Customer Reviews

DIGIFLEX External Sound Card USB 6 Channel 5.1 Audio

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Remarkably cheap for what it does. For some reason my on-board audio ceased to work on my general purpose machine (I have another machine which is dedicated to audio but it's useful to be able to play stuff on the machine connected to the net) and I bought this device as a quick fix.

Delivery (to Spain) was good and it turned up within a week, The unit is solidly built for the money, but I have to agree with most of the other reviewers, the 'support' is appalling. No instructions of any sort and the CD gives no indication of which (of several) drivers to install. That's why I give it 3 stars, otherwise it deserves at least a 4, if only on a price vs spec basis.

For anyone still struggling, the drivers you want are in the directory CM6206(XP,VISTA,WIN7), go there and then select your OS (I'm running XP) and then double click on 'install.exe' - and all should be good. You do need to reboot the computer after installation.

FWIW, when I plugged the unit in, Windows rushed off and automatically installed a set of Windows generic drivers - and they did work. However, although I didn't explore it further, I suspect they won't allow access to all the features.

Hi, first review on amazon after being a member a long time (Lazy!).

Bought this device as I invested in an Onkyo AV reciever and wanted to connect the PC up to the device with tru surround sound. As the AV reciever I bought is geared toward digital connection (HDMI, Optical etc) The older 5.1 card with analogue outs on my machine wasnt going to do the job.

I took a gamble on this unit as it was cheap and cheerful and I am very pleased.

I am using Windows 7 64bit, I plugged in the device while connected to the net and the drivers were puled doen automaticaly (the chiposet used in the box appears to be c-media). Conencted an optical (spdif) cable to the optical out on the box and into the amp then set up using all the standard windows tools. This is a good job as the supplied CD is basically useless. I havent marked down for this as it has not interefered with my use at all and the hardware is working flawlessly. I will be interested to see if I can have a play around with the other analogue outputs to use for DJ'ing but I cannot confirm this will work and the device probably isnt good enough quality to be honest.

In summary - Very cheap, plug and play on my WIN7 64 Bit (ultimate) OS. deliveres 5.1 over optical with no config needed to my av reciever via a simple USB connection from the PC. Solved a problem I made for myself.

I purchased this Sound Card in order to improve the quality of recordings made transferring LPs via a Hi-Fi Amplifier onto MP3 music on the PC. My internal sound card has some noise on one channel. Seemed like good value and unlike some of the other external sound cards this had a Line-In socket rather than just a Mic (which will be mono in many cases). I won't be using the 5.1 Audio yet but this looks like a good bonus.

Item was smaller than I expected, about the size of a pack of cards, and nicely finished with a smart metal case. It arrived promptly, with a mini-CD and no documentation. When I plugged it into the PC (running XP) Windows auto-installed a driver ("USB Sound Card"). Trying to update this off the supplied CD failed ("no drivers found" message). I could not get sound into the PC despite trying all the available settings.

On further investigation, the CD has several directories with zipped .rar files in them. I didn't have a way of unzipping them, so installed a freeware utility (google "RAR Extract Frog" - worked fine with no spamware side effects) and extracted the files in the directory "USB-106-081014-12.8.2111(Full-LO-01)_1016". Not the most obvious of Directory names! Having done this, I found a setup.exe utility (which I ran) and drivers which updated the card (to "USB Multi-channel Audio Device") and added an Icon to the System Tray, from which I can now open a Console Window to easily change the settings. Had to do this again on second use of the card, but these settings have now survived a re-boot so seem permanent now. So a bit of a struggle here for a few hours!

Once further change I had to make was to change the Sound Properties on the PC to take Audio Input from "Microsoft Sound Mapper" rather than the system default settings. Once I had done this, I could finally get incoming sound through the Line-In socket of the card into the PC, and make some recordings with Audacity. There is still a little noise on both channels but this is less than before and the quality of the MP3 recording is fine.

Only comment about the exterior of the unit is that all the mini-jack sockets are quite close together and cable plugs I had into the Line-In and Front-Out (can use for regular stereo speakers) were squeezed up against each other. If you have fatter cable plugs they may not all fit into the sockets concurrently.

So summary - neat unit, good value, works OK but it's hard to set up and some basic documentation should be provided. The drivers and install programs should be shipped uncompressed so that Windows can find them on first installation of the CD.

As soon as I received this device I was amazed of the simplicity of the packaging. But astonished of the looks of the litle device, I love the colour and the quality metal case feeling, even though the litle screws are not screwed perfectly. The device comes with a usb cable and a very simple litle blue CD, but no instructions!! The CD is titled DRIVER CMI6206. This is the model of the chip provided by C-Media. I looked on the C-Media website, but no drivers were available for this chip.

MAC USERS SEE BOTTOM OF THIS REVIEW.

