StarTech.com USB Sound Card w/ SPDIF Digital Audio & Stereo Mic – External Sound Card for Laptop or PC – SPDIF Output (ICUSBAUDIO2D),Black 0.6" x 1.8"

I bought this to use with my travel headphones, Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 wired headphones. The M2 headphones are very efficient, which means that I can hear even a little bit of noise. When I plugged them into my business laptop, I heard an annoying hiss. I tried a Creative E1 device and also heard an annoying hiss. With the ICUSBAUDIO2D device, I initially heard a loud hiss; but I turned the volume control dial down a bit, and very abruptly the hiss cut out. My music is still plenty loud enough. The left jack accepts the standard 4-ring plug for headphones + microphone all in one (common on mobile headphones). I was able to plug the M2 directly into that jack; headphones and microphone just worked. I use Linux, and the ICUSBAUDIO2D showed up in the Sound preferences as "USB Audio Device Analog Stereo". I had to adjust the amplification slider for the microphone all the way up or the M2's mic is too quiet, but after I did that it was just fine. Initially, bass sounded terrible. Anything with bass sounded muddy and smeared. But then I realized that the ICUSBAUDIO2D has a mini-equalizer feature: a 3-position sliding switch, with positions for Bass, Direct, and Treble. It defaults to "Bass" and it was applying some kind of bass boosting effect... and I didn't like what that effect was doing to my music. But no problem; once I figured it out, I switched it to "Direct" and I'll just leave it that way from now on. It sounds fine in "Direct" mode. Given how small and light this is, and given that my M2 headphones just plug right in and work with no adapter needed, I have found my new travel audio device. I'll just leave this in my laptop carrying bag all the time. EDIT: I have used this for about a month, and I am completely happy with it. You can get a better audio adapter but it will cost a lot more and probably need a separate power supply. Therefore I have upped my rating to 5 stars. It's the best in its class.

Incredibly this little cheap device does things that far more expensive devices cannot do which is to accept a 1/8 stereo headphone out, into the stereo mic in on this device and actually give me incredible stereo quality. I've wasted probably $1,000 and much more expensive, sound blaster or I-Rig and other devices only to waste my money. This thing solved the problem that other things couldn't do. Amazing

My previous sound interface broke (don't trip over plugged-in cords, mmmmkay?), so it was time for a replacement. I have lots of gear that I like to record, and so I needed a simple stereo input. This gizmo did the trick. NOTE: it took a few attempts to work out a strange bug/feature: the stereo inputs are NOT equal. One channel is MUCH louder than the other. I was able to fix this in Ubuntu Linux by using the Pulseaudio Control, and separating the channels for individual control. One channel is set to 25%, and the other at 125%, which leads to level inputs in Audacity. I'm pretty happy with this purchase. No extra drivers necessary: Ubuntu recognized it right out of the box. After a bit of tweaking, everything works as I want.

Highly recommended. This USB adapter works really well as an interface for recording musical instruments with a STEREO 3.5 mm battery-powered microphone like the AT2022 or AT822 (the kind of stereo mics often used with audio-for-video and portable audio recorder applications). It is a worthy replacement for the old Griffin iMic, which only recorded at 16 bit. The stereo mics, combined with this soundcard and a laptop, make for a really light, compact and portable kit for quick, great-sounding recordings. It captures excellent sound at 24/44.1, which I find to be the sweet spot for digital recordings. The latency, input and output levels on the soundcard were very user friendly and pretty optimal. I use it to record electric guitar, which is a relatively loud sound source, so I cannot report in detail on the noise floor of the soundcard. But in preliminary testing with spoken word, the noise level seemed surprisingly good for a consumer-level device, and would likely be more than adequate for most recordings. The hardware volume control on the StarTech is a nice bonus, and very convenient. The StarTech soundcard installed effortlessly in seconds on Windows 10, which automatically installed the right driver. You may need to make some tweaks in the Windows Control Panel/Sound settings to optimize the output and input of the StarTech USA Sound Card for your computer--that is also the place you can change the bit depth and sample rate for this soundcard. I use Cubase as my recording DAW, and this soundcard gave excellent results, both recording via the mic input and monitoring via the headphone output. And Cubase had no problem recognizing and connecting with the StarTech's inputs and outputs. My pre-sales contact with StarTech was impressive. The online chat representatives gave fast responses to my technical questions. I have no idea how durable this will be in the long run. But if it delivers a reasonable service life, I would gladly get this again.

My PC audio kept cutting on and off, I updated drives, it would work for a few days/hours then cut off again. It got frustrating....I purchase this to hopefully get audio back, it work like a charm, just plug and play, no driver updates. 5/5

