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+ Under 100 USD (paid 99USD on the Black Friday Deal). + Supports DSD over PCM up to DSD128. + Sound quality is on par, if not better than the Dragonfly Red DAC at less than half the price. + Gaming related features are pretty great with realtime virtual surround sound effect. + Hardware Dolby decoding included

Coming from years of using audio cards (PCI & USB) utilizing C-Media chips i can say this is an upgrade. The C-media were always plenty loud to drive high impudence headphones and sound quality was great but i could not tweak the EQ too much because i would get sound clipping, the amps on the chips were simply not able to handle much more headroom. This sound blaster has the head room and the volume. After installing the driver \ software from creative site you get options for bass boost, virtual surround effect, sound enhancement (works well with music and movies alike) and Equalizer. The software also includes a toggle switch between low impudence and high impudence headphones (Large driver headphone usually equal high impedance which requires more power for the sound card to push through). The sound maintains clarity even when tweaking the Equalizer although i found that out of the box i only needed a light boost at the 16k and 60hz (old ears). The mids are perfectly tuned for my taste with plenty of bite, presence and clarity. Your experience may vary depending n the headphones you use.

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.

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.

This sound card worked perfectly on my Windows 10 computer. I am using the fiber Optics feature from my the Asus Sonarn SE 5.1 card to my Sony stereo system. Everything is working great and the sound is excellent. I am very pleased with this sound card.

Sound Quality Build Quality Portable

- 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.

Incredible sound quality, so much better than PC motherboard cheap sound chip... Richer, clearer, more enveloping and noise-less output, specially when used with headphones. Never thought it would make such a difference. Great software too.