Andrea Electronics C1-1021450-1 Model USB-SA-1 High Fidelity External Digital Sound Card with Noise Reduction Technology

Great sound card. I've been using these Andreas for almost 20 years in court reporting. Great quality.

I use mine with a lavaliere microphone that has a 3.5mm mini-plug, to record training videos onto my laptop for work. I have tried similar devices including those by Sabrent (noisiest, and does not work at all on some laptops), Turtle Beach (worked on my older laptops, useless on new ones), Audio-Technica (an improvement, but still noisy) and Plantronics (OK). This one is the best, because of the noise reduction when recording -- there's still some hiss, but so little that it's easily removed in Audacity or just ignored. My son also has one, which he uses as a headphone amplifier and it also works better with headphones than any similar device we have tried. So, between us we have found this the best choice for both sound in, and sound out, where USB is the best available interface but your listening or recording device has a standard mini-plug. Well worth the few extra dollars.

As far as I can tell, this particular adapter doesn't fail and start sounding robotic after extended (~1 hour) use. If you don't know what I'm talking about, good for you. But if you do know the problem where USB headset adapters go all robotic after a certain amount of time, buy this one. I'll update this review if I do experience it, but at present it's the only USB adapter I've used that doesn't have this problem.One negative: WOW is the blue LED bright. Easy enough to cover with a bit of Gorilla tape, but jeez, if you try to use this at night, the flashing blue will demand an immediate cover up.

I had the device plugged into my mac book for less than 60 seconds and an error came up saying that a USB device was drawing too much power and my laptop had shut it off. I unplugged the device and it was too hot to even touch. After letting it cool I tried it again and it was dead, the USB port still works fine but the device is done. It was scary to me how hot it got and how quickly it got there. Not sure why this happened but it is very unsettling. I bought this one for the reviews but I guess I got "the one".

This is the first time I have purchased this USB soundcard. I had another one that was way too sensitive for the kind of work that I was doing but this one has been terrific!I use Dragon Medical Practice Edition Version 4 for all of my dictation needs and I also market it and I recommend an external soundcard for all my customers simply because the sound cards inside computers and laptops are definitely inferior and will not be able to handle the kind of dictation needs that this Andrea Electronics external soundcard provides. I use it for my tabletop gooseneck microphone and also for my stereo dictation headphones. The sound comes through very well and the accuracy with dictation is terrific. There is no instability as I experienced with the other soundcard. I highly recommend it!

Am so glad I bought this. My laptop has an internal mic that I could not disable so this did the trick. I am now able to plug in an external mic and the sound is great.

I needed this for my classes, and it does a pretty good job. I have had a few instances where I had to wiggle my microphone around to get it to recognize the mic from the computer, but I haven't had that problem lately.

I needed this because I got a new computer and most new computers don't have separate input/output aka separate mic/audio jacks anymore and only have the audio now. I didn't realize this until I bought my new computer. For my work I need to record from my computer using an external microphone. The audio was terrible/unusable before buying this little gem, and now it is GREAT! Very happy!