Creative Labs Sound Blaster Play! 3 External USB Sound Adapter for Windows and Mac. Plug and Play (No Drivers Required). Upgrade to 24-Bit 96Khz Playback

I bought this to use with a PS5 since its marketed as compatible, but there is a low volume issue where all but the easiest to drive headphones will be way too quiet. I saw a Reddit thread where a Creative employee said this was a known issue and they may be working on a firmware fix. Sony consoles have had this issue for years with external DACs needing special firmware to function properly, so I dont know why a company like Creative wouldnt have done testing on it since they have plenty of gaming focused products that do work like the G6. Im not sure if I want to wait for a possible update or just return it and try something else. Apart from that its a good dongle for its price point. Using it on my PC the sound quality is solid (pretty much on par with my $10 HTC dongle, not quite as good as my Fiio K5 Pro which is much more expensive). I dont hear any noise and it can drive all the headphones I own well. There are a lot of sound adjustments in the App but I turned them all off. All in all I would say its worth buying if you need better audio for a laptop on the cheap, but if your goal is PS4/PS5 use I would look elsewhere for the time being.

This card helped me to solve microphone issues on the motherboard, so it works well as an external sound card. I am still on the fence about the sound effects (Surround, Crystalizer, Bass, Smart volume, Dialog plus). Crystalizer and Bass seem to be the most useful to quickly compensate for headphones weak spots, but they appear to do similar stuff what Equalizer does otherwise. However, this card seems to lack power compared to a computers usual analog output - everything sounds quieter through it (my headphones are 32 Ohms), lacking that last bit of volume at the max level which makes a difference in some voice calls and music scenarios. Maybe thats by design, due to the limited power supplied via USB... The software is a bit glitchy, because Smart Volume seem to mess with regular volume settings, resulting in quieter than usual sound when the sound card is unplugged. Overall, I dont regret that I bought it ($22), the lower volume is a bit of a bummer but you are getting a great quality sound for a low price.

Bought this stick for a cost effective way to have good recording quality and be able to use it on multiple devices. The quality definitely beats the other USB audio devices I own that were between the $10-$17 range. To me its definitely worth the extra cost. Its still really cheap nowdays because of the Play!4 that offers better quality and a wider compatibility. Pros: - the expected SB playback and recording quality that beats cheaper competition - very attractive pricing - plug and play on all our windows (10/11) PCs chromebook and mac - virtual surround works well in games and adds a lot to titles like War Thunder Cons: - could have a line input - recording limited to 24-bit / 48khz - playback is limited to 24-bit / 96 kHz - no physical mute button or volume control (doest bother me but worth nothing the Play!4 has mute and EQ buttons)

I had a poor external sound card which made popping sounds from another company who will remain nameless, but I needed a solution for my issue. I did not want to open up my PC, so I was looking for another external sound card, and found this one. I read a few reviews which were good, and for $18, I took a chance on it and I am blown away with the quality. I have a Windows 10 desktop PC, and it was plug and play, no software drivers needed. I remember back in the day in 1990, I paid over a $100 for a Sound Blaster card for my first PC. Highly recommended product. Thank you Creative Labs.

I got this to facilitate using my Sony XM5 headphones on PC/WIN through 3.5mm cable. It worked immedately after plugging it in, and the available software on their website allowed me to tweak the equalizer and other options. Im extremely pleased to use my favorite headphones on PC without the headaches of bluetooth on Windows. Listening to my music library (FLAC) and game sound is great. Excellent value.

Ive been a believer in Soundblaster stuff for a VERY long time, but the last time I got/used one was an Audigy notebook card that had to be inserted in a PCMCIA slot, and tended to be very glitchy interacting with the OE audio card/drivers. Once it was working though ... fabulous. Now Ive moved on to a laptop with a PCIe/NVMe-based SSD boot drive running Windows 10, and as always, quickly realized its onboard sound card (Realtek) is junk for driving anything other than the teeny onboard speakers, so I went back to the Creative well to see what theyve been up to these days. I was very happy to find this inexpensive, USB-based, plug and play Soundblaster card that seemed like it had all the same basic functionality I needed/used in my old card, so I bought it. I primarily use this device for listening to music from my MP3 collection at my workstation, which is equipped with a pair of bookshelf Infinitys, an Infinity powered subwoofer, dedicated rack amp and 15-band stereo equalizer. The Realtek output from the laptop headphone jack is ok, but just doesnt deliver a signal with the gain/quality Im used to hearing from MY rig … like putting kerosene into the gas tank of a Ferrari. So I plugged this thing in; it really is plug and play easy; overrode the Realtek audio card with no trouble of any kind, and, without doing anything more than that, I noticed a big improvement in both sound quality and signal gain. However, I still wasnt totally blown away like I was with my original Soundblaster card, and just figured, e.g., oh well, whaddya expect for $20? Then I remembered Creative has its own, custom drivers and software for this device, and figured Id try that and see if it made any difference. The answer to that question is a RESOUNDING yes. Another boost in gain, but more importantly, I now heard the same crystalline frequency separation/response that I loved about my old Soundblaster card. All that 24-bit Soundblaster mojo is still in this little gizmo, but you cant stop/settle at just plug and play on generic audio drivers ... you really have to download and install Creatives custom drivers/software to get the best performance out of their device. Anyway, hope the review helps ... I feel that, when used with Creatives drivers/software, this device delivers everything its supposed to, and is WELL worth the cost.

