Home > Consumer Reviews > Sabrent SND-P8CH 8-Channel 7.1 High-Performance Surround Sound 3D PCI Sound Card Controller
Sabrent SND-P8CH 8-Channel 7.1 High-Performance Surround Sound 3D PCI Sound Card Controller
See it at Amazon.com for $12.95Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
it gets the job done
(4 out of 5) by Lenny on Mar 11, 2009 (Baltimore, MD)I purchased this sound card because I was getting static through the mic on my onboard sound. I was looking for something inexpensive that would give me a clean mic input and clean sound. It has certainly worked on all accounts.
Installation was easy enough, although I would recommend that you just ignore the drivers disc. It was easy enough to go online and find the drivers I needed, and after a couple reboots it was working fine.
I will say that I'm not really pushing the limits of the card, I use either a pair of stereo desktop speakers with a subwoofer, or my headphones with the mic. I haven't tried setting up anything close to a 7.1 setup. Then again, that's why I wanted an inexpensive card - I wasn't going to spend $100 for a sound card to listen to through headphones!
I give it four stars because of the drivers - it wasn't hard but it wasn't easy either. Overall, this card does exactly what I was looking for - a no frills sound card that gives me clean sound.
Installation was easy enough, although I would recommend that you just ignore the drivers disc. It was easy enough to go online and find the drivers I needed, and after a couple reboots it was working fine.
I will say that I'm not really pushing the limits of the card, I use either a pair of stereo desktop speakers with a subwoofer, or my headphones with the mic. I haven't tried setting up anything close to a 7.1 setup. Then again, that's why I wanted an inexpensive card - I wasn't going to spend $100 for a sound card to listen to through headphones!
I give it four stars because of the drivers - it wasn't hard but it wasn't easy either. Overall, this card does exactly what I was looking for - a no frills sound card that gives me clean sound.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
painful to install, but sounds ok
(3 out of 5) by J. Chen on Apr 8, 2009Cons:
CD does not work, has to download driver from www.sabrent.com. sabrent's driver's autorun does not support windows 7 yet. I had to go to device manager and install driver manually. There are 6 identical jacks. The jacks do not follow standard color coding convention. No manual or label to tell the user which jack is front, rear, center, etc. Although it is possible that the label is on the green board, but I did not want to take it out again after I inserted it into the pci slot. I had to manually test it out by trial and error. Installation and setup very painful.
Pros:
Once you get it setup, it does give you the surround sound as intended, and works pretty well for the price. A worthwhile upgrade if you only have a 2 channel built audio.
CD does not work, has to download driver from www.sabrent.com. sabrent's driver's autorun does not support windows 7 yet. I had to go to device manager and install driver manually. There are 6 identical jacks. The jacks do not follow standard color coding convention. No manual or label to tell the user which jack is front, rear, center, etc. Although it is possible that the label is on the green board, but I did not want to take it out again after I inserted it into the pci slot. I had to manually test it out by trial and error. Installation and setup very painful.
Pros:
Once you get it setup, it does give you the surround sound as intended, and works pretty well for the price. A worthwhile upgrade if you only have a 2 channel built audio.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Beware of CD
(3 out of 5) by Paul R. Wilson on Mar 17, 2009I installed the card after removing previous audio software and bios settings. Then came the software install which didn't work properly right away. Crust of the matter, it corrupted my operating system!!!! After reinstalling my whole PC system, I downloaded the driver directly from C-Media and it installed properly. So far, so good! Throw the cd away!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Sabrent Sound Card
(4 out of 5) by Timothy I. Mutch on Jan 11, 2009 (Spokane Valley, WA USA)I had to get the supporting and installation software from Sabrent, as the disk that came with the card was worthless, but Sabrent support was excellent. I downloaded the software and was pleased with it and the quality of the sound for a very affordable sound card.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Sabrent Sound Card
(4 out of 5) by Joshua Peloquin on Feb 3, 2009 (Antigo, WI. USA)The card installed easily but had problems with the set-up until after getting the driver update.