DigitalLife External USB-C 7.1/5.1 Sound Card Compatible with Windows 11 / macOS 14

this can give 7.1 true and real suround sound, not vertual surround sound/fake. You can add this to a laptop and run headsets with front side rear and bass channels like the Razer Tiamat version 1. set games to 7.1 it is small light cheap good quality clear sound drivers load automatically. remember to choose it in sound settings. make it the default and it will work when you plug it in and revert to old card when unplugged.

Bought this to add surround sound to my computer when watching Netflix (I would say for Amazon Prime too but they STILL HAVEN'T ADDED SURROUND SOUND!). It works great - super-easy install and I can route each channel directly to speakers or into my mixer.Negatives are the price - the USB C model was (at time of purchase) £25 more expensive than its predecessor but other than a different USB plug I didn't notice any £25 improvement. It also 'feels' flimsy - as in I don't want to plug cables in and out repeatedly because the jacks just don't feel durable - construction could have been better, but all-in-all it does a great job.

Didn’t work

TLDR: It's fine if you can get it for under £20, but otherwise spend the extra money on something from a company that you've heard of. (sorry DigitalLife!)Initially, it was just rubbish.I hooked this up to a new Win 11 laptop, and tried a few different sets of headphones on it. Literally nothing came out of the headphone socket, and the front speaker socket was (naturally) distorted.I also hooked up a SONY stereo lapel microphone to the non-mono branded socket and it was barely audible. I had to really crank the the software gain, which really shouldn't be required.So that's when I decided to test the headphone output I mentioned above. Initially, non-existent, the headphone socket wasn't even listed in the Sound panel as an available port. Only the speaker outs do anything, and they're naturally not tuned right.You need the software driver from the digitallife site which is detailed in the little manual, although it doesn't explicitly tell you this, just to download operating instructions.Anyway, once you have the drivers, things will start to function more adequately, and that's about it. The driver package (at time of review OK on Virus Total) installed a pointless system tray application which does nothing more than existing control panel options. So I advise against using that install if you can. Instead, do one of two things:1. Install it then uninstall it, and the drivers *should* stick (I haven't restarted yet)2. Open the executable in WinRAR and extract the folder for your operating system, then just install all the driver files from the driver folder one by one and anything appropriate for your OS version.This avoids the software, and should work.Once the drivers are in, it ... performs ... but that's about it. There's a background hiss to recordings with the microphone that isn't there on a cheap Terratec USB sound card from the 00s, it's barely improved by splitting the stereo mic into both mic inputs, but barely.All that said, it's passable. If you want a cheap USB soundcard for on the go sound, it should suffice, but it can barely play back frequencies beyond a certain range, so that should also play in to your decision making here. The on-device controls are a nice touch, though.

If you're having issues with your computer's soundcard and you have many inputs/outputs that you need to use together, then this little device works wonders! You not only have a lot of choice for both input and output, but you can have a full surround sound setup with ease!I personally would have preferred there to be a remove control rather than on-device buttons, as I don't want to keep this on my desk and make it look messy with many wires. However, it's not a huge deal as I just use my computer to change volume and mute etc anyway.Overall, I think this is a great external sound card and I'd highly recommend it!

This arrived simply packaged in a retail box and inside you get the Sound Box, USB-C to USB-C Cable and Instructions. The instructions do say that is comes with a CD to install the driver/s but that is not the case. You must go to the DigitalLife website and download from there. I will say that my anti-virus software blocked the download due to security issues and I had to override that – it is up to you if you decide to do that also. The drivers are for Windows 7, 8 and 10.Having installed the drivers and restarted my PC everything looked to be working fine. I ran through outputting to Headphones, via Toslink and the main run of Audio Out ports. The sound was consistent across all of them.Control wise, you have volume up/down, volume off and mic off. There is no button to switch either output source. If you have your headphones plugged in and you are playing through your speakers, your headphones are still playing music. Which I think is an oversight, meaning you must unplug your phones. This does seem to be the case with many of these devices.Where I think it does not perform so well, is picking up some of those in game cues, like footsteps and such like. Which more expensive sound boxes are better equipped to do, and they will have higher bit rates.It is 16Bit and supports Dolby Surround Sound, but you are not going to get mind blowing sound out of it. It does only cost £35.99 though. It is more about convenience and expanding the number of speakers than anything else.I was unable to test the mic inputs, I am aware there have been some issue around this since I do not have the right connector for either of my desk mics.I did have some issue with switching the sound output from my PC to this box, to my PC direct to speakers. The box was connected using the USB-C to USB-B cable and the speakers directly using Toslink. I ran I sound test and sound was coming from the speakers but when I tried to play back anything, I got nothing. After deleting the software and restarting, everything was back to normal.Although I did not have any issues, given the flags my virus protection software threw up (several times), I did remove it after testing. I am most probably being over cautious but better safe than sorry.Apologies, I got so engrossed in setting it up and testing, I forgot to take photos of it wired up to my PC.I hope you found this review & photos interesting, informative, and useful. Thanks for reading.NB. For a sizing guide, squares in photos are 1cm.