USB External 7.1 Channel Audio Adapter

One year in. I use a desktop PC as a Home Theater PC (HTPC) that I have plugged into a Yamaha receiver. I was using a Sound Blaster sound card in it and the results were "ok" but not great - a distinct lack of silence when nothing was playing. The receiver has a built in DAC that is better than that on the sound blaster or the one built into the PC. I plugged this little dude into the USB port and connected it to my receiver with an optical cable and: IT WORKS! I'm using Linux and the operating system recognized the device immediately, as did the receiver. Whether I'm playing audio files or the sound from movies I'm watching from Amazon/Netflix/Hulu/etc, the sound is much better than from the SoundBlaster card or the onboard sound circuit in the PC. The biggest downside is that MP3s may sound worse as you can hear the imperfections of compression, so, if you are ripping CDs, make sure you use a lossless encoder like FLAC. There are much more expensive boards for this, but unless you have a dedicated room and VERY highend equipment on the other side of the cable, this is as good of a device as you need to get sound from a PC into a receiver and you can put your extra money toward other things that would give a greater improvement - like better speakers. My Yamaha has 3 digital inputs, and many others do as well. Using an outboard DAC is the best way to get sound out of a PC as the analog circuits are too exposed to electrical noise from the motherboard and accessories. By allowing (in my case) the receiver, which is designed to be as noiseless as possible, you greatly improve the sound quality. I've also noticed the CPU runs slightly less than with the sound blaster. FINAL NOTE: I would NOT buy this for the analog outputs and only bought this as a test in using a SPDIF to DAC on my receiver. I feel the analog ports are no better than the ports built in to the PC. They might come in handy if I needed to use it with the analog ports on a preamp that didn't have a DAC, AND needed to move it often - but there are probably better devices for that use.

This Vantec NBA-200U is a very affordable way to add multichannel sound to a PC or laptop. In my living room, my Windows 11 laptop drives the Vantec via USB. Analog cables run from the Vantec into a Denon AVR 3805 receiver. The Denon, a 7.1 receiver that is about 20 years old ($70 on craigslist), drives two pairs of speakers, making this a 4.0 setup that can be easily upgraded to 5.0, 5.1 or 7.1. This setup allows me to play two-channel (stereo) music, or four-channel music, or surround-sound movies out of my laptop. In another part of the house, I have a much more expensive - really what I call "snob level" - sound system with components such as Krell, Threshold, Martin Logan, etc..., but, most of the time, I enjoy this "cheap" setup because that's where I spend most of my time. Finally, this system, centered around a laptop and the Vantec, has run for years without a problem; I'm just now getting around to reviewing it.

