Sound BlasterX G6 (GREY)

My 13-year-old amp blew up and died so needed just a headphone amp for my pc duties and this little box has worked really well so far.Sound quality and loudness both very good for the price.

The G6 is an awesome USB sound card. Using headphones, the sound is excellent, the amplifier makes listening on earphones an absolute joy. Music is louder and just sounds better than with my built-in sound card.But... Earphones wasn't the main reason for purchasing an external sound card. The various other outputs and the ability to connect it to anything, was.Creative, with their prestige and experience, decided not to fully implement the SPDIF protocol on the output, which means the volume and mute function cannot be controlled on the device connected via optical cable. So, increasing and decreasing the volume and muting, using Windows sound controls or the volume knob on the G6 itself does nothing. I have to reach for the remote to control the sound levels. It's a mild inconvenience, but when one is used to using the keyboard to control volume, it's an irritating change to get used to.Even more an irritation when you consider that the SPDIF optical input is able to be controlled from Windows.A major flaw, for me, unfortunately. If you don't require the optical output, though, I'd say: go for it! It's an awesome sound card.I emailed Creative and they're not too interested in explaining the issue.