CreativeSound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1 USB Sound Card with High Performance Headphone Amp and Integrated Beam Forming Microphone

I am a cheap audiophile. You will never see me wearing those wooden Audio Technica headphones, but I do not like cheap earbuds either. Just to mention my set up: I have a pair of $50 Logitech speakers, a $60 pair of headphones from Audio Technica (ATH-M30), and a Turtle Beach XP 500 headset that I have used extensively for 3 years. The speakers and the heaphones use 3.5mm and the headset uses optical. My motherboard can't handle all of these devices being plugged in at once. Windows craps itself when I have 2 3.5mm devices plugged in at once. Plus, I do not have SPDIF on my motherboard and I have been wanting to use my XP 500 headset for a while on here. So I had 2 choices. I could either get an internal sound card or an external sound card.I looked at the Z series from Soundblaster and they looked nice, but the problem is that I do not know if I can physically fit anything on my motherboard because my video card heatsink almost hits the 3rd PCI-e slot. So I looked around and came across this. I actually didn't know Soundblaster made an external sound card until I just Googled "USB sound card." I heard that PCI-e sound cards sound better, but I honestly don't think my ears are so sensitive that they would be able to tell a difference.Specs: The front of the unit has a beamforming mic that lets you talk to people while typing but doesn't register your typing unless you manually adjust the beamforming settings via the control panel software. The front has 3 inputs: headphones, mic, and audio in. Those take priority over the back. If you have your headphones plugged in, your speakers will go off. Then when you unplug your headphones, the speakers will come back automatically with no delay. (note, any optical connection will not prioritize like this because you must select it in Playback Devices. If it is selected then it will be used no matter what else is plugged in.) There is obviously some hardware on the circuit board controlling that because if it were simply software controlling it through Windows, you would have to wait a half hour for it to register the change (burn against Windows). On the back there is an RCA output that you plug your 3.5mm speaker connector to via an included adapter. They did this to increase connectivity options. Then on the back there are 2 3.5mm rear and center outputs as well as an optical out. And the entire thing is connected to the PC via micro USB. So, onto my review. I will start with the bad and end on a good note.Cons: 2 cons. First, the optical device must be selected in Windows via Playback Devices. I was actually hoping to be able to skip ever messing with Playback Devices. When you select the optical device (called SPDIF-OUT), you have to stop all processes that are making sound and then restart them. If you are on Youtube, you have to reload the video. If you are in a game, you have to restart the game. I think the included software, which is amazing, should take care of this automatically. Second gripe, The volume knob only controls the sound through Windows. I would have liked to see the volume knob control the volume through the device itself. It is like if you use the volume control on your speakers. You expect your knob to control the sound through the device and not through Windows. This is only a problem because it might take a few seconds for the volume control to register. You will be turning the knob up and down for a few seconds and then Windows will adjust the volume accordingly, with a long delay. But this only happens the first time you adjust the volume after turning on the PC or waking it from sleep. After that, the volume control is immediate.Now that I got the gripes out of the way, onto the pros.Pros: I will get to the sound quality in a minute, but I want to start small and end big. This thing is very convenient. It is a one stop hub for all of your sound devices. All of those connectivity options I mentioned are nice to have when you have multiple devices, and the fact that they all play nice with each other is another plus. These things are easy to overlook, but Creative should be given credit for it. I think Creative put a lot of thought into the convenience of their device. It also has rubber pads on the bottom to keep it on the desk which adds to the convenience because all of those wires will pull against it. I've had USB hubs that would fall to the floor because the wires were stiff and would pull them. Not so with this device.The beamforming mic is nice. Of course you must set it up in the control panel, and that brings me to the next point. I paid $70 for this. If you were to tell me that half of the cost of this was on the software, I would be OK with that. The software has ALMOST everything you need. I say almost because I still use Razer's surround software for my Audio Technica M30s. I am not the most technical guy when it comes to sound, but if you are very technical, this thing has many options in it for you.Finally, onto the sound quality. When I used the headphones with the on board audio, they would hit the highest volume and still be too quiet and still become distorted as if I had it blasting the sound. I could not tell different drums apart in certain songs or I wouldn't be able to tell different guitars apart, ect. There was not enough of the spectrum. All mids basically (My motherboard has Realtek 887 I believe so if you have a motherboard with Realtek 887, you know what I mean). I turn the Omni on 1/4 of the way high with my speakers and I turn war tapes mode on in Battlefield 4 and I am blown away. Games sound amazing, music sounds amazing, and I assume movies will sound amazing but I do not use my PC for movies so I don't know. I like to emphasize mids when listening to music, but I also like the highs and lows to come in at a reasonable level because I am a normal human and I do things the correct way. I am able to easily do that with the equalizer. With the headphones on, I am able to listen to things louder and every different sound is distinct.With my Turtle Beach XP 500, I am able to finally use these on my PC. In order to use these in 5.1 mode, I have to enable Dolby Digital Live in the Omni control panel and make sure the light on the XP 500 receiver is on above the D symbol. I do not have to use Razer's surround software on this, only on the 3.5mm headphones if I want them to act as virtual surrouns headphones.And that is it. This thing was well worth the money. Realtek seems to spend 5 cents and a used cigarette on the on board audio and it shows.Oh, and this works on your laptop too.4 and 1/2 stars for an amazing product. Minus half a star for the volume control being through Windows and not through the device. The optical device needing to be selected in Playback Devices is the other concern. It would have been nice for there to be a small button on this near each plug for the different output devices so the Omni could control them directly instead of channeling the unholy Playback Devices demon in Windows.

