your hearts content, however you'll most likely end up turning a lot of them off and using only a few like I did. Not a negative, but it does feels overwhelming initially.

Cons: -Not sure if its because this doesn't have as much memory like the desktop audio cards or what, but if you have more than say three or four of the enhancements enabled, the bass starts to dive and take over all the other channels hooked up a little bit, with all those on at least. *Nothing too major, for me at least, because I found the crystallizer enhancement to be a bit of a nuisance more than anything. It oversaturated the highs making me want to over compensate by oversaturating with low end. If you have a lot of... what we say -obtained- music with mismatched playback bitrates, it would probably do you more good than me. All my music is a minimum of 360 kpbs. Anything below that bothers me to some degree as it worsens. 360 isn't all that high of a standard either... that's basically just a ripped CD directly off the disk. Lossless sounds amazazing through this, however. -I'm rambling again....

Overall Review: If you're looking for a decent replacement for on-board audio for a LAPTOP (or netbook, whatever), this is definitely one to stop by and take a gander at. It doesn't disappoint, as long as you make your EQ adjustments. Tinker away, and it'll be perfecto. If you're looking at this as a potential replacement for on board audio for a desktop, however, I could not recommend it. There are so many better options available for a tower! Get one that's not external for your desktop. You won't be sorry you spent an extra $30-$40 for a better PCI-E card. OLong made short! Get this for a laptop (dont even hesitate if this card has caught your fancy). Don't get this for desktop. I would personally look for a PCI-E internal sound card.

Pros: Had to find a replacement for Titanium sound card not fitting in the PCI-E slot due to dual SLI cards. Connected all wires and installed using setup disc, then used the auto-updater for updates and everything has been running fine. Comes with a nice little remote.

Cons: No cons so far!

Overall Review: Bought a red/white Y-wire cable to hook up the X-box 360 to the mic output and now all the speakers are working fine with 5.1 surround sound.

Pros: My laptop immediately recognized the USB device, easy install! Has all of what you need for an external speaker system. Comes with EQ, Crystallizer, and more! Great sound!

Cons: None.

Pros: This is a fantastic sounding card! I originally bought it to use with my laptop (Lenovo T61), and it absolutely blows away the onboard audio. The sound is much deeper and fuller, and little things in music and voice that the Realteck chipset hides are brought out. I've since gotten a desktop machine, and this little card still blows away the onboard audio of my Gigabyte motherboard! It drives my Grado SR125 headphones with no issues at all.. no pre-amp required. Recordings made with the line in sound fantastic too. Lovely blue LED! I have it right next to my hand normally so I've never used the remote, but I played with it when I first got it, it seemed to work fine. Windows 7 had OK support for it out of the box. Downloaded and installed just the basic driver for the volume knob to work.

Cons: X-Fi. It sounds like complete and utter garbage. The full driver package lets you turn it off, the basic driver package doesn't enable it to begin with. Without this, its fantastic.

Overall Review: I bought this at another store a couple years back when it was like $75. Using it with some $150 headphones though. It also drives a Behringer XENEX502 mini-mixer for my speakers and takes an input from the same board for my mic (I like using a condenser mic that needs XLR)

Pros: When listening to music on my Asus G74 this makes it more enjoyable. The comparison to just using headphones with the build in sound is night and day better.

Cons: In some games I would get some random popping. One game it happened often enough that I would not use this when playing it. Tried the newer drivers Creative had but the issue peristed.

Overall Review: Overall I'm happy with my purchase of this unit.

Pros: I have been using the left and right analogue I/O. At first when I installed it and hooked up the TOSLINK Cable to test the surround and main speakers. I got nothing except only test tones from the left and right channel. Now just recently after having it a little over 2 months. I decided to test out the Optical again. And this time I got it to work. Test Tones came from all 6 channels. Left, Center, Right, Surround Right, Surround Left and LFE (Sub). It automatically switches my A/V Receiver into a pure Dolby Digital Signal. Audio files sound crisp and vibrant. Especially Lossless Audio. Which is my preference. I've ripped raw DVD's to my TB HD. And this card does a fine job with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 Nice and pure sound.

Cons: As one other reviewer states. "It DOES NOT upmix 2.0 channel audio files to a 5.1 mix. Which would've been awesome.

Overall Review: Pretty good card. Hopefully it will last a good while for my HTPC.

Pros: Excellent product, does everything as advertised without any headaches associated with traditional Creative sound cards. I highly recommend this unit when connecting to a surround sound receiver via toslink optical cable. Dolby and DTS signals pass through with ease for properly encoded content. For general music listening and gaming, the Crystalizer and Surround features really make soundtracks shine. The included remote control works with Windows Media Center and XBMC which is a nice bonus!

Cons: none.

Overall Review: Don't waste your time with traditional internal sound cards. Just buy this, plug it in and install the driver with Creative control panel. Don't bother with any of the other useless software.