5.1 SOUND CARD

This sound card has an old standard Wavetable MIDI connector.And it works on Windows 10. It is worthwhile for those who want to use the old MIDI daughter card.However, be careful if your motherboard has an old PCI slot.

After living unhappily with relatively poor Soundblaster cards for a while (both an X-Fi and an Audigy card), I decided to look for something new. While the Soundblaster sound cards work fine with Windows XP, I constantly got static & crackly sound in Vista & Windows 7 Beta. Additionally, Soundblaster's drivers were big and bloated and caused frequent blue screen (crashes) while playing games (LOTRO, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, etc).I found the Dynex 5.1 card in a local Best Buy, and for $25 I took a chance. It turned out it works well for what I needed, which is a simple 5.1 sound card that won't destabilize my machine. It installed easily and automatically in my Dell machine, which triple-boots to Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, and Win7 B2. All 3 versions of Windows automatically found the driver online and installed it easily - no reboot required. The box came with a CD to install the driver in case I didn't have an Internet connection, but I didn't need it.The sound quality is more than adequate, and my games, movies, and audio play great through my 5.1-speaker setup. I did not try the optical/digital port, but I never used that with my old SB card anyway so that didn't matter to me. What's good is that my games play well, I get the full sound I wanted, and I don't have to live with Soundblaster's poor quality & bloated drivers anymore. It was a joy to uninstall SB's software off of my machine.If you're looking for a simple, cheap, 5.1 card, I recommend this card.

While the stereo sound that comes through this card is crisp, the 5.1 channel sound only plays through the analog ports. So while technically it is a 5.1 channel card and there is audio output through the optical port, you can't play 5.1 channel sound through the optical port.The card's manual demonstrates some questionable business practices on the part of Dynex. It says that you should return your card to the place of purchase if it breaks within the 1-year warranty. (This is, of course, impossible.) It also says that you should make sure your sound system not only has an optical port, but that the sound system's manual specifies compatibility with the exact model number of Dynex card. This is ridiculous, and in any case it should have been printed as a system requirement on the box rather than hidden in the manual.

This sound card is not compatible with XP's SP3 update. I bought it today at BestBuy and after an hour of trying to uninstall/reinstall things, I finally called Dynex who informed me that it's incompatible with the SP3 update.

I, too, called Dynex - wondering if the SP3 issue had anything to do with using Dynex drivers.While I didn't get an answer to that question, I was told by 'Inga' that the Dynex DX-SC5.1 Sound Card would work with Windows XP SP3.