StarTech.com USB Sound Card w/ SPDIF Digital Audio & Stereo Mic – External Sound Card for Laptop or PC – SPDIF Output (ICUSBAUDIO2D),Black 0.6" x 1.8"

Sorry I don't have a picture of the product; I forgot to take a picture of it before I placed them (I have two of these).These are great to use on the computer, the only problem is unless you have the right optical cable for these (they take the ones like look like Earphone Plug), you will need to buy an adaptor to use the standard optical cable on them. You're in luck Amazon does sell these in a two pack and they are not that much of a cost.Are there better converters than these, you better believe there are, but then you are talking big bucks. These do a great job for the price.

I bought this to use with my travel headphones, Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 wired headphones. The M2 headphones are very efficient, which means that I can hear even a little bit of noise. When I plugged them into my business laptop, I heard an annoying hiss. I tried a Creative E1 device and also heard an annoying hiss. With the ICUSBAUDIO2D device, I initially heard a loud hiss; but I turned the volume control dial down a bit, and very abruptly the hiss cut out. My music is still plenty loud enough.The left jack accepts the standard 4-ring plug for headphones + microphone all in one (common on mobile headphones). I was able to plug the M2 directly into that jack; headphones and microphone just worked.I use Linux, and the ICUSBAUDIO2D showed up in the Sound preferences as "USB Audio Device Analog Stereo". I had to adjust the amplification slider for the microphone all the way up or the M2's mic is too quiet, but after I did that it was just fine.Initially, bass sounded terrible. Anything with bass sounded muddy and smeared. But then I realized that the ICUSBAUDIO2D has a mini-equalizer feature: a 3-position sliding switch, with positions for Bass, Direct, and Treble. It defaults to "Bass" and it was applying some kind of bass boosting effect... and I didn't like what that effect was doing to my music. But no problem; once I figured it out, I switched it to "Direct" and I'll just leave it that way from now on. It sounds fine in "Direct" mode.Given how small and light this is, and given that my M2 headphones just plug right in and work with no adapter needed, I have found my new travel audio device. I'll just leave this in my laptop carrying bag all the time.EDIT: I have used this for about a month, and I am completely happy with it. You can get a better audio adapter but it will cost a lot more and probably need a separate power supply. Therefore I have upped my rating to 5 stars. It's the best in its class.

After 2015 Apple deleted the S/PDIF TOSLINK digital optical output on Macs. For digital quality direct connection (not using some BT link thing) you need one of these. It (seems to) provide direct output without reprocessing, clean digital sound.Use Audio MIDI Setup.app to configure (see screenshots).I've tried a few othershttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CGXD2QKV/ seems to reprocess the audio and sounds muddy.https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B9H53KD9/ doesn't work on a Mac.

I first tried an ICUSBAUDIO7D but it fail miserably. It corrupted Windows. The drivers caused the USB to have issues. It also would not completely uninstall. I had to restore a backup to get it out.This one, the ICUSBAUDIO2D did work. It was tried in the same laptop, a Panasonic Toughbook. This is an expensive military grade laptop. It worked with Win 10 and Win 11, even though the writeup states for Mac OSX not mentioning Windows as a compatible platform. This one works with the built in drivers for both Win 10 and Win 11 64bit. It is using a generic Microsoft driver and because of the experience with the previous device, I'm not going to take a chance with their driver.It is being used as a secondary audio card for Military MARS and Amateur radio digital communications over radio. It does not produce the same amount of power out as the factory built in Realtek audio card. It is down about 10% of the power generated by the built in Realtek card.I'm not impressed with the USB pigtail permanently wired into the housing. It is not secured as it should be. If I keep it I will most likely rip it open and add my own USB C connector all in a shielded metal housing. It wound be nice if it had a Realtec chip in it but my guess the one in it is akind to two tin cans tied together with a string. I'm interested enough now to compare the waveform quality and voltage level to the Realtek. I have some concern that the drive culd be distorting the output signal quality. I'll check that and post it when available.This Panasonic Toughbook cost about $8000. They are made well, watertight, EMP proof and have extremely stable operations. They are designed for heavy abuse and maintain absolute near perfection with very little variation to the extremely tight performance tolerances in its specifications.They are worth it for emergency communications and with quality of the build, I can back exactly what I have written. StarTech makes good equipment and I have never had any issues until now, so it concerns me as to the direction the company seems to have taken.

I got this for my steamdeck when it's docked. I have one pair of Blue Tooth headphones I have connected to my Steam Deck and ran a 3.5mm audio cable from my computer to my Steam Deck though this device's mic input so I can hear my computer when playing my Steam Deck. I did have to also buy a 'Ground Loop Noise Isolator' to get rid of a buzz, it just plugs into this device and then my audio cable from my computer plugs into it. It is only $10 here on Amazon. Most negative reviews is because of a buzz it seems but if everything is not grounded properly you need a 'Ground Loop Noise Isolator'. In fact growing up I wish I knew about them because I had this problem all the time.