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

For what you pay, this works well. I bought them for my laptop, and it definitely improves the sound on it. The 2 onboard EQ are OK, but very basic. A vast improvement from onboard.

Not my fist S,B. and not my last. For short money you get a decent sound. Audiophile sound, a, maybe not. but decent. I use it on my desk-top when listening to my music files, easy plugplay Much better sound than the board in the computer gives you. One drawback is however, this IS NOT an Amp. It has no volume control of its own. You can control your volume on your computer control panel or on the video screen itself during play. But GEE folks ! for under twenty dollars, how can you go wrong? Give it a go.

Item works really well and I like it

If youre a musician with a love for analog gear like me, you might have a PA mixer that youd like to record with but no way to plug it into your computer without getting some crazy hum from the mic jack in your computer. I record on a Yamaha MG 10/2 and run a Red/White stereo out from the recording jack on the mixer into the mic input on the Sound Blaster. I also run an auxiliary cable back from the speaker jack on the Sound Blaster into one of the channels on the mixer so that I can use it to play beats and backing tracks from my laptop. The sound quality is far superior to any other recording set up Ive used so far. If your mixer has USB out you can probably skip the Sound Blaster, but if you like older analog equipment this thing is a lifesaver for recording. As other reviews have stated, you have to download the software from the companys website and then turn off all of the settings they add, but once you do that you get a very clean signal from whatever youre plugging into the Sound Blaster. This is a great external soundcard if you want to bring your analog mixing set up into the 21st century without spending a ton of money that you could be spending on 9 volt batteries and guitar strings. 5/5

So my ASRock motherboard was defective. No back panel or front side panel sound no matter what. This fixed everything. Just plugged it in. And plugged in my mic and headset. Then I changed all my sound settings and app permissions to this in their respective drop down boxes. I have windows 11 64 bit. Now everything works great. $20 fix. Oh and the sound is way better than factory on board sound when the onboard sound did work.

Solid all around and produces great sound as soon as you plug it into anything, Im very happy with this. Its a cheap fix (and upgrade!) for my mostly broken built-in headphone jack and I would buy it again in an instant. Unfortunately it comes with a few enhancements enabled by default, all of which sound terrible if you are picky about audio at all, and you of course have to install the custom drivers to change this. The drivers/UI are fine (heavily custom UI of course (why???), but its easily enough understood), but it is a bit of an annoyance. It seems like this setting might stick once changed, from other reviews, but I havent yet tested that.

For some reason the device turns off around 20% volume (not the minimum). Not sure why. Same experience on a different computer with a different piece. It is weird and annoying but not a deal breaker for me.

UPDATE 6/20 I decided to plug this back on my computer to see if I was being too rough with the Play!3. $20 with an equalizer, surround, expander, and ability to add high gain cant be as bad as I wrote. It is that bad. Im using a HD tracks and a Status Audio CB-1 and a Fluance power speaker. I did buy a CLIPTHAT HiFi DAC/Headphone Amp for $14 bucks and it sounds approximately 25% better. The Creative has more power, but it is really garbage. Im only disappointed that my review are a few pages back. I wanted to use the CLIPTHAT on my phone and use the Creative on the computer. Nope, it is going back to the drawer. Dont buy this DAC/Amp. It is tempting to get a super bargain, its hot garbage. I dont know why anyone would write a positive review. On the positive note, it works. Its a DAC and the music files sounded better than a 7-year-old GeForce NVIDIA soundcard. The amp section isnt up to snuff for use for powered studio monitors. However, everyone should realize that a USB dongle doesnt have an effective headphone amp (maybe for earbuds, it would work). It was my mistake or temporary brain cramp. The SBX Pro Studio software sounds hollow and glitchy when you use higher levels. It has a surround, Crystalizer (expander), and Bass effects. Again, its a tiny USB dongle and only temporarily insanity would believe that it is anything other than poo. Its better to not use them, in my opinion. But, for $20, it works. Are they awesome like the other reviews? Maybe, but probably not. The reason I changed my review was Creatives Customer Service. They sent me an email to see if I was satisfied. I sent a no and said that I didnt like the SBX Pro Studio. I didnt make demands or for a refund; I just wanted them to know that it isnt great. The CS agent told me that it was an entry-level product and if I wanted pristine sound audio, (the ad said, Studio Quality Listening) I should have purchased a $120 DAC from Creative. What!?!? After 2 more emails, I am done with Creative. I assume that customer satisfaction is to buy (for 6X the price of the product I just bought!!!) more from them and continue sending emails until you get tired of writing. I could continue with their blather, but its not worth it for a $20. I would suggest that its not OK to buy this DAC, but its would be better to do more research for a less glitchy product (XTrem Pro X1 has a DAC/Amp with a Sabre chip for $30) and avoid customer service, except to return it. However, since Amazon has buried my 1-star review and has purchased this DAC, turn the volume to 65% in the Control Panel and turn off the SBX Crap-filled Studio. Be aware that Creative is going to change the soundcard during installing the DAC and, if (when) you update to a better DAC, it will have issues. It will need updates on your soundcard. Please, dont buy Creative stuff. The marketing is great and there are so many 4.5 star reviews that they are from fake reviewers. There are bad reviews, but I am a general trusting man and figured that the reviewers were expecting a $5,000 audiophile DAC. However, they are spot on and should have listened to them. I join with them to tell you to get from another company. I am grateful that I only lost $20 and learned the lesson that free stuff for Amazon reviews and YouTube reviewers are what theyre in the Creative world. I, certainly, will never buy any Creative product from this time forward. I hope you do the same, they suck.

muy bueno

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)