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

Update #3 Creative wants to play games with support and I havent gotten anything substantive from them. Their chat support was responsive, but they dont do consumer RMAs. I finally got in touch with a helpful person at Amazon who refunded me. And then the 4th one died too, albeit in a different way. Not sure how I got so many duds, nor what the problem is. i cant get in touch with a techy person to do real troubleshooting. This was my last time trying this adapter. I went with a random one on Amazon for half the price, which probably has a Realtek chip in it. Update #2 Both Amazon and Creative are dropping the ball. Amazon made promises, then failed to deliver, and Creative wants nothing to do with you if you dont buy direct from them. This is ridiculous! Update: The second one has died the same way as the first: no mic input. Looking on their support page for less than a minute and Ive gone in 3 circles and found some kind of channel partner portal. Warranty/RMA service is not complicated, yet companies seem to go out of their way to make it so. Ive noticed the price has dropped 25% since I bought mine, but its still available for same-day delivery. That seems to be conflicting signals if my problem is indicitive of a wide spread issue or not. I may upgrade my review if, ONCE I FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH CREATIVE, I can get decent support. Original review: TL;DR Works good, and the gamers I voicechat with love the audio quality First one died after 2 days, but the replacement has been working fine. Getting a replacement out of amazone instead of a refund/re-order was more painful than anything to do with the sound card. I use it with a SENNHEISER GSP 500 Open backed headset: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CK4J1SW/ which apparently has an unusal mic impedance and might not work with all USB soundcards. That headset did not work with a comparable Sabrent USB soundcard, for example.

Had issues with motherboard sound. Replaced with SB and I’m back on track with undistorted sound.

The price is right on this one. The sound quality is better than your average motherboard. Its super easy to use. It supposedly can drive a 600 Ohm set of cans, but I dont have any to test with. It does sound better if you put it at that setting, but youre likely to damage your headphones permanently if they cant handle that.

I mainly used to device for music. Sound quality is excellent and its very neutral. Pairs excellent with bright iems. Not sure why people dont mention this device. I had issues with driver but I somehow fixed it by uninstalling and installing the drivers again. But device was keep disconnecting for sometime. I decided to return the device. If creative make another portable dac in future I am certainly going to try it out.

So with my PCs built in sound card, the audio quality was always just ok. It was serviceable when I used a good pair of headphones but whenever I connected it to an external speaker via AUX cable, it would produce a horrible hissing sound and it would be a bit distorted at higher volumes. For reference that onboard sound card was the Realtek ALC892. I decided to upgrade from that and Im very glad that I did! This thing is great and as soon as I plugged it up and plugged in my headphones, I noticed a substantial improvement in the audio quality. All the issues I had with my onboard sound card were gone. The mic quality seems to be good too, though I havent tested it quite as extensively. I also like how i can use this multiple devices (at different times of course). It works great with macOS too. Creative (the vendor) also provides a companion sound software where you can adjust various audio settings and save those settings as presets on your PC or Mac. In all, great external sound card! I know there are certainly better sound cards out there, but for the price, this cant be beat and will provide a noticeable improvement if youre coming from an older onboard sound card. 5/5!

Very please just perfect plug and play no drivers no software thanks Creative

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 just plugged it in a USB port, windows recognized it and suddenly I had sound from a server with no built in audio. It didnt sound any different than built in audio.

This is a great usb sound card. I’m using it with an external microphone to stream online using OBS. It sounds great.

Like other reviewers, this is an excellent choice when picking a USB audio adapter after failure of on-motherboard audio on a Windows desktop PC. This Creative SB adapter delivers great sound at a nice price. Unlike cheaper USB audio units, this SB adapter is quiet during PC bootup and shutdown -- other inexpensive units can produce loud popping noises as the USB gets power, loads driver, etc. Recommended.