Needing clean pro audio to compose music using Reaper & Kontakt on my Win. 10 1903 Desktop PC, I got this USB 2.0 to 7.1 Channel Audio version Adapter due to my old internal Asus 7.1 soundcard causing big pops, a reported issue with all Win. 10 builds. I connected it from the desktop (see 1st pic) to my old Harman-Kardon wired 5.1 1700 AVR Receiver with an Optical-Spdif cable, then carefully followed the 2, below posted installation & setup guides by Amazon Users Jose_49, & GiGNet, respectively. I was initially stumped testing the Virtual Surround via the Win. 10 speaker setup, only getting left & right Stereo playback, until I chose to go online & play a YouTube video; THIS is where I & discovered what GIGNet was trying to explain, that Virtual ("fake") Surround only works with specific Surround sources, but as connected with a Digital Optical-Spdif cable using PCM Pass-Through, you'll only get 2 Stereo channels of "real" sound. So unless you configure any desktop software with surround or multiple outputs, L-R Stereo is all you will get offline. The GOOD NEWS is (depending on your Receiver), connected with Digital Optical-Spdif & using PCM (Pass Through), it CAN play: PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital 2.0 to 5.1, Dolby Digital EX 6.1, DTS Digital Surround, DTS-ES Matrix 6.1, DTS-ES Discrete 6.1, & DTS 96/24 (96kHz/24bit audio). It CANNOT play: 5.1/7.1 multi-channel PCM, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS:X, or Auro 3D Audio. This is the MAIN thing PC users must get to avoid an exercise in futility, just carefully follow the below pasted Amazon user instructions I've mentioned for Win. 10, connect to your AVR Receiver with an Optical-Spdif cable (see 2nd pic for how I setup my Vantec C-Media Software Panel for PCM Pass Through with NO EFFECTS), & you're good to go! From Jose_49 "Here it goes: 1st. Download Driver From Vantec Site 2nd. Open it and extract its content anywhere, in the case of this example I'm going to open the file and copy and paste the folder "CM6206-1.08(QR)" into my desktop. There will be a bunch of folders in there. 3rd. DO NOT CLICK Setup.exe (I know you did it ! ) 4th. Go to the extracted folder and head into "WIN81(WHQL)", there you will see a "Setup.exe" and "Setup.ex_" file YES, with the underscore at the end. 5th. Rename "Setup.exe" to "Setup.exe_bak" (or whatever) 6th. Rename "Setup.ex_" to "Setup.exe" 7th. Run "Setup.exe" by double clicking or pressing enter. 8th. You will now see the "Installing USB Multi-Channel Audio Device". If it asks you to connect it, connect the device. 9th. Restart your PC. 10th. After restarting on the task bar at the right (system tray) you'll see a blue icon. Double click to configure. 11th. Enjoy! " --------------------------------------------- From GiGNet. "This device works exactly as advertised...if you know what you are doing. They key here is that this device is NOT a Dolby Digital/DTS Decoder. You need an optical connected device than can decode the uncompressed PCM stream. My use case was simple. I needed optical digital PCM pass through to my Logictech Z906 system for watching movies and listening to music in Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1. Here is the thing. To make this work you just have to a) set the Vantec software to PCM ON - the rest of the settings are analog related and don't mean anything in this case - Then, Windows 10 just sees the device as digital output via USB - nothing to do there. b) You must set whatever client you are using i.e. VLC, PLEX to NOT transcode the audio rather to pass it through. This is a super important step. If you don't do this you will get what sounds like a weird hybrid of stereo/surround that sounds terrible- remember SPDIF is really just two channels of audio - but when you pass PCM the assumption is that your connected device can decode the PCM stream - in this case Dolby, DTS, etc. Once you have made that settings change in your client the next thing is to make sure whatever movie or music file you are playing is in fact encoded for the expected format - playing a two channel AC3 movie or a stereo MP3 is not going to sound like you'd expect - remember, whatever you send to the SDPIF output it is going to expect to be decoded by the connected device. Story short, all you need to do is make sure your computer is outputting PCM (PCM is uncompressed data) and you will be loving your little Vantec device."

Using a USB switch to switch between a Mac and a PC. The PC has 5.1 surround speakers. Tried just doing 2.1 from Mac and 5.1 from PC with a 3.5 switch, but there was a quite a bit of line noise. Found this little device and hooked it up it works great. Whenever I switch computers on the USB switch the sound card comes with it. I've not heard any sound anomalies and high and low pitches sound great. The device is old. It doesn't even list Windows 10, let alone Windows 11. However, both the Windows 11 PC and the Mac Pro M4 recognize the device without drivers and output 5.1. Great solution for me.

Like many other reviewers, I bought this device because I wasn't satisfied with the audio adapter on the motherboard of my Windows 10 PC. My speakers support Dolby 5.1, and I wanted take advantage of that feature. The price was right and it seemed like the right choice. Set up was easy. I first downloaded the driver from here: https://vantecusa.com/search_dl.php?keyword=NBA-200U The downloaded file was compressed, so I had to decompress it in Windows Explorer: Left click on file (nba-200u_v8182166) the right click on the file and select "Extract All". That produces the directory nba-200u_v8182166. I ran the Setup file in that directory and followed the menu instructions which includes plugging in the device into a USB port when prompted and plugging in the speakers. I then rebooted. Once rebooted, I opened the Windows 10 Control Panel, went to "Hardware and Sound", then "Manage audio devices". I selected "Speakers USB Multi-Channel Audio Device". Then I clicked on "Configure". I followed the steps to setup 5.1 Surround Sound. I assume 7.1 would also work if that's what your speakers support. You might also have to select a microphone as well. Without any further adjustments there was already a big sound improvement from before, but I wanted to see how good I could make it. I tried various mp3 players and settings. What worked best for me was the VLC media player with a few adjustments to the settings. In VLC, I clicked on "Tools" then "Effects and Filters". I enabled the Compressor and also set the Equalizer to "Large Hall". It sounds pretty awesome, MUCH better than the motherboard audio adapter I was using. As others have suggested, I covered the super bright blue LED with black tape.

