Review on HT OMEGA CLARO Channel Sound by Delos Rodeo

Summary: This is the best sound card I have ever had for a computer. Highly recommended for stereo output. Long version. I've owned and used quite a few sound cards and dedicated DACs for gaming, listening to music and powering professional audio applications. These include the original 8-bit Sound Blaster, the newer ASUS Xonar, AudioQuest Dragonfly, Focusrite Saffire and many more. With the HT Omega Claro II, I haven't tried any speaker configurations other than stereo, and I haven't attempted to record via mic or line-in. Generally 2 channel output for listening to music, games and movies. That's what my rating is based on. The sound card is connected to a Musical Fidelity A5 integrated amplifier, which in turn drives a pair of Magneplanar 1.7 and a REL T-9 subwoofer. a hint of audible hiss at any volume, and the sound is fantastic - very faithfully reproduced from FLAC-encoded audio files. I did some blind tests between a very good CD player (Rotel RCD-855) and playing the same music through an HT Omega (FLAC, Foobar2000, Core Streaming) and couldn't tell any difference. Finally, the first card I received was defective, but HT Omega support was kind enough to help diagnose and send a replacement when it was clearly defective. In short, the computer detected that the sound card was connected, but the drivers were not installed. The second card worked with a bang.