My laptop doesn't have a Stereo Microphone IN port on it. And this USB Audio adapter advertised that it supported Stereo Microphones. Well... it does support Stereo IN, but I'm not sure it supports Microphones. I was trying to get an unamplified shotgun stereo mic to work with this, but the audio was just barely enough to be recorded via the audio software program. It definitely wasn't enough to use with a video chat software. This is where I think StarTech failed in their design. Curious what this thing was made of, I cracked open the device and took the plastic case off. This device is almost wholly a C-Media chip (model CN6533 to be exact) and a dual channel op-amp to amplify the headphone out port. And that's it! The C-Media CM6533 chip actually has both an analog and a digital amplifier on-board (according to the spec sheet), but I think the driver for this USB device only allows control of one of them. (In fact, I think StarTech relies on a standard Windows Audio Endpoint driver to get the job done.) This is unfortunate as some microphones need more amplification than others. Specifically, there is a "digital mic boost" feature found in some Microphone drivers under Windows, but it explicitly needs to be enabled by the manufacturer. StarTech didn't do this. They just "phoned it in" on this one and let the standard Windows Audio EndPoint driver do its thing. If you go to C-Media's website, they say to contact your manufacturer for a driver. Well, there is none on StarTech's website. As for the Audio Out, it's just okay. It has a switch on the back to either give you a Bass Boost, no EQ change, or a Treble Boost. The switch works and indeed you get a nice Bass boost (or Treble Boost). The sound amplification is "just okay" though. The sound is kinda flat. And if you listen carefully in a quiet room, you can hear a very light hiss/noise from the op-amp. EDIT: The op-amp onboard is a LM4808 "Boomer" brand. Designed for headphones. Low voltage/high output. Nothing special, but it gets the job done. For the price, this isn't a terrible unit, but it ain't great either. In comparison, the built-in Realtek audio chip in my laptop is audibly much better than this thing.

I recently purchased a new Dell computer and was surprisingly disappointed by the quality of the sound. My old Dell computer from the early 2000s sounded way better. After two weeks of making adjustments to enhance the sound quality, I couldn't take it anymore, I needed an upgrade. Since my computer was still under warranty and I didn't want to pay someone to install a new sound card, I looked for an external one. I came across the Startech external sound card. I did have one major concern, would this card be powerful enough with good sound for my huge gaming headphone. I took a chance and bought it. I installed it by just plugging into the USB port, but surprisingly it took a bit longer for the computer to recognize it which is not a big deal considering I have anti-virus/malware on my computer. After about a minute and a half, close to two minutes, the computer said the device was ready to go. I plug in my earphones. Adjusted the volume on the computer, and the device itself. I was blown away by the clarity and power of this card! It made the headphones which I have used on a newer computer even better. Music was high quality, video, and gaming was really good. I'm not into the heavy bass, but I tried it out nevertheless, I made adjustments by using the switch on the back of the unit to "bass" and then make another adjust using iTunes equalizer which has its own bass boost. Same with the treble. So there is a wide range of sound that you can make adjustments too depending upon your taste. This card was only 30 dollars which don't break the bank, and it helped salvage a brand new computer. I love this card! Thank you Startech! :)

The microphone 3.5mm jack crackles when rotating a plug in it. More importantly the right audio channel when recording randomly cuts out when you rotate the jack in place or press on it sideways. If you get it to play both it works, but even the slightest touch or twist on the chord of the microphone may or may not make you lose the right channel of your microphone, which you won't know unless you have a monitor. This was tested with multiple microphones, and care was taken to ensure that the plug was fully inserted each time.

I am very happy with my purchase especially for the dolby surround 5.1. Everything works fine on Windows 11.

Stereo Audioeingang funktioniert!

Got this because the headphone socket on my Toshiba laptop had intermittent sound due to a loose connection or similar. Read that a repair would have cost as much as a new laptop, so took this route instead. Checked a few things by ringing up Startech.com first, then bought sound card here on amazon as it was a lot cheaper. Dead easy to install, just plugged in to USB port, waited two minutes, then plugged in headphones after turning down the volume control on sound card which had been factory-set to maximum (then I turned it back up to max), then went on youtube and listened to Celibidache conducting Bruckner's 6th symphony and could not believe how much better the sound was compared to my onboard sound card; much more balanced, spacious, static-free. Then I tried the bass and treble boosts, both of which were far more subtle than I had expected; sounded great on direct too. How on earth do Startech produce such a great product at such little cost? This little gem gets the ultimate recommendation from me

Cette carte son externe est un petit boitier comme on peut le voir sur l'image. Je l'utilise pour sa sortie S/PDIF uniquement, en conséquence la molette de volume et le bouton arrière concernant les basses sont désactivés. Cette carte fonctionne parfaitement et semble partie pour durer. Le son qu'elle envoie à mon système audio 5.1 Logitech Z5500 est identique à celui que j'aurais avec une carte son intégrée. Le son produit est bien en 5.1, car lorsque le fichier lu est en dts, l'écran de mon système audio affiche bien "dts audio". Idem avec un son dolby où ça affiche "dolby digital". La fréquence d’échantillonnage peut aller jusqu'à 96 khz. Vous pouvez tester avec l'utilitaire windows si vous voulez pour vérifier qu'il y a bien une indépendance des 5 canaux. Le rendu est donc excellent, et regarder un film avec cette carte son est génial. Si vous utilisez le lecteur lecteur multimédia VLC, et que vous ne comprenez pas pourquoi le son n'est pas en dts ou en dolby digital, comme c'était mon cas, c'est parce que dans VLC il faut faire le réglage suivant : outils --> préférences --> audio --> module de sortie : sélectionnez "Sortie audio DirectX" et cocher la case qui vient d'apparaître "Utiliser S/PDIF si disponible".

Since Apple decided to discontinue to build-in optical outputs in their MacBook Pro's and my TV didn't passthrough DTS signals due to licensing, I needed to look for an alternative to connect my MacBook to my old AV-Receiver (without HDMI). This handy little USB SoundCard is doing the job pretty awesome. As usually no driver installation necessary under MacOS and in combination with VLC Player the DTS and AC3 Passthrough is working great. Very quick processing and posting too. Excellent deal.