Creative Sound Blaster Play!3 High Resolution USB DAC Amp and External Sound Card

My HyperX Cloud IIs USB Soundcard was basically falling apart, so I had to choose between getting another one for £30+, but instead looked into separate external sound cards to see if I could make the headphones better by basically plugging into this Creative Sound Blaster Play! 3 instead of using HyperX's USB Soundcard (the little thing that the headphones plug into before you can plug it into the PC).I combined this with a DuKabel 3.5mm Extension TRRS 4-Pole Headphone Cable, and instantly the results were so much better. My motherboard is a Gigabyte B450M-DS3H so the onboard audio for it is budget and old, and this play! 3 blows that out of the water.Like everyone else says, you NEED to download the Creative Sound Blaster software from their website to gain the benefits, but once that was downloaded and all set up... Incredible improvement.One of the most obvious improvements is that with no music playing, and the volume at its highest, there was no audible hiss or any static. Just pure silence, as if the headphones were off. Since using it I have noticed less headaches and haven't needed to take my headphones off as much as before due to the previously annoying hiss that I got using the soundcard supplied with the headphones.For the price, it's great value for money and is like a day and night difference to getting an audio upgrade on a budget. I definitely feel that paying even just £10 or £20 more for one of Creative's better solutions would give even better results.However, for gaming I felt that the options provided by the software were disadvantageous - competitively. The surround sound was a bit lacking and weird, and when playing games I sometimes could swear that I would be hearing sounds in different directions than they are due to it so I keep it off, but the crystallizer always remained on. For casual play and music listening, the adjustable bass boost option and bass rollover gave a very nice customization and clean boost that magnified the experience.

I have entered the rabbit hole of DAC dongles and had many dongles USB Dac amps in my arsenal over the last 2 years from HIBY, Audioquest, Fiio, Hidiz, Cayin (the ladder dac one) , THX Onyx, Apogee groove and i thought for £20 on special offer this was too good an opportunity to miss but let me say first of all iam in no way a gamer do this review is based purely on musical enjoyment.Let me tell you this piece of kit (from 2017) can stand toe to toe with all those dongles in terms of sound quality IMHO clear, precise nice soundstage not harsh in ANYWAY great bass and it has a beautiful piece of software called creative control panel that has great functionality in which you can change the gain settings to drive a whole host of headphones it drives my Beyerdynamic DT880s with ease on the high gain 300 ohms setting. For £20 its a no brainer , and I had zero expectations of this bit of kit , I do think manufacturers play on the fact that so called audiophiles are prepared to pay big money (like emperor's new clothes syndrome lol)

What a piece of cake to install this to upgrade the audio from my PC to my old 2.1 Sony powered speaker set up. I had wondered about connecting an amp and some passive speakers to the PC or getting some new powered speakers, possibly even Bluetooth. A friend suggested upgrading the DAC. So I did some research. To meet what I already had and without spending a fortune I plumped for this. Plugged it in to a USB, connected to the aux inputs via the 3.5 mm socket to the DAC, waited for it to install and hey presto. An immediate improvement in the quality of the audio output. Tested it against a few different genres of music and each one was noticeably improved. Audio seems brighter and less muddied. Best to download the Soundblaster SBX Studio software to tweek the audio output. A great investment at pocket money price. I'm sure spending more would have greater improvements but this has made an audible difference and ticks all the boxes for me. A great little addition.

Don't bother installing the Creative software and instead download Equalizer APO from Spundforge (it is free). The difference in sound quality is nothing short of miraculous

Good quality item ,well packaged in professional looking box with decent set up instructions. Lot of information & help on manufacturers website if required. Easy to install the control panel drivers if wanted, again from manufacturers website. Sound is very good, I am only using for listening to high res music, but would think it would be very good for gaming as well. Small size, so takes up little space when connected to computer. This item makes music very loud through headphones, so I have the controls set very low. The downloaded control panel makes adjusting volume etc very easy, but the computer controls can be used as well. Once disconnected, the computer on board speakers etc work as normal. Very good item, pleased I bought it.

My main issue was game freezing and crashing due to my motherboard manufacturer stopping the audio update. Having bypassed my onboard audio with this dac I can confirm the issue seems to be fixed. While I haven't heard any sound improvements it has done what I needed it to do. Easy to install and use.

all good

My first purchase from the Warehouse, so was very nervous when receiving this.. shouldn't have been, the 'damaged box' was simply tape that had been removed.The device itself works like a charm, with the microphone hiss / static virtually completely removed, which was the reason i bought it in first place, this was literally plug n play for me with no drivers having to be forced installed.All in all I'm very happy, and another plus is that it supports the combination of mic and headset through one port. It doesn't sound much but having less wires is always a plus.If it helps, i use the combi of the Philips SHP9500 with the V-moda Boom Mic Pro.