I've been a massive fan of Creative SoundBlasters since my first 386DX in 1991, with my first SoundBlaster Pro. They have always had incredible hardware and sound processing. Despite my personal fanboy feelings, not everything Creative has always been a success story. Their drivers are sometimes a massive headache and its a shame because so much care usually goes into the hardware and design of their products. I bought a SoundBlaster ZxR sound card that NEVER worked right and only ever came on on occasion and was told by Creative that it was a timing issue on the PCI-e of my motherboard and that it was something my motherboard had to fix. Considering that my only problem that I had on my Gigabyte motherboard, a name brand motherboard, was the SoundBlaster I found this to be kind of terrible service, regardless of if it was truly the issue or not. Considering that my other peripherals had no issues on PCI-e that means either their CS was wrong or there was an issue that THEY should have worked out, not Gigabyte, since my NVIDIA cards seemed to communicate fine with the PCI-e ports.So that being said, Creative can be a frustrating company to work with and if you've had problems with them in the past I can understand your frustrations. Thankfully, if you are looking at buying this Omni 5.1 unit, I can assure you that it seems free of problems or issues. The sound is crisp and powerful and it transformed my laptop into a true powerhouse gaming rig with real true powerful sound. Even YouTube videos sound cleared through my Logitech desktop speakers.Creative is in an interesting position. I think they still make great hardware, but the need for aftermarket soundcards has dwindled immensely these days. Most PCs tend to come with built in Crystal Audio or RealTek built into the motherboards and the audio processing even on those has gotten so good - and often even support 7.1 surround - that most people won't find the need for aftermarket audio units like this. I can understand that. I'm a bit of an audiophile so I prefer the crispness of a SoundBlaster or even a Turtle Beach or something like that, but I'll admit that there are plenty of situations where I am hard pressed to tell the difference these days. That being said, the fine tuning of a SoundBlaster is still preferred to me and once you put on headphones the whole game changes. Laptop speakers aren't going to produce great results no matter what, but if you plug in a pair of headphones into your laptop and then hook it up to a SoundBlaster like this, you probably WILL notice a difference. Not everyone notices the nuances in sound, and if that's the case your built in sound is probably where you'll be happy to stay. Something like this is for if you REALLY tend to notice the minute details in clarity, small audio details, and nuances. Be warned though, that a card like this can also make lower quality audio a bit more noticable (the audio noise present in a 160kbps MP3 file is much more noticeable when you run it through a high quality sound processor like this).Overall its a great card. I'd even recommend it if you use a desktop PC, as the need for a PCIe based add-in card really isn't that necessary anymore, unless you just want to reduce the amount of peripherals connected to your PC or on your desk. Otherwise, USB is simple and mostly plug and play. You'll definitely want to download the latest drivers and software from Creative for the best experience. I read some experiences with this saying that the firmware on this was terrible, but the unit I got seems to have a newer and corrected firmware preinstalled, as when I tried to update the firmware myself, I was told I was already up to the most current. That that seems to have been resolved. I almost decided to go with a SoundBlasterX plug and play USB, but I'm glad I spent the extra money and went with this. At my laptop station, the volume control and omni microphone along was worth it, and the media passthrough was enough of a draw for me alone. If you have nice desktop speakers though, you owe it to them to give them great audio to work with, so this is a solid purchase choice.Pros:-Creative makes great hardware and the Omni 5.1 is no exception-Small footprint and easy to set up. High grade audio without having to install a card is a big plus and makes everything nice and easy.-The control module is convenient and looks nice on the desktop-A great way to convert your PC into a 5.1 speaker setup.Cons:-Maybe a bit pricey for some. If you aren't a big audiophile you may not notice enough of an improvement to justify this expense.-Again, if you tend to not notice the subtle differences in audio quality or aren't a stickler for Hi-Def audio, this may not be necessary and your built in audio may be enough to keep you happy. I find that the average person doesn't necessarily notice a difference between this and the motherboard audio that came with the PC, in which case this may not be worth spending money on.-May add unwanted clutter to your desk space if you like to keep things clear on your workspace