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

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 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!

My onboard motherboad sound went out years ago and installed an internal sound card. Well 7 years later, that card went out also. Was at a loss, until I read that pc technology has moved up since the last 7 years and just a simple card on a tiny dongle has been around for some time now. Hooked it up, and playing pc games again!

But for some reason on my machine it drops connectivity

I downloaded the Play 3 control panel and must say It sounds Awesome!!! hooked up to my Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers!!!! The dedicated equalizer is perfect!!! Sounds as good as my old Audigy 2 ZS card, which I cant use anymore. WTG Creative!!!

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!

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.

Using Koss Porta Pros on an Acer Swift 3 314-43 this sounds better than my Audio Quest Black.

I did not need it so I returned it. I thought my on-board sound was messed up, but it was just equalization error. I adjusted my higher frequencies properly and my problem was solved. Even if I wanted to use it, it is not compatible with my headphones.

I bought this to hook up speakers to a Samsung laptop and also to my home-build desktop PC with fairly new Asus motherboard. It greatly improves the sound volume from both of them compared to their on-board audio. It especially improves the laptop, since plugging speakers into the laptops headset jack makes windows 11 think youre plugging in headphones and constantly makes you confirm you want to raise the volume as a warning that it could damage your hearing. Thats not a problem with this adapter anymore when plugging it into the laptops USB, Windows detects it as external speakers now and I get more volume out of the speakers. Overall this adapter has been a very good upgrade for a small cost.