I love the sound of a well played bass guitar. Dont you? I think all the great bands had great bass guitarists. McCartney. Greenwood. Novoselic. The list goes on and on. Many of todays indie bands have great bass playing/composition. I think too many DACs these days are aiming for vocal clarity, detail digging and things that focus on the mid and higher frequencies of music. I like DACs like this one that can really make the beginning of Come Together by the Beatles sound fun and engaging, cuz that has to be one of the greatest opening bass riffs of all time, right? In fact, I use that song to test my audio equipment. This DAC delivers beautiful well-placed bass tones. Not the thump, thump part. The deep Dmmmm part.. That part of the song is placed more prominently and accurately than even the sacred, Dragonfly Black, which I also tested. The Black has better soundstage, but again, only if youre just not that into bass guitars. The sound might be a little distorted, but what do you expect from a DAC powered by device USB hosting? Even the Black is distorted (on the low end). Its not plugged into the wall, so... And at least this one doesnt have some stupid LED light wasting your battery or hurting performance or both. Considering all this, I LOVE THIS DAC!! It improved the sound of my Samsung Galaxy Tab A Android tablet that I have connected to a Tivoli Audio One by AUX Cable and and OTG cable (necessary or it wont work). The volume comes out a little low, but I can boost the volume on the Tivoli enough to a fun or even slightly obnoxious level. WIthout a powered amp/speaker situation like this, though, you might find this disappointing. The company does, however, make it clear that this item is NOT INTENDED FOR ANDROID/iOS. So that it works at all this way and this well makes me appreciate it and not be too picky about its flaws. Hope that was helpful. Oh. AND IT ONLY COSTS LIKE TWENTY BUCKS! You can get five of these for one Black. Im gonna get a second one just in case something happens to this one. Why not? So cheap!

I got this sound card initially for a problem I was having with my internal sound card on my laptop. I then decided to try it out on my newer laptop with Windows 11. I did that and downloaded the driver. I was not the least bit impressed with the sound and was ready to throw in the towel. I put it back with the older computer as the sound card in it was not working properly and at the cheap price, it was better than doing without no sound at all. Then, this evening, November 17, I thought I would give it another try. But, this time, I did not load the Creative drivers, I let Windows 11 set up the drivers for me. I went in to change the sampling rate to 96/24 on the sound properties menu and something magical happened. When I put the music on Tidal on HiFi setting, it was like a totally different sound card. The sound stage opened up and magic happened!!! Whatever you do NOT DOWNLOAD THE CREATIVE DRIVERS FOR THIS CARD. Let Windows set up the driver by itself. Their program was choking the lifeblood out of this little gem of a sound card. I am happy that I gave it another chance :)

I installed this USB sound card plug and play on my Windows desktop. I immediately heard an improvement over the computers stock sound card, better clarity, more solid bass, wider soundstage. But I mainly bought the card to help me listen to my headphones at a stronger volume level and with just plug and play I got minimal volume increase. You need to download the Sound Blaster Play! 3 software (App). Then click on the Speaker/Headphones tab and at the bottom select High Gain. That gave me substantially more volume. Now I can listen to my power-hungry headphones and get a good listening volume.

Bought this as the Creative Labs internal sound card would not work in Windows 10. The Sound Blaster 3 Play works perfectly and supports a 2.1 speaker setup. I am using it with the Cyber Acoustics CA-3602FFP 2.1 Speaker system. All works perfectly and brought my speakers to life against the Realtek onboard sound. The smart volume seems to work but takes sometime getting use to as sometimes you need to adjust the volume via the Cyber Acoustic volume controller. Just glad this worked with 5 minutes of setup and grabbing the creative software against two hours with the internal sound card by Creative which never worked.