Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood basic sound card
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 12, 2022
I had a problem with my Asus Tuff 570 where the onboard sound wasn't working. After nearly two weeks of troubleshooting via suggestions from Asus' forums, hunting down all kinds of drivers and riding that merry-go-round of installing/wiping/testing I was about to yank the mobo out and send it back. After looking at all the hoops I'd have to jump through to do so, I figured I'd try buying a basic sound card to fix my issue.
At $40, the issue was resolved for less than the price of shipping and hassle of no pc for 2-4 weeks.
The card produces pretty good on my 2.1 system, and while I own good speakers, they're definitely not audiophile level performance. I can say that my speakers sounded better with the soundcard, than using the onboard realtek sound from my previous build. Bass was good, mid and high range were clearer without a tininess I used to deal with using the onboard.
Installation was about as easy as it could possibly get. I literally just plugged it in, turned on the PC and Windows knew immediately what was going on, I didn't even have to install the drivers I downloaded. I did a wipe/reinstall anyway, as the downloaded version was newer however I didn't notice any difference in capabilities. Prior to purchase, I had read several of the 2/3 star reviews and was braced for potential problems with Windows, but I personally didn't run into any of the issues mentioned. It *might* be because my board is a Asus board, but I can't say with any confidence.
Sadly, I did notice a drop in quality when I retrieved my 5.1 speakers from storage and wanted to see what they sound like. The 5.1 are pretty good quality, better than my 2.1, but I wanted less clutter on my desktop hence I went to 2.1. Anyway, the sound suffered a bit with the 5.1, while the bass was even better than before, the mid and high range were a less so. I was watching the Witcher series, and there is a lot of screeching in various scenes, it quickly proved too shrill and unpleasant through those speakers. When I ran some music through the 5.1, I noticed violins sounded very off and again, a bit shrill. Plugged the 2.1 back in and that wasn't the case.
All in all, for what I needed a soundcard for, and at this price, it's a solid 3. If this goes out on me, I won't feel cheated and I didn't have any aggravations installing it unlike others have. Lets hope my luck holds.
