StarTech.com USB Sound Card With SPDIF Output (ICUSBAUDIO2D)

Far worse sound than my entry level Navida GX internal sound card.

To compare I used the same audiophile audio cables connected to highly rated Audio Engine A5+ powered speakers (stereo). The only change was the sound cards.

The basic internal sound card vastly surpassed this external card in every department: sound quality, output volume, wiring convenience, and drivers.

Yes, I will return this disappointing card as soon as my new top-end audiophile stereo card arrives.

J’ai acheté cette carte son externe pour ajouter une sortie optique vers mon home cinéma 5.1.
Le Dolby et DTS marche parfaitement bien et le son est de belle qualité.
Excellent rapport qualité-prix pour cette utilisation, à côté des Creative et ASUS à plus de 60€.

Si rien ne sort, essayez d’autres ports USB, c’était un peu capricieux de mon côté mais tout est OK après quelques essais.
Pour bien tester votre système de son, n’hésitez pas à télécharger une vidéo de test avec sortie 6 canaux, une sortie testée à la fois.

Highly recommended. This USB adapter works really well as an interface for recording musical instruments with a STEREO 3.5 mm battery-powered microphone like the AT2022 or AT822 (the kind of stereo mics often used with audio-for-video and portable audio recorder applications). It is a worthy replacement for the old Griffin iMic, which only recorded at 16 bit. The stereo mics, combined with this soundcard and a laptop, make for a really light, compact and portable kit for quick, great-sounding recordings. It captures excellent sound at 24/44.1, which I find to be the sweet spot for digital recordings. The latency, input and output levels on the soundcard were very user friendly and pretty optimal. I use it to record electric guitar, which is a relatively loud sound source, so I cannot report in detail on the noise floor of the soundcard. But in preliminary testing with spoken word, the noise level seemed surprisingly good for a consumer-level device, and would likely be more than adequate for most recordings. The hardware volume control on the StarTech is a nice bonus, and very convenient. The StarTech soundcard installed effortlessly in seconds on Windows 10, which automatically installed the right driver. You may need to make some tweaks in the Windows Control Panel/Sound settings to optimize the output and input of the StarTech USA Sound Card for your computer–that is also the place you can change the bit depth and sample rate for this soundcard. I use Cubase as my recording DAW, and this soundcard gave excellent results, both recording via the mic input and monitoring via the headphone output. And Cubase had no problem recognizing and connecting with the StarTech’s inputs and outputs. My pre-sales contact with StarTech was impressive. The online chat representatives gave fast responses to my technical questions. I have no idea how durable this will be in the long run. But if it delivers a reasonable service life, I would gladly get this again.

I am very happy with my purchase especially for the dolby surround 5.1. Everything works fine on Windows 11.

I bought this to use with my travel headphones, Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 wired headphones. The M2 headphones are very efficient, which means that I can hear even a little bit of noise. When I plugged them into my business laptop, I heard an annoying hiss. I tried a Creative E1 device and also heard an annoying hiss. With the ICUSBAUDIO2D device, I initially heard a loud hiss; but I turned the volume control dial down a bit, and very abruptly the hiss cut out. My music is still plenty loud enough.

The left jack accepts the standard 4-ring plug for headphones + microphone all in one (common on mobile headphones). I was able to plug the M2 directly into that jack; headphones and microphone just worked.

I use Linux, and the ICUSBAUDIO2D showed up in the Sound preferences as “USB Audio Device Analog Stereo”. I had to adjust the amplification slider for the microphone all the way up or the M2’s mic is too quiet, but after I did that it was just fine.

Initially, bass sounded terrible. Anything with bass sounded muddy and smeared. But then I realized that the ICUSBAUDIO2D has a mini-equalizer feature: a 3-position sliding switch, with positions for Bass, Direct, and Treble. It defaults to “Bass” and it was applying some kind of bass boosting effect… and I didn’t like what that effect was doing to my music. But no problem; once I figured it out, I switched it to “Direct” and I’ll just leave it that way from now on. It sounds fine in “Direct” mode.

Given how small and light this is, and given that my M2 headphones just plug right in and work with no adapter needed, I have found my new travel audio device. I’ll just leave this in my laptop carrying bag all the time.

EDIT: I have used this for about a month, and I am completely happy with it. You can get a better audio adapter but it will cost a lot more and probably need a separate power supply. Therefore I have upped my rating to 5 stars. It’s the best in its class.