Review on 🎧 StarTech.com 7.1 USB Sound Card - External Sound Card for Laptop with SPDIF Digital Audio - PC Sound Card Silver (ICUSBAUDIO7D) by Michael Barry

Finally I can replace the onboard sound card (Realtek). The built in card was fine until I had to look for new drivers after reinstalling and couldn't find any that were compatible with Windows 10. I tried several and they were unstable at best and caused random system crashes. I even tried a new Creative Labs sound card and had the exact same problem finding stable drivers on Windows 10. So I removed all those failed attempts to install drivers manually with Autoruns (MS Sysinternals app) and then I had a clean stable system again I did it. Now that everything is disabled back to onboard audio in the BIOS and the system is stable with the default Windows audio driver, I thought I'd give this StarTech USB sound card a try because to be honest I didn't have any options and didn't want a new motherboard to buy (processor, memory, etc.) and I'm very glad I did. Installation was as easy as plugging into my Logitech G51 (5.1 surround sound system) and I had sound again. Well, at least the left/right stereo sound. At this point I didn't install the included StarTech USB drivers as I figured I'd run into the same issues with older drivers from 2008 on Windows 10, so I went in a completely different direction. That's what works for me. Instead of the StarTech drivers, I downloaded the Dolby Access app from the Windows Store (you can also get it from Dolby.com) and voila! I have Dolby Atmos sound on my 5.1 surround speakers! Sounds fantastic! You need to enable Spacial Sound and set it to "Dolby Atmos for Headphones" in the Sound Tray icon (not exactly intuitive). I believe it treats my Logitech 5.1 setup like headphones. The sound is very exciting. I liked it so much that I bought the Dolby DTS Headphone:X app. Since I can control the EQ from the Logitch G51 console, it works surprisingly well.