I have seen these products get so many bad reviews, many of which seemed to be talking as though they had paid a small fortune for the device and it then didnt live upto the HUGE price tag
Thing is though, theyre CHEAP.
So bearing that in mind here are my views
I have a HP Microserver which doesnt have built in sound at all, it does have two PCI-e slots but have you seen the cost and limited choice of PCI-e soundcards?
So I figured for the price I would give this a go
First impression was that considering how cheap they are theyre packaged surprisingly well in a blister pack (I half expected them to arrive in a ziplock bag tbh)
On insertion under both windows XP and Windows 7 windows recognises them on the fly and no drivers or reboot is required
I run creative 2.1 speakers and to be perfectly honest the sound from these is nothing short of surprising.
I get some loud clicking when the machine is booting up, but to be perfectly honest I also get that from the built in sound on my £90+ Asus M4A87td-EVO boards too so no problem there
Once booted though the sound is crisp, well rounded and the sound stage is wide and well seperated making stereo content sound very good.
Due to the amount of people who have complained about these and similar items "falling apart" or suffering mechanical breakdown I decided to plug the module into a short USB hub rather than the PC itself which also helps to leave other ports free for use as its a bit chunkier than a flashdrive
But once in place it wont be accessed so it cant really "fall to bits" and I do wonder whether those reviewers carried theirs around and repeatedly inserted and removed them tbh as my two seem surprisingly solidly built for such a low price
Its probably worth not risking it by using the built in buttons though as everything can be controlled from within windows anyway. And the only potential weakspot I can see is the speaker and microphone sockets. But to be perfectly honest I may consider buying short extension leads and then as "icky" as it might look just securely taping them into the device so I never have to insert or unplug anything into the soundcard itself just to avoid damage over time
Basically though this device cost about the same as a pint of lager, gives surpsisingly good well rounded sound for music, video and voice so I am extremely impressed with the purchase and might purchase a couple more as spares incase theyre not still available when the one I am using now does decide to die
Taking the price into consideration and what it sounds like for that price I honestly cant find a single flaw or criticism of this device for my personal requirements on a machine that has no native sound at all.
So I have given it a full 5 stars without reservation
You normally get what you pay for, but with this item it really does feel like I got a bargain