SETUP

It seems judging by the other reviews that the cd driver has now been updated and is easy;
If your CD contains a .Zip file, Just use windows unzipper or a program like Winrar to unzip the setup files on the cd, to your computer and install the driver from there.

1) Connect the devie to your pc/laptop.
Insert the blue cd labeled CMI6206 in your computer/laptop.DO NOT let windows autorun the setup.
2) Go to My Computer and right klick the CD drive and select on Open. There, you will see the following 3 folders:
XP
Vista
Win7
3) Ignore everything else. I have windows 7 64bit and the drivers in the Win7 Folder worked for me. Open your appropriate operation folder. For MAC see bottom of this review.
4)Click on the Setup file and connect your device and let the setup program install your driver software!
5) An icon will appear in right bottom corner of your screen, if not restart your pc.

Software settings for standard 5.1 Speaker configuration.

Click on the Usb Multi-Channel Audio Device, a litle music icon in your right bottom corner of your screen.
You will see the UI of your little USB Multi-Channel Audio Device. Make sure the following for a 5.1 speaker configuration)
1) System Input - 2 CH
2) Output Mode > Analog Output - 6 CH
When you put Analog Output on 6 CH mode, a button apears next to it, it looks like a wrench tool icon. click on it.
You will see a litle window popping up, with heading 'Speaker Environment'
Make sure 'Bass Management' is ticked. Bass Management gives you 3 options of Bass. 'DVD Title' Bass is the most powerful and my favorite. General Music Bass is another good option. Try it out and experiment. Once working, you will be astonished of the sound from this little device.
The software gives you many other options to enhance your Audio experience.
One I like is DSP Mode. Enable it by clicking the litle wrench?tool button next to it. Then click on 7.1 Virtual. A litle diagram called SHIFTER appears, of a person surrounded by speakers appears next. With this tool you can play with the speaker sound its very funny try and experimment with the buttons! there is always a RESET button SHIFTER mode

I have tried the Trust driver many reviewers recommended aswell but the drivers on the litle CD supplied seem to be newer than the Trust drivers CD drivers work great I'd recommend the CD drivers. Driver version on cd is 7.12 while Trust driver is below that. I rechecked this in Device Manager, the cd drivers are few months newer, October 2009.

For DJ's;
If you google around for ASIO4ALL, you might find it useful with DJ software such as Traktor, and the various ins and outs should be separately addressable.
According to one of the reviewers, ASIO4ALL reveals the Devices true Playback date:
Recording at 16 bit 48khz,
Playback on the Outs is 16 bit 96khz!!

MAC Users;
The following website seems to provide a solution to the issues many people face using this great litle device on a MAC. Just follow it aparently it works, even though I dont have a mac and havent tried this solution:
) [...]

Summary;
Works great on my 64bit Windows 7.
Definetly Highly Recommended.

Pros)
-Excellent Quality Sound
-Firmly Build and Looks great!
-Very Portable.
-Many nice options in the software.

Cons
-No Instructions
ehm thats it i guess?

I've only had this for one day, but seeing as there were no other reviews or much in the way of product specification I thought I'd add my 2 pennies worth.

Sound card comes with a mini-CD containing the drivers, and a USB cable. There's no manual and as far as I could see I couldn't find one on the CD. The CD's a bit confusing as well, as it seems to contain software for other products as well. Took me a while of browsing and testing to find the right drivers for the sound card, as the drivers installed by Vista didn't produce 5.1 surround sound, only stereo.

Anyway, once I'd installed the correct drivers (there are drivers for Vista and XP on the CD, and looks like there might be for 98), and restarted my machine, I started to get surround sound from the card. Only problem was that the Center speaker didn't produce any sound when tested. After installation you should have an icon in the system tray for changing the sound card's settings. Played around on it for a while and found a setting for switching the output for the Center speaker and subwoofer. That fixed the problem.

There are quite a few settings that can be changed including number of input channels; changing from stereo up to 7.1 surround sound; enabling virtual 7.1 surround sound if you only have 5.1; changing the speaker setup in your room; changing room size; changing environment; EQ; there's even a karaoke feature. So there are quite a lot of options to try and get your sound to sound just the way you like it.

The speaker system I used with the sound card is the Logitech X-540 - the sound that comes from these speakers are brilliant - definately worth the money as its cheap as well. The sound produced from the sound card was excellent, I used the THX setup on my Pirates of the Caribbean disc and as far as I'm concerned it was passed with flying colours. I tested mp3's, youtube videos, as well as a few dvd's with surround sound, and the sound that comes out is of a very high quality. Therefor I think my combination of this sound card and Logitech speakers works very well.

But as I said at the beginning of the review it's very early days, and I'll post any subsequent relevant updates about the product.

