I was blown away by the quality of the sound. It all depends on headphones quality. No big difference if gaming headsets were used (in my case at least). Sound great on Sennheiser HD 599.
For years I had gotten away from addon soundcards as onboard sound had been getting better and better. I have a Yamaha sub woofer and Bose speakers and I had been noticing with each newer build I was less and less happy with sound on my desktop system. Weak thin sound finally got to me so I bought this card and was reminded why I bought my sub woofer and speakers, the sound is so rich and full, better than I ever remember it sounding! Bas that can peel wallpaper off walls and rich full sound makes you feel you are right there at a concert hall!
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.
Accessibility. Reliability. Trustworthy manufacturer. A name you know is good. Audiophile quality.
Easy install. Good sound quality for what I use. App makes setup easy
High quality product. The sound is amazing. I have upgraded from a Sound blaster Z series. That was great. But this one is something else. I am happy with my purchase.
I brought this because my mother board sound card was dying and was unable to install an internal card due to my graphics card being mounted vertically in my case preventing access to the card slots. This little device was easy to connect and use having noticeably better sound quality than the original mother board audio before it developed issues.
Easy install
So being a custom gaming desktop user for years, when I decided to purchase my first gaming laptop (Alienware M17) I just didn't like the built-in sound chip though it is a good one, I've just never been a fan of onboard sound chips. Since I have always used Creative sound cards in my custom gaming desktops I decided to give this external DAC a try. Man, was this ever the right choice! This external sound card is simply perfect. Sounds great no matter if you're playing a game, listening to music, or watching a video. This is about the size of a small external drive. Fits in your pocket, laptop bag, backpack with ease. Worked flawlessly soon as I connected it to the laptop. The only thing I had to do after connecting this up was download the Connect 2 software, set up the sound profiles I wanted for music, gaming, etc and I was off and running. Love this thing it was the smartest purchase for achieving great sound on my laptop. It's loud with my desktop speakers (Klipsch) and very clean and clear when playing music. The scout mode for gaming is great which I use all the time when playing FPS games. My sound profiles are correctly set after each cold boot so haven't experienced any issues in that department like others have reported and it fires up properly each time I have cold started my laptop. I have even changed the USB port I have this plugged into with no issues of it connecting or having the right sound profile selected.
Great Sound, tested on my Logitech Z-5300 280 watts 5.1 Speakers. Movies sound like a theatre. Games like HL2, COD2, BF2 are an entirely new experience. Easy Setup/install. Drivers were easy to find. No conflicts with my Nvidia onboard 5.1 surround sound. BTW the difference is noticable, in favor of Soundblaster of course.
I was looking for a DAC for my Lenovo laptop that only decodes digital audio in 16 bit 32KHz. This decodes Digital Audio at 24 bit 96KHz. In high bit rate audio the difference in the sound can be noticed. The audio does not sound garbled like it does with the 16 bit audio that the laptop can produce. The audio sounds a lot crispr and fuller with cheap pair of speakers that I tested it with. Sounds great for a 3+3 watt speaker configuration power from a power bank. 24 bit audio is noticeable on anything. I would recommend this product. This is for 2 channel audio only. It is great for its intended purpose. If you have a old stereo and a laptop, buy this, or for a 2 or 2.1 set of PC speakers and you want to hear clear and rich audio, buy this product. Just plug into the USB port and let Windows install it's driver and it will work a few seconds later.
Got this because it's compatible with Windows 98 Upon boot, Win 98 detected it, it installed a PCE-E to PCI bridge chip driver. I had to install the driver manually after, but that's just Windows 98 being bad.
This card is great. It gives beautiful playback quality and with the handy pci-e interface it makes it a nice fit into the system. I have owned this card since around the time it came out and it hasn't failed me.