Vantec NBA-200U USB External 7.1 Channel Audio Adapter (Black)

One year in.I use a desktop PC as a Home Theater PC (HTPC) that I have plugged into a Yamaha receiver. I was using a Sound Blaster sound card in it and the results were "ok" but not great - a distinct lack of silence when nothing was playing. The receiver has a built in DAC that is better than that on the sound blaster or the one built into the PC. I plugged this little dude into the USB port and connected it to my receiver with an optical cable and: IT WORKS!I'm using Linux and the operating system recognized the device immediately, as did the receiver. Whether I'm playing audio files or the sound from movies I'm watching from Amazon/Netflix/Hulu/etc, the sound is much better than from the SoundBlaster card or the onboard sound circuit in the PC.The biggest downside is that MP3s may sound worse as you can hear the imperfections of compression, so, if you are ripping CDs, make sure you use a lossless encoder like FLAC.There are much more expensive boards for this, but unless you have a dedicated room and VERY highend equipment on the other side of the cable, this is as good of a device as you need to get sound from a PC into a receiver and you can put your extra money toward other things that would give a greater improvement - like better speakers. My Yamaha has 3 digital inputs, and many others do as well. Using an outboard DAC is the best way to get sound out of a PC as the analog circuits are too exposed to electrical noise from the motherboard and accessories. By allowing (in my case) the receiver, which is designed to be as noiseless as possible, you greatly improve the sound quality. I've also noticed the CPU runs slightly less than with the sound blaster.FINAL NOTE: I would NOT buy this for the analog outputs and only bought this as a test in using a SPDIF to DAC on my receiver. I feel the analog ports are no better than the ports built in to the PC. They might come in handy if I needed to use it with the analog ports on a preamp that didn't have a DAC, AND needed to move it often - but there are probably better devices for that use.

Bought it 10 years ago and has worked every day since. Love the software to configure my sound in my 4.1 system to align where I sit amongst the speakers. But it does take some work to figure out how to set up the software to use it. Have used it in Windows 8 and 10 with no issues. Was worried about setting it up with a new Windows 11 computer, after reading some other reviews, but had no problems. Downloaded the software from their website. Started to install it and when it said to hook up the sound card, I did and everything worked perfectly.

Needing clean pro audio to compose music using Reaper & Kontakt on my Win. 10 1903 Desktop PC, I got this USB 2.0 to 7.1 Channel Audio version Adapter due to my old internal Asus 7.1 soundcard causing big pops, a reported issue with all Win. 10 builds. I connected it from the desktop (see 1st pic) to my old Harman-Kardon wired 5.1 1700 AVR Receiver with an Optical-Spdif cable, then carefully followed the 2, below posted installation & setup guides by Amazon Users Jose_49, & GiGNet, respectively.I was initially stumped testing the Virtual Surround via the Win. 10 speaker setup, only getting left & right Stereo playback, until I chose to go online & play a YouTube video; THIS is where I & discovered what GIGNet was trying to explain, that Virtual ("fake") Surround only works with specific Surround sources, but as connected with a Digital Optical-Spdif cable using PCM Pass-Through, you'll only get 2 Stereo channels of "real" sound. So unless you configure any desktop software with surround or multiple outputs, L-R Stereo is all you will get offline.The GOOD NEWS is (depending on your Receiver), connected with Digital Optical-Spdif & using PCM (Pass Through), it CAN play: PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital 2.0 to 5.1, Dolby Digital EX 6.1, DTS Digital Surround, DTS-ES Matrix 6.1, DTS-ES Discrete 6.1, & DTS 96/24 (96kHz/24bit audio).It CANNOT play: 5.1/7.1 multi-channel PCM, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS:X, or Auro 3D Audio.This is the MAIN thing PC users must get to avoid an exercise in futility, just carefully follow the below pasted Amazon user instructions I've mentioned for Win. 10, connect to your AVR Receiver with an Optical-Spdif cable (see 2nd pic for how I setup my Vantec C-Media Software Panel for PCM Pass Through with NO EFFECTS), & you're good to go!From Jose_49"Here it goes:1st. Download Driver From Vantec Site2nd. Open it and extract its content anywhere, in the case of this exampleI'm going to open the file and copy and paste the folder "CM6206-1.08(QR)" into my desktop. There will be a bunch of folders in there.3rd. DO NOT CLICK Setup.exe (I know you did it ! )4th. Go to the extracted folder and head into "WIN81(WHQL)", there you will see a "Setup.exe" and "Setup.ex_" file YES, with the underscore at the end.5th. Rename "Setup.exe" to "Setup.exe_bak" (or whatever)6th. Rename "Setup.ex_" to "Setup.exe"7th. Run "Setup.exe" by double clicking or pressing enter.8th. You will now see the "Installing USB Multi-Channel Audio Device". If it asks you to connect it, connect the device.9th. Restart your PC.10th. After restarting on the task bar at the right (system tray) you'll see a blue icon. Double click to configure.11th. Enjoy! "---------------------------------------------From GiGNet."This device works exactly as advertised...if you know what you are doing. They key here is that this device is NOT a Dolby Digital/DTS Decoder. You need an optical connected device than can decode the uncompressed PCM stream. My use case was simple. I needed optical digital PCM pass through to my Logictech Z906 system for watching movies and listening to music in Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1. Here is the thing. To make this work you just have to a) set the Vantec software to PCM ON - the rest of the settings are analog related and don't mean anything in this case - Then, Windows 10 just sees the device as digital output via USB - nothing to do there. b) You must set whatever client you are using i.e. VLC, PLEX to NOT transcode the audio rather to pass it through. This is a super important step. If you don't do this you will get what sounds like a weird hybrid of stereo/surround that sounds terrible- remember SPDIF is really just two channels of audio - but when you pass PCM the assumption is that your connected device can decode the PCM stream - in this case Dolby, DTS, etc.Once you have made that settings change in your client the next thing is to make sure whatever movie or music file you are playing is in fact encoded for the expected format - playing a two channel AC3 movie or a stereo MP3 is not going to sound like you'd expect - remember, whatever you send to the SDPIF output it is going to expect to be decoded by the connected device. Story short, all you need to do is make sure your computer is outputting PCM (PCM is uncompressed data) and you will be loving your little Vantec device."