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Sabrent Aluminum USB External Stereo Sound Adapter iMic and Recorder for Windows and Mac - Plug and Play - Replaces Griffin iMic. Sabrent Aluminum USB. Sabrent Aluminum USB External 3D Stereo Sound Adapter for Windows and Mac $ 29.99 $ 24.99. Function keys: microphone-mute, speaker-mute, volume-up, volume-down. This Sabrent AU-DDAB 3D Audio Sound Card Adapter is a highly flexible audio interface, which can be used with either laptop or desktop system. USB audio sound adapter; 2 Feet.
Sabrent USB External Stereo Sound Adapter for Windows and Mac. Plug and play No drivers Needed. (AU-MMSA)
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Converts USB to 3.5mm audio and microphone signals.
Today, I’m taking a look at the Sabrent USB External Stereo Adapter. My first impression of this product was, “what is this for?” The back of the package mentions using it to connect “PC” style headsets to your Mac. I could see how that might be useful if you have a very old style headset that has separate 1/8″ audio plugs for headphone and microphone. It also notes that it has an aluminum finish to match your MacBook, but mine is solid black. This suits me just fine since I do not use an Apple laptop, and the color matches my Lenovo just fine. The case of the unit is indeed made of metal at least.
The adapter is about the size of a quarter in width and height, and about as tall as maybe 4 quarters stacked. It features 2 1/8″ jacks, one red for microphone and one green for headphones. Also packaged with the adapter is a 2-foot USB extension cable. I really like when companies include items like this. Just in case your ports are hard to reach on your desktop or if the unit would block your other ports, you can use the convenient extension.
Upon connecting it to my Windows 8.1 machine, Windows quickly downloaded the appropriate drivers and the sound output device appeared in my volume mixer as “Speakers (USB Audio Device)”. After changing my default audio device in control panel, I connected up my Sony Studio Monitors and selected a song from my library — Pokey Lafarge’s “Central Time”.
The first thing I noticed and was surprised by is the amount of amplification available. Many devices have trouble driving these headphones at a decent level. It was plenty loud for me at about 60% of max volume. I was surprised by the quality as well – clean, with no noise that I could tell even with the volume full and playback silent. I used Window’s “bass boost” option in the “sound” control panel to give it just a bit more low end, but that’s probably just a deficit of these particular headphones.
I could see someone using this to replace a noisy sound output on a laptop. I’ve heard some pretty poor headphone outputs on laptops and PCs with integrated audio. This could be a nice option for that situation.
Looking at the USB device path in device manager, it seems that this unit is powered by C-Media DSP chip. So it looks like there are some quality components inside.
Next, let’s look at the other side of things here. Maybe you have a low quality microphone input on your computer and you are looking to do some podcasting or game casting with your existing microphone. I connected my Behringer Ultravoice microphone to the mic in the Sabrent adapter. The Behringer has a little low level so I had to put the audio input to full, but I got very good results in Audacity. I’d consider this to be a decent option to capture audio for your personal audio productions.
In summary, while I’m not sure the utility of this device for most people, if you have an old headset you want to make USB compatible or just a desire to have noise free audio from your low quality computer audio interface, this is a great low cost option to achieve that. It was simple to use, no disc or drivers to download, and it does exactly what it says on the box. It retails for around $8 and can be purchased by clicking on the Amazon link below.
![Sabrent usb external stereo sound adapter for windows and mac computer Sabrent usb external stereo sound adapter for windows and mac computer](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Y5jRk06eL.jpg)
For more information, visit http://www.sabrent.com/category/audio/AU-EMCB.
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