I purchased this product to improve the sound quality of my laptop primarily for streaming movies online and routing the sound through my home theater system. I chose this particular product because it has a digital optical output and that is the best input option for my home theater system that could allow 5.1 sound.
I was able to set it up and get sound easily, but the sound quality was garbled at times and was only coming out over 2 speakers. The supplied instructions gave no information on how to configure the system with digital optical output.
After a couple of hours spent fiddling with the control settings, downloading and installing beta drivers, and reading posts, I learned in a post that the sound output within the OS control panel needs to be changed to use the digital output as opposed to the analog output if it is configured the way I have it.
Just with that simple change, everything worked. The sound quality is great and coming out in full surround. My only complaint is that this is not written anywhere in the start up manual and I wasted a good amount of time figuring this out. This point could be made very easily in the quick start guide and it would save a lot of time and agony.
I have a engineering masters degree, and I can imagine that some people who have given this product poor reviews might have given up sooner. I have a good deal of patience for this type of thing and I know many do not. It seems like a silly problem to have, when the product is actually good - all it needs is a better manual. The way I am using it seems like a pretty typical application of the product, so I would imagine that it would merit writing about it in the startup manual.Get more detail about Creative Labs SB1090 USB Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Audio System.
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