Creative Labs Sound Blaster Play! 3 External USB Sound Adapter for Windows and Mac. Plug and Play (No Drivers Required). Upgrade to 24-Bit 96Khz Playback

Had issues with motherboard sound. Replaced with SB and I’m back on track with undistorted sound.

I purchased the Sound Blaster Play! 3 to upgrade the audio quality from our Raspberry Pi. I was a little nervous about having to change default configuration settings on the RPi, but the latest Raspbian OS makes it super simple. I just plugged in the device after boot, the audio drivers were recognized automatically, and the only setting I changed was to make the sound card the default. I had everything up and running in less than 5 minutes, and the majority of that was finding a pair of headphones to test with and also an audio file to test with. The product is simple, lightweight, and the quality is excellent so far. I would highly recommend this product, especially if you are looking for an audio upgrade for the RPi that is cost effective.

The sound is great if your audio and mic are separate. However, if you use the TRRS (audio+mic) jack, there is a constant static noise. I verified this with 3 pairs of headphones. So you need to use an audio splitter to split TRRS into TRS (audio) and TS (mic) to avoid the static.

Plug it into a USB port and you have very adequate sound. Works on Linux and Windows effortlessly.

Does exactly what I need it to do perfectly. Good quality, good value, easy setup.

I was impressed by the sound quality, need to do some tweaking to get it where you want. For the price I found it to be really good.

So with my PCs built in sound card, the audio quality was always just ok. It was serviceable when I used a good pair of headphones but whenever I connected it to an external speaker via AUX cable, it would produce a horrible hissing sound and it would be a bit distorted at higher volumes. For reference that onboard sound card was the Realtek ALC892. I decided to upgrade from that and Im very glad that I did! This thing is great and as soon as I plugged it up and plugged in my headphones, I noticed a substantial improvement in the audio quality. All the issues I had with my onboard sound card were gone. The mic quality seems to be good too, though I havent tested it quite as extensively. I also like how i can use this multiple devices (at different times of course). It works great with macOS too. Creative (the vendor) also provides a companion sound software where you can adjust various audio settings and save those settings as presets on your PC or Mac. In all, great external sound card! I know there are certainly better sound cards out there, but for the price, this cant be beat and will provide a noticeable improvement if youre coming from an older onboard sound card. 5/5!

Ive been a believer in Soundblaster stuff for a VERY long time, but the last time I got/used one was an Audigy notebook card that had to be inserted in a PCMCIA slot, and tended to be very glitchy interacting with the OE audio card/drivers. Once it was working though ... fabulous. Now Ive moved on to a laptop with a PCIe/NVMe-based SSD boot drive running Windows 10, and as always, quickly realized its onboard sound card (Realtek) is junk for driving anything other than the teeny onboard speakers, so I went back to the Creative well to see what theyve been up to these days. I was very happy to find this inexpensive, USB-based, plug and play Soundblaster card that seemed like it had all the same basic functionality I needed/used in my old card, so I bought it. I primarily use this device for listening to music from my MP3 collection at my workstation, which is equipped with a pair of bookshelf Infinitys, an Infinity powered subwoofer, dedicated rack amp and 15-band stereo equalizer. The Realtek output from the laptop headphone jack is ok, but just doesnt deliver a signal with the gain/quality Im used to hearing from MY rig … like putting kerosene into the gas tank of a Ferrari. So I plugged this thing in; it really is plug and play easy; overrode the Realtek audio card with no trouble of any kind, and, without doing anything more than that, I noticed a big improvement in both sound quality and signal gain. However, I still wasnt totally blown away like I was with my original Soundblaster card, and just figured, e.g., oh well, whaddya expect for $20? Then I remembered Creative has its own, custom drivers and software for this device, and figured Id try that and see if it made any difference. The answer to that question is a RESOUNDING yes. Another boost in gain, but more importantly, I now heard the same crystalline frequency separation/response that I loved about my old Soundblaster card. All that 24-bit Soundblaster mojo is still in this little gizmo, but you cant stop/settle at just plug and play on generic audio drivers ... you really have to download and install Creatives custom drivers/software to get the best performance out of their device. Anyway, hope the review helps ... I feel that, when used with Creatives drivers/software, this device delivers everything its supposed to, and is WELL worth the cost.

Great Product.. Plug and Play

I bought this to use with a PS5 since its marketed as compatible, but there is a low volume issue where all but the easiest to drive headphones will be way too quiet. I saw a Reddit thread where a Creative employee said this was a known issue and they may be working on a firmware fix. Sony consoles have had this issue for years with external DACs needing special firmware to function properly, so I dont know why a company like Creative wouldnt have done testing on it since they have plenty of gaming focused products that do work like the G6. Im not sure if I want to wait for a possible update or just return it and try something else. Apart from that its a good dongle for its price point. Using it on my PC the sound quality is solid (pretty much on par with my $10 HTC dongle, not quite as good as my Fiio K5 Pro which is much more expensive). I dont hear any noise and it can drive all the headphones I own well. There are a lot of sound adjustments in the App but I turned them all off. All in all I would say its worth buying if you need better audio for a laptop on the cheap, but if your goal is PS4/PS5 use I would look elsewhere for the time being.