(UPDATE 11/10/2010) Bought a new laptop with Windows 7 and so far have been unable to get it to work in 5.1 mode :-(

(UPDATE 26/10/2010) This driver works for Windows 7 64bit :-) [...]

Ordered this last night and received this morning all standard posting fees, just amazing. Installed the drivers on the mini-disc that came with it but even though it worked the output was only 2.1. No matter how much I tweaked the settings in the settings I still couldn't get it to output above 2.1. I googled "trust 510ex" and downloaded the drivers from their site and within seconds it was playing full 5.1 surround sound with no tweaks to settings. If anyone is having trouble with their soundcard, definitely look that up. The sound card does it's job perfectly and delivers pristine sound with no crackling or any negative effects. I would've gave a 5-star review if it were not for complete lack of instructions and clearly unsuitable drivers however this problem is very easily resolved.

this is a great product,currently playing music on i tunes through my laptop to a fully working pc 5.1 surround system.

1.insert the cd,my computer,open the dvd,click on the the secound folder"cm6206(XP,VISTA,7).

2.open the windows 7 folder,loads of files find "setup" and install the software.

3. restart the computer

4. you will find the software in the system tray click onto it.

5. now check your computer is the same as below on the main screen of the utility

5.
SYSTEM INPUT:2 CH
SYSTEM OUTPUT:6 CH (5.1)

to swap the bass and center click on to the spanner icon next analog output and tick the box for swapping the output..

Hope this helps

this has a c-media chipset ( much better than ac97 - comparable to creative and xonar chipsets), use the trust driver and application mentioned in other reviews, download and install asio4all, and you pretty much full control over the ins/outs in daw's and dj programs. 2 stereo ins, 3 stereo outs plus digital in/outs, recording is at 16 bit 48khz, playback on the outs is 16 bit 96khz, sound is clean and crisp with plenty of headroom, build quality is fine, the cool blue annodised case makes it a looker, this is probably the most ins and outs you will find for the price. Works with (with the asio4all driver+app running on top of the trust driver and app) -- Ableton, Traktor, Reason, Virtual dj.

remember to disable your onboard sound chip via the bios or windows device manager, to aviod conflicts.

Excellent product, fast delivery (3 days), great value, for this price, even if you have a soundcard, get one for a backup, its that good.

I just bought a new 64 bit windows 7 machine, but very few offerings in the PC line now come with any SPDIF inputs - a few have outputs - no good for what I want. My old machine has SPDIF I/O thanks to my trusty old Creative live drive add on, but that isn't supported now and nether is my external Creative eXtegy device. I didn't want to mess around with old drivers and mess up my new machine so I bought this as a possibe cheap solution to getting the digital outputs from my multitrack recording system via optical SPDIF to the PC for further processing and mp3 burning etc.
After placing the order I was dismayed to see that other reviews of the next more expensive item claimed that budget item was no good and the spdif port was just a through port!! Can't be used to get digital audio into teh PC.! AAAArgh!
However after a supper fast delivery, (next day) and plugging it in after first checking I had internet connectivity ready, it installed the drivers directly from the WEB in a few seconds and told me to reboot. (thanks for the tip on the previous reviews here - don't mess with the supplied drivers CD unless you have some much earlier windows version). On reboot the sound fired up from the analogue front speaker output - good, I had to wiggle the speaker plug in teh device to get good contact on both channels. May be just because new contact material is contaminated with some insolating oily residue in the manufacturing process.
I checked the sound mixer and couldnt see any spdif input , after a little clicking around in the mixer dialogs i found the options to enable the
LISTEN button on the listen tab and was able to hear (monitor) the input from the SPDIF. "SPDIF In(USB Multi-channel audio device)"
I then opened up my PC recording software app and set the preferences to the same remote SPDIF input rather than the default microphone input. - Recorded the input signal, then playback.
Great, no problems. I was also able to direct left and right channels to seperate tracks from the SPDIF signal The device also has very low latency compared to my old system. Great for live recording. Control panel (device) also lets you select 44.1 16 bit or 48 kh 16 bit. this is a speciifed. Pity it doesn't do the 24bit for studio quality.
Windows seven has also has a Real time mode drivers to reduce this even further if need be. With Windows 7 this little device is a Bargain. Brilliant.
Recommended.

PS also works with my MacBook pro, with a small free utility to enable spdif , downloaded from web.

I've been trying all afternoon to get this working on Win 7 x64 system and despite what everyone is saying it is not simply a case of plug it in and it works! I've tried every driver I can find on the web from Microsoft archive to ones listed in the comments here and even ones from other manufacturers that supposedly work... they don't. The bundled mini CD is completely useless; it even contains drivers for completely unrelated products!

Taking the case off I noticed that the audio chip is infact a CM106-L (the bundled drivers are CM108 and CM2606, nice one!), even so, none of the drivers I could find work - they all result in 'The device could not start' in Device Manager.