
Sound Quality Build Quality Portable

For me it is better than a dac. Out of sight and sounds just as good to my ears.

Improves sound quality. easy to use.

- My headphones actually sound like they should now, despite my motherboard having a pretty decent sound chip on it, with isolation in the circuitry, all that good stuff. - The breakaway control panel is really nice due to how it controls the audio even when explorer exe is disabled for gaming stability. Disabling this will break the volume control on my keyboard due to how explorer exe controls the audio slider. This fixes that for me. - The different impedence settings are really nice too, because while these headphones should technically only be set to the neutral 32 ohm setting due to them being 32 ohm themselves, they are an odd pair of cans that can handle the 600ohm range as well; though with altered audio levels to ensure no damage is being done. This setting used for high end headphones mainly, makes my 'supposed to be high end' headphones actually sound like it. It's really nice. - The SBX software/hardware stuff they have included is nice as well, since virtual surround via windows is kind of hit or miss; where as this is (so far) quite accurate about positional audio. I have not tried the scout mode yet it includes, but I suspect that will come in very handy during some other gaming sessions aside from the usual MMO stuff I have been doing as of late. - Double points for the SBX for watching my shows and movies as well. - I am sure the other outputs are quite nice as well for high end audio setups. I do not have one right now. I am certain that when I do get one, I will very much like how this suppliments it in conjunction with my computer being hooked up to it. - Has the red and yellow RCA inputs for auxillary input, and included cable for use with headphone jack split into said RCA inputs. This is super useful for me, because I have a Sega Model 1 with the volume slider that I will be needing to use to reroute my audio from it, due to the TV I have to use with it, not having its speakers included anymore. (External detachable speakers, so of course they got lost.) But that TV also has a seperate output panel as well, so I can make use of that instead if I want. But due to sound timng/latency reasons, will probably go with the stereo output jack on the front of the sega instead. I am hoping this will also fix some of the audio issues it has, as I suspect it is not quite powerful enough to drive these headphones. Again, they claim 32 ohm, but use with multiple jacks now makes me wonder otherwise. Rear headphone jack on the motherboard was kind of bad as well, while the front case jack using the HDaudio port on the motherboard did better. Which makes sense, since it's rated for up to 300 ohm instead. (I wonder if whoever entered the impedence data for these headphones put in the wrong data.) Anyways, this is just pondering on my side. Moving on to cons.

Works well ( and I am using Linux Mint and Cachy

Plug and play, super easy, amazing sound and it installs itself!

Motherboard sound went out and sound card wouldn't work with windows 10. This works just fine for me. Akso a great price and shipping was very quick.


- Powerful software with game specific settings

- Works out the box with pulseaudio on Linux - Drives my existing 5.1 speaker set

Finally got this to work on my Linux system. Always tried the analog outputs, never dreamed of using the digital, tried that and wallia....daggone good sound.

If you want the best sound card on the market then this is the one to buy. Sound blaster been around for a very long time and know what there doing. Easy to install, great software. My headphones have never sounded better! It supports dts for my home theater, which was a must have in a sound card for me. The evga nu or the nu pro does not support dts and is why i never gave it a chance. I upgraded from my old soundblaster z and i am very happy that a did.

Right out of the box it has been working just fine for me. Clear audio highs and lows. I'm using it via optical and it works perfectly. The small form factor was nice as well. More breathing room for my GPU.

-Amazing sound quality -Stylish on you desktop. -Scout mode is so nice in games like Fortnite, Apex.

Comes with low profile bracket. Sound is great compared to onboard sound component.


Using the 3 slots on sound card, 1 for dual Creative Gigaworks T40 desk speakers, 1 for same set of speakers on a side shelf, and 1 slot for other set of smaller speakers with sub-woofer, selected the 5:1 channel, works great, installed card into a free PCIe x 4 channel slot on the windows pc motherboard (the smallest slot), love the card, 5 eggs



- The part near the USB plug is rubber. Makes it easier to grip when plugging in/out. - Slim and lightweight