Creative 70SB124000002 Sound Board

Comment:
J'ai un pc ITX et sa me dépanne très bien! même song que mon ancienne sound blaster x-fi !

Comment:
I bought this to connect my Windows 7 HTPC to an old Sansui amp (I think surround is a gimmick that is really more distracting than anything). I was looking for a USB sound card so that it was as far away from the RF interference of the PC as I could get. I was also wooed by the RCA outs, which most competitors seem to lack. Windows 7 automatically handled the driver installation without the need for any of the bundled CDs or a visit to Creative's website. Sound playback also "just worked" in Unbuntu 12.10, though I didn't try the line in there.Overall I was thoroughly pleased with the noticeable improvement in sound quality, particularly through headphones. I was also happy that this unit did not exhibit the speaker-killing "pop" sent through my motherboard sound system whenever the PC shuts down or goes to sleep. I also found the phono in to work as advertised, which is a pretty neat feature. I was dismayed however to realise that in spite of being marketed as an "audiophile" product, it has no 44.1khz clock for native CD music playback. That's right, it's advertised as "up to 96khz". What they don't tell you is that the only other option is 48khz (as used in DVDs and Blu-rays). That being said, Windows 7 seems to handle the conversion seamlessly and to be honest, I'm not sure my ears can discern the resampling artefacts anyway, but I'm still enough of an audio geek that I would probably have forgone the RCA jacks for a competitor that properly handled all standard sample rates. This is my main justification for giving only 3 stars.I should also say that the phono playback is digitised as a line input that must be selected for playback using the windows sound system. It therefore digitises your vinyl on the fly and pipes it back to the output jack which seems kind of silly, but I guess the main purpose of the phono in is for digital archiving.