CLARO II 7.1 Channel PCI Sound Card

Short version: This is the best sound card for a computer I've owned. Highly recommended for stereo output.Long version.I've owned and used quite a few sound cards and dedicated DACs, in gaming, enjoying music and professional audio applications. This includes the original 8-bit Sound Blaster, the newer ASUS Xonar, AudioQuest Dragonfly, Focusrite Saffire and many others.With the HT Omega Claro II I have not tried any speaker configuration other than stereo, and I have not tried recording through mic or line-in. So basically, 2 channel output for enjoyment of music, games and movies. That is what my review is based on.From the sound card it is hooked up to a Musical Fidelity A5 integrated amp, which in turn is driving a pair of Magneplanar 1.7's and a REL T-9 subwoofer.There is not even a hint of audible noise at any volume level, and the sound is fantastic - very faithfully reproduced from FLAC encoded audio files. I performed a few blind tests between a very good CD player (Rotel RCD-855) and playing the same music through the HT Omega (FLAC, Foobar2000, kernel streaming), and could not tell a difference.Lastly, the first card I received was defective, but HT Omega support was most gracious in both their assistance to diagnose it and sending a replacement when it was obviously defective. In short, the computer could detect a sound card was connected, but drivers didn't install. The second card worked off the bat.

I dont mean to give it one star, it's just because i never got to get it to work. Guess why? Cause it's freaking needs old fashione freaking mother board pci connector to beable to plug it in. Basically the plug is opposite on the sound card. So i had to return it and pay for shiping again.(this is third time this thing happen to me on purchasing sound cards). No hard feelings, but sound card this