[Update: Sept. 4th, 2016] Download this: [...] Just run setup.exe, and restart your computer. You're good to go! [Update: After experimenting for a while I discovered I didn't' have true 5.1 and/or 7.1 surround sound - Found a Fix] Hello again. (June 6th, 2015) update: I was tinkering around my sound card and noticed that I didn't have true surround output with the fix I showed to you. Fortunately there's a workaround for installing the program and outputting correctly the sound. This has been tested on Windows 10 Build 10130. Here it goes: 1st. Download this file [...]2nd. Open it and extract its content anywhere, in the case of this example I'm going to open the file and copy and paste the folder "CM6206-1.08(QR)" into my desktop. There will be a bunch of folders in there. 3rd. DO NOT CLICK Setup.exe (I know you did it ;) ) 4th. Go to the extracted folder and head into "WIN81(WHQL)", there you will see a "Setup.exe" and "Setup.ex_" file YES, with the underscore at the end!. 5th. Rename "Setup.exe" to "Setup.exe_bak" (or whatever) 6th. Rename "Setup.ex_" to "Setup.exe" 7th. Run "Setup.exe" by double clicking or pressing enter. 8th. You will now see the "Installing USB Multi-Channel Audio Device". If it asks you to connect it, connect the device. 9th. Restart your PC. 10th. After restarting on the task bar at the right (system tray) you'll see a blue icon. Double click to configure 11th. Enjoy! :D ****ORIGINAL**** Here's a quick guide on how to get working it on Windows 10 (and other Windows versions in case setup does not work): 1st. Download this file [...] 2nd. Open it and extract its content anywhere, in the case of this example I'm going to open the file and copy and paste the folder "CM6206-1.08(QR)" into my desktop. There will be a bunch of folders in there. 3rd. DO NOT CLICK Setup.exe (I know you did it ;) ) 4th. Plug in your device to your PC, wait for Windows to finish installing your device. (It doesn't matter if you plugged in the device before extracting the files, but before step 5 you need to have it plugged in!) 5th. After Windows finished installing the device, head to Device Manager. To open it, press start and type "Device Manager" Or press Win + X, then M 6th. Go where it says "Sound, video and game controllers", and find USB Audio Device. Right Click on it and select "Update Driver Software" 7th: Click "Browse my computer for driver software" 8th: Now, where it said "Search for driver software in this location, click "Browse". And go to the extracted folder, since in my case I extracted it to the desktop I head to the desktop, and open my folder. Go to this folder: (this is your extracted folder) CM6206-1.08(QR) => WIN81(WHQL) => SoftwareDriver With SoftwareDriver highlighted, press OK. 9. Click Next 10. Wait for Windows to finish installing the drivers. 11. Go to the Speaker icon at the right bottom of your taskbar. Right click and select "Playback Devices" 12. Select "Digital Output" and then "Set Default". Press OK 13. You now have setup your digital adapter! :D :D :D In case you need to roll back to your previous configuration, repeat steps 11 - 12. Instead of selecting "Digital Output" select your original device. Now about the proper product, I've seen an increase in sound quality Sounds louder, brighter and deep bass can be appreciated. I'm no audiophile so I don't have that ability to perceive great sound quality... But for me it was worth the addition! Now rocking 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound in my Y510p ;)

