Gadgetory

while Sal cards have pretty much gone the way of the dodo there is still a market for high-quality sound on laptops and even some desktops the creative soundblaster x7 is a curious Beast it's a USB sound card that also doubles as a stereo amplifier plus enables you to record to a PC as well oh and it has Bluetooth and a smartphone app and $400 it certainly packs in a lot of features but is this something you might need build quality is only barely acceptable sadly for a while it looks pretty sitting on the desktop it's too lightweight it moves around on the desk when you plug things in and the buttons scrape when you push them while it has the outputs for surround sound and it decodes Dolby Digital it's really designed to be used as a stereo device with a 100 watt stereo amplifier built-in and 2 headphone outputs meanwhile hooking up surround sound means you would have to forego the amplifier altogether and in this case you'd be better off just paying for a cheaper card the amp accepts the line-in as well as a digital optical input and these can be used to listen to consoles or even your TV as well as record to the PC unfortunately there's no remote and there's also no input selection so everything including the Bluetooth input will play at once if you let it however the smartphone app does offer some control over sound settings and volume being able to use the device to play Bluetooth music while the PC is off is also handy sound quality is fine as other sound blaster cards which is to say it's very good and the amp is even good enough to drive speakers worth up to 600 or $700 of course you'll find that more modest speakers like for example the $300 audio engine p4s will make a better match you could also consider the emu XM 7 speakers and I would personally only use them with this amp as it has a specific EQ setting to tame their overly bright treble is this sound cut better than a dedicated USB and at the same price no but if you're looking for a desktop and slash sound card that will also record to a PC say if you're a musician or a podcaster then the x7 is pretty niche but also pretty capable this is ty Pendlebury for cnet.com you