Creative Sound Blaster Play! 3 USB DAC Amp and External Sound Card for Windows and Mac. Plug and Play (No Drivers Required). Upgrade to 24-bit 96khz Playback

You can feel change in sound quality of PC.

The Creative Sound Blaster Play! 3 is a compact and versatile USB audio interface that significantly enhances sound quality for gaming and music. With its easy plug-and-play setup, it’s perfect for both beginners and experienced users. The built-in headphone amplifier provides rich, clear audio, while customizable audio profiles allow for a tailored listening experience. The durable design makes it a reliable companion for on-the-go use. Overall, it’s an excellent choice for anyone looking to improve their audio experience without breaking the bank.

This a low-cost upgrade from onboard sound, quite a bit better than the cheap ones based on C-Media chipsets (or worse, local Chinese vendors).The DAC is plug-and-play and has an option of downloading a control panel for modifying some of the sound settings. Given this will be partnered with very cheap speakers, the control panel is useful for fixing the usually boomy bass and tizzy treble of such speakers.The control panel has one caveat though, when used in 'Speaker' mode you get a pretty big reduction in output level. In PnP mode you get all the available gain because Windows does not perform the attenuation. But at certain levels this can cause digital clipping, the worst kind.The solution is to use the Creative control panel in high gain headphone mode, and then reduce the overall level in EQ panel to the point where you don't get clipping even at 100% volume. For me this was about -5dB.You can also perform some useful functions such as an LF cut to help with bottoming out tiny speakers, my Pebble V2 was quite happy with the change and now gives proper non-boomy bass. As long as you don't use the fake 'enhancements' provided by Creative, you'll be OK.Sound quality is acceptable. When auditioned against the Dragonfly V1.1, it came close. The output is a slight step above the UMC22, and quite a bit behind the Fiio M3 Pro. But it's a ton better than the onboard audio on my MSI Mortar, which itself claims very good audio.Overall I'll recommend it for basic applications where onboard audio will not do.

My laptop's inbuilt sound card gives terrible sound. With this dongle, I can certainly sense the performance has improved quite a lot. I use it on my laptop and it works with my android mobile as well. You need to enable the USB Debugging option in the settings of your phone. Moreover, to drive the headphones I have added the Volume Booster app so I can increase the volume output. It does cause phone overheating so be cautious. 20-30 mins use should be okay.Yes! You need to install the Creative SBX Pro app on your PC/Laptop.I use this device for Zoom meetings, on-location content recording, and to connect my lav mic (with adapter TRRS to TRS). I love it.Going to drive my Sony MDR 7506 headphone monitors, the Blackwire 5220 headset and the basic Sennheiser CX180 headphones. I shall update the experience here because not much review/content is there on YouTube and elsewhere for this product.Overall, I loved the product. Priced quite high compared to the USA market. I am going to get the Sound Blaster Play 4 for online meetings and calls.

Don't waste your money on it, Completely ruined sound signature.

Good quality and worth for money. It is powerful.

Here's the thing, if you have an expensive headphone, this DAC is going to bring out it's amazing potential and you're going to love it.DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL APP, ITS EVEN BETTER.My review-Classical music is way more versatile than modern music, there is something called 'Rubato' in it where the professionals could use their own tempo, and increase and decrease the sound to a lot more extent than modern music.What this DAC does during the diminuendo part or soft part (lower sound) it try to sustain the audio so it increase the audio output so it gives you unnecessary white noise which is not required, same happens when 'Fortissimo' (very loud) part comes on it sort of decrease the sound to sustain it like modern song.Overall this is just a perfect DAC for everyone except classical music listener, its not bad but takes the fun of delicacy and timidness of classical music.

Its worth noting that the Play 3 should be used with the Software (downloadable from official site) rather than simply Plug and Play. The software has quite a few tweaks that allows lots of flexibility regarding tweaking of sound signature. The output gain options are handy depending on the kind of headsets being used. Over ear large sized headphones even though less than 64 ohms play quite well with the higher ohms option as it increases the volume by approx 30%. I found the default option a bit too low in volume.Other enhancement options like Crystalizer enhances the volume further while giving more Bass and Treble (fun sounding signature). There is also a Bass Boost option which also provides quite a punch. Apart from these options one can also tweak the EQ separately. Hence all in all the options are plenty.As for difference between onboard audio and USB can definitely be felt if the motherboard is below 10K /-.My reason for buying this usb DAC is because I was hearing crackling sounds from my motherboard inbuild audio, mostly because my GPU (rx5700XT) was causing interference. This solved the issue (do note that simple plug and play didn't solve anything besides the audio sounding too underwhelming. Only after installing the downloaded driver/software did I notice the immediate change in sound signature).