🎧 Vantec UGT-S220 7.1 Channel PCIe Sound Card Review

For almost a year I have been using this sound card for my home theater which is connected to my Harman Kardon AVR 3600 surround sound receiver via the optical port. I bought it because I needed a low profile sound card with SPDIF output. It generally worked, but I've encoded a lot of movies as MKV files in DTS. Regardless of the player software, this card wants to revert to Dolby Digital when you pause the movie. So let's say you take a break to go to the bathroom, it switches from DTS to…

Dunno what the one star reviewer got wrong but this card is easy to set up and install, don't listen to his review. You can download the drivers from the CD or the Vantec website, but Windows 7 uses generic drivers and it works fine. I use it with HTPC for SPIDF output and it sends a nice 5.1 surround sound signal to my receiver. Get a good cable, like the Belkin PureAV Digital Coax [. ]

I bought a Vantec 7.1 channel PCI sound card to fix faulty onboard sound hardware in a 10 year old Dell Replace Dimension 8300 with Windows 7 (32-bit) Home Premium. Although the Vantec card is clearly overkill for an old 2 channel speaker box, I was pleased to find a very cheap PCI slot product in this card that clearly claims the support of Windows 7 websites . sites. In the end, while I'm fairly happy with the UGT-S100, my own ignorance of the one step that seemed required to properly…

I needed a SPDIF out and this worked. Very inexpensive. It took a bit of fiddling with the drivers to get it working, but I managed.

switched back to onboard audio as this card was causing occasional PC crashes and lots of noise with headphones plugged in.