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 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 purchased this product to use with a Dell Latitude 7490 with 16Gb of RAM running Windows Home. The intention was to get better sound than the installed default sound drivers could provide for Pianoteq 6.70, which is driven through the laptop by a MIDI controller keyboard. The instructions for the sound adapter suggest that no installation is required and that Win10 will recognize the adapter as soon as its plugged in. This didnt happen for me. So I went to install the recommended software to control the adapter. The URL given for this software in the enclosed documentation generated a 404 Page not found error and did not redirect to the present location. Nor was it particularly easy to find the software by following the instructions on the Creative site. Eventually I found it and installed it. This did allow Win10 to find the adapter, but there followed about an hour of struggle with Pianoteq to get it to recognize the adapter. Then the latency proved to be unacceptable. I tried to find an ASIO driver for the actual adapter but didnt succeed. Eventually I uninstalled the Creative software and settled for Windows Audio Exclusive for the audio driver and the Sound Blaster for the output, though those choices seem to imply that Im actually still using the Windows driver. Right now, thats as far as Ive got. Im guessing Ill find answers to all these problems, but this was far from being a plug-and-play solution for me. This was much cheaper than other USB-driven external adapter options. Perhaps I need to return it and trade up. Creative could certainly do better when it comes to locating their accompanying software - a 404 error is not really good enough. My application for the adapter is not mainstream, so it may be that I should have anticipated problems. I hope to revise this review (and my rating) based on whether I manage to find an effective implementation.

$20 bux. Should have done it a couple years ago. The Realtek onboard sound on this little desktop mini was starting to get to me. The sound seemed to degrade over time. Streaming content would have this annoying BBBrrrtt sound when ever someone started speaking. It was as if the digital part of the hardware was failing. The only thing that would stop it temporarily was to completely power the box off. Then there was the constant 60 cycle hum. It was very low, but it was there. Popped this guy in and BAM! Fixed it all. Is it worth $20? Pffftt... Yeah to me it is.

First, thanks to all the reviewers who took the time to explain setup. Yes, when I installed the Play!3 there was a low frequency hum. When I followed the suggestion to open the software, go to the Control Panel, go to the Mixer tab and mute the microphone the hum immediately stopped. I purchased this because the headphone jack on my 7 year old ASUS N550 laptop is intermittent and will suddenly stop playing audio and generate a loud buzzing noise. The Soundblaster Play! 3 is a $20 solution to the problem. I use the laptop almost exclusively in the garage, as a media center and to view helpful YouTube videos when I am working on a project. Sound quality is excellent, based upon my original setup, in my home office with a Pioneer Elite receiver connected to Martin Logan Motion 60s and a ML powered subwoofer. Test material was in FLAC format. In the garage the Play! 3 is connected to an Onkyo receiver, which feeds two Advent satellite speakers and a powered subwoofer, none of which are worthy of testing audio gear but nonetheless sound pretty good when I’m working in the garage. When I put the computer to sleep the speakers are silent. No hum. An excellent $20 solution to a very annoying problem.

Wasnt too sure about this because of the things I read about it not working or sounding too great on windows machines. I went ahead and purchased it as I needed one the next day. Connected to my Ubuntu system just fine and sounded great and it also works and sounds GREAT on all 3 of my laptops! One Dell and 2 HPs.

I have a really nice amplified 2.1 speaker system on my desk. Recently something has happened to my headphone jack, and I am getting terrible ground loop hum. I have always wanted to try a DAC anyway, and I was resigned to spend $100+ on something from audioquest, but I saw this at less than 1/5 the price from a reputable brand, and decided to try it. No driver needed,plugged into my USB hub, and instantly sound was MUCH better than anything I have ever heard out of my stock 3.5mm jack. Extremely impressed. I shaped the sound to fit my likes with the program EQmac, and wow. The fidelity is great now. One other great thing is that my MacBook is trultplugand play with just one cable, vs before when I had to plug in the headphone port. 5 stars. If you have a quality system you will hear a difference

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.

Minor hastle to set up for the first time other than that it works great. The fact this thing uses a USB and not a pcie slot is amazing for saving space on the mother board.

Sound quality is what I have come to expect from Sound Blaster, having owned the SB16 back in 94, the AWE32 a couple years later, and eventually a SB Live! PCI card in the late nineties. I eventually took a hiatus from A/V and PC gaming until recently when I decided to pick one of these up to use for teleworking. It has a decent level of pre-amplification for minimal distortion playback of video and/or video games. Anything I play back sounds as good as the source permits (obviously, a 128Kbps MP3 cant be made to sound any better than it can; garbage in, garbage out). Its just that this overcomes limitations present in most inexpensive onboard sound chipsets included in the vast majority of PC systems and/or motherboards.

I researched budget external sound cards extensively before purchasing this one. This has better audio quality than cards 5 times the price. 2 caveats: I dont use the microphone input and have disabled it. Some users have reported a slight hissing at high volume when using the monitor function. You have to install the control panel to change settings, and youre going to want to to disable the default EQ settings (totally unnecessary IMHO). Crucially, this device doesnt store settings offline, so you HAVE to use the software (Windows/MacOS only) to load the correct profile onto the device. This could be an issue for Linux users. Wish I didnt have to have another piece of software that autoruns when I start my machine. This device would be perfect if those settings persisted across machines!