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[Jamil]

Like most people, I stopped buying sound cards many years ago.  I use the motherboard sound without complaints.  I ran into an issue where I accidentally tripped over my headset while walking away from my computer (wire got tangled around my leg or something silly).  The headphones still work okay, but the cable was yanked.  It seems to have caused an issue with my front headphone jack.  With the plug fully inserted into the jack, I do not hear sounds as I did in the past.  If I pull the headphone plug out of the socket a bit, I can hear audio perfectly just as I could prior to tripping over the cable.  I probably could look into getting the headphone jack replaced, but it's probably cheaper to buy a new sound card.

I am not even sure if I have a free PCIe slot for a sound card (I probably could free one up, or worse case I have a spare video card slot that is unused [can you even use a PCIe 1x card in a PCIe video slot?])  I am seeing that they now have USB sound adapters.  USB would be super easy, and I know they have made great improvements with USB audio devices in the past few years.  USB is still kind of slow though; hence my question--  I currently use a USB DAC for music.  I listen to it almost all the time while I use my computer.  The nice thing about it is that I can even play games that use mobo audio while continuing to use my DAC with zero issues.  With a USB sound device, would I be able to do this?  If I use my DAC to listen to 192kHz 24-bit tracks, can I also use the sound device simultaneously?  I could with the mobo audio.  Does anyone have experience with these USB sound devices?  Are they stable, or do you experience latency/break-ups/etc?  I am getting the Sound Blaster X G6 Hi-Res 130dB 32bit/384kHz Gaming DAC.

Thanks.

[JimH]

Try another headset.  It's possible you damaged it.

[Jamil]

You're correct -- I did damage the headset.  I have a new pair I was not using, and they work perfectly plugged all the way into the jack.  It's weird how my old pair sound perfect with the plug pulled part way out of the jack.  I wouldn't have thought this meant they were broken.  That's good news.  I still have the Sound Blaster DAC coming tomorrow, so I will experiment with it to find out these answers for myself.

[JimH]

Good.  If it's the plug itself, I think that would be easy to repair.

[Jamil]

You're correct -- I did damage the headset.  I have a new pair I was not using, and they work perfectly plugged all the way into the jack.  It's weird how my old pair sound perfect with the plug pulled part way out of the jack.  I wouldn't have thought this meant they were broken.  That's good news.  I still have the Sound Blaster DAC coming tomorrow, so I will experiment with it to find out these answers for myself.

I have the SoundBlasterX G6 right now.  I ordered it from Amazon.  The photo on that site doesn't give a clue of how small this thing is. I cannot imagine this even coming close to sound quality of the DAC on desktop.  This thing is absolutely puny.

[Jamil]

I have used this mini DAC as my primary sound device in Windows 10 for various scenarios.  I experience no problems at all with latency, sound drop-outs or anything poor.  For such a small device, it has a decent sound.  I would rate it better than my motherboard audio.  However, it does not compete with the DAC I primarily listen to music with.  To be fair though, I have a different set of headphones plugged into my primary DAC with a pair of Steel Series headset I bought from Best Buy into the SoundBlaster mini DAC.  The SoundBlaster I own only accepts small male input audio plugs, whereas my primary DAC accepts the larger male plug.  I cannot swap headphones easily to compare. 

Also, I played 192kHz 24-bit FLACs simultaneously through both USB DACs at the same time.  I encountered zero issues with sound quality alternating headphones between the two.  I saw no CPU usage via Task Manager while using it (USB is supposed to be CPU bound).  The USB cable for it is a small non-standard cable, so it is not easily replaceable if lost.  Also, the cable is not very long either.  I currently have it placed on-top of my primary DAC plugged into the rear of my workstation.

The SoundBlaster is okay for a replacement sound device.  It's better than on-board motherboard audio, and it appears to be resource inexpensive.

[Jamil]

After using the Sound BlasterX G6 for over one week now, I have one more comment on its performance.  I use my computer heavily for VoiP (my VoiP number is my landline; I have no other telephone service in my home other than my mobile phone).  This audio interface shines for hearing vocals.  I hear everyone speak more clearly than I ever could with onboard audio from my workstation.  It's actually very impressive for vocal audio quality.  Creative Labs has some gadget that I have enabled to improve my spoken voice as well as others.  It works very nicely.

[Le cong minh]

Hello everyone!
I am a new comer to JRiver , i am having JRiver , please help to teach me how to setup my JRiver 24 to play with USB 2.0 ST 30C3 . Many thanks to whom may help me .

[Awesome Donkey]

Hello everyone!
I am a new comer to JRiver , i am having JRiver , please help to teach me how to setup my JRiver 24 to play with USB 2.0 ST 30C3 . Many thanks to whom may help me .

These two wiki articles should help you get started.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Getting_Started
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Audio_Setup

[Jamil]

I am not even sure if I have a free PCIe slot for a sound card (I probably could free one up, or worse case I have a spare video card slot that is unused [can you even use a PCIe 1x card in a PCIe video slot?])

I recently bought a SoundBlaster AE-7 PCIe x1 sound card.  The answer to my question above about pluging a PCIe 1x card into a video slot is yes -- it works perfectly without a single issue.  I am currently doing this now under Windows 10 and was doing it under the latest Ubuntu LTS.  It works with no trouble at all.

A PCIe card is much faster than USB, so my SBx G6 is in storage at the moment to be used later.