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

Great Sound ... Great Software ...

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.


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.

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.


- 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.

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

A simple and inexpensive fix to loosing the sound on the all in one motherboard!


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.

Works awesome with my beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro’s (250ohm). Powers them well, sound is great!


Easy to install and use. Great sound quality, games or music. UI under W10 PRO 64 took some time to get used to. Using with just no name regular headphones, and still sounds great. Miles ahead of any on board sound. Outside of PC case location is plus.