Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+ External Sound Card Sound System
Getting premium stereo music with your PC or notebook has never been easier! Sound Blaster MP3+ improves the quality of your MP3s and CDs whether you're at home or on the road. Just plug this external USB sound system in and enhance music with the included Creative MediaSource digital player. Listening to your PC or notebook just got dramatically better!
Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+ External Sound Card Sound System Accessories
 Belkin F3U133-16 USB 2.0 A/B Cable (16 Feet)
Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+ External Sound Card Sound System Reviews
No go. I tried this unit on my Dell laptop to provide line-in capability for recording audio tapes. Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+ External Sound Card Sound System: I seem to be the only one with this problem. After much research I came up with the info that XP limits the current draw of an USB port to 1000mA which was not adequate to power the device. I bought a powered USB hub and got it working, but not well or reliably enough to like it.
If you are looking to boost the sound of your notebook using any kind of speakers, and having two separated soundcards, this is the right choice. What I like about this item in particular is the fact you just plug it to your usb port and you have two different sound cards, which is great if you plan on mixing music with any of the music software out there. Very easy to use, I like the fact that is has an optical-out slot. It's a great accessory for your laptop, given the fact that most of the computers have lousy speakers mounted on them.
Connecting this or any computer sound upgrade to cheap, desktop computer speakers probably isn't going to make much of a dramatic, audible difference. In summary my advice would be if you use your computer for music or even DVD playback and you enjoy it enough, I would absolutely upgrade the USB audio or soundcard if the original is lacking in quality. The sound was as good as a high quality home audio component, such as a CD player. Most but perhaps the newest laptops probably have the audio included as an afterthought. You must use a good home or computer audio system.
I listened with decent headphones, and a stereo receiver with two ordinary bookshelf speakers. Although it's not advertised this way, it works for Mac. Some casual listeners may believe.mp3's sound indistinguishable from regular CD's. Contrary to what I've read some sound card buyers saying, this definitely sounds great compared to the built in audio usually found in laptops and and other computers with built-in, non-upgradable audio.
A good soundcard can also reveal the limitation in quality of compressed audio files, such as.mp3 or.wma. Happy listening. The line input for recording works as well. This is probably because they are listening on little computer speakers, which are appropriate, in my opinion, in an office cubicle at low volume at best.
I recommend playing uncompressed audio files such as.wav,.aiff, CD's, or Apple lossless files to really demonstrate its capabilities. I found it to work very well with my aging Apple iMac G3 500 Mhz. I have tested and found several USB audio devices to work well, so you can't go wrong.
It would lock up, crop playlists following closing of the program, and add a "pop" sound one second after starting any mp3 that was not pre-loaded into the software player. I have used this little gadget for a couple of years now and have always been happy with the performance of the hardware itself. I've used this MP3+ on three different computers with different versions of Windows from Me to XP, but have only used the analog output and never the digital connection. I never could get the Creative MediaSource program and the other included software to work well. I would recommend the hardware to someone who wants good stereo sound and an easily-accessible headphone jack, but would recommend that you use other software with it. The included software is another issue.
I also wanted to be able to record from those digital outs. The manual also says there's only 44.1 KHz output when the switch is in digital mode only (which disables the analog line-outs), I was able to get 44.1 KHz digital output even in mixed digital/analog mode. Although the manual says wma drm files will not work with the digital output, it worked just fine for me. I wanted something with digital outputs so I could hook-up my laptop to my receiver's digital inputs. Without installing any drivers, the toslink output works just as expected.
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