Rating is based on only one feature - the Line-In. The Vantec's Line In feature doesn't work. I was looking for a USB product that will make up for the fact that my notebook computer doesn't have a line-in jack. The product I was looking for had to provide a line-in capability or functionality which is IDENTICAL to the one provided by the line-in jacks of computers that have them. To record using the Line In feature of computers that do have line-in jack, (1) connects the Out jack of a cassette player (which has such a jack) to the line-in jack of the computer (by an appropriate cable), (2) either from inside the recording program's interface, or at the Recording Control of Volume Control, one selects the Line In option (and set the desired volume), then (3) one presses the Play button at the cassette player, and gives the Record command at the recording program. The program records what the cassette player is playing, directly (as opposed to acoustically) from the cassette player's Out jack. As it turned out the Line In of the Vantec doesn't work. Using the same cassette player, cable, and recording program, which work flawlessly with computers' line-in jacks, (and, obviously, the audio device or driver that comes with the Vantec product) does not result with any recording. I returned the product.

So I got this based off of people's reviews on the product stating it works with Macs, and discredited the one review that states it isn't Mac compatable. Well I would like to backup that review but make one edit, it work about halfway with my iMac. I say halfway because it does allow me to switch to my external speakers, but it only allows me to use my sub and two front speakers. It does NOT allow me to use the center or two rear speakers. I've looked all over the web to find a driver or something to import into the sound settings but I can NOT find anything. Therefore if you want surround sound with your iMac, DO NOT buy this device. I would recommend getting a single bose speaker that is supposed to provide surround sound or something 100% Mac compatable, but from what I've researched there are NO 5.1 system that are Mac compatable. I've decided to keep this device so I can hook it up to my laptop or any other PC computer I might get in the future.

For apartment TV (58 inch Hisense), the headphone output is 2.0. Using and old laptop, with the Vantec NBA-0200U Usb device plugged into a usb 2.0 port, ... it became a new external audio device to use with regular headphones with a 3.5 mm male plug. Using the SPDIF TV output to the NBA-200U(cable not included), FosPower (0.9M/3FT) 24K Gold Plated Toslink Digital Optical Audio Cable (S/PDIF) - [Zero RFI & EMI Interference] Metal Connectors & Ultra Durable Nylon Braided Jacket. Once the external audio device is properly configured, the NBA-200U Adaptor front panel headphone jack, provides an incredible 7.1 "clean" sound field ... that can only be believed once heard ! The result is that now, ... in an apartment setting, the audio output from any TV source fed into NBA-200U Adaptor becomes a "surround experience" that will rival a big buck audio system, ... in stealth mode. The unit is an old school 2012 type of unit, and the software looks dated, BUT IT SURE WORKS FINE ! Such an inexpensive solution to achieve a sound field of astonishing proportions. What a GREAT device and RESULT !

En connectant le Vantec sur un port USB d'une Shield TV Pro (le nouveau modèle), je pensais pouvoir avoir un son Dolby Digital 5.1 sur la sortie optique. Et bien non ! Stéréo au mieux. Par contre ça fonctionne en le connectant sur le port USB d'un PC sous W10 mais c'est pour moi sans intérêt. Je retournerai donc le produit.

Lo compre en un inicio para conectar la salida audio óptico de mi Tv a la entrada de audio óptico de la tarjeta Vantec pero no dio señal, probé con otros dispositivos como Xbox one, play 4 y otra computadora con salida optical y estos si daban señal, por lo que deduje que la salida optical de mi tv era la que no servía y la entrada optical de la tarjeta Vantec si. Por lo tanto, estaba a nada de regresarla debido en que no cumplía lo que requería pero me convenció la excelente calidad de sonido que tiene a pesar de ser externa y de bajo costo, la recomiendo.

I like the VANTEC USB external audio adapter, works like a charm, the only complaint I have, I couldn't purchase it locally, had to buy it from the US of A, but only took one week to arrive, that's cool, the price tag is very affordable, They even have a web site for this product should you need support, Oh and it works on Windows 10 32/64 Bit systems. Installation and use worked with out any problems, in 5 mins I was up and running, I'm a happy camper now.

I got this for my nvidia shield tv pro and it works well however i thought it comes with the USB cable but unfortunately it doesn't. On the instruction manual, its mentioned it comes with the cable, but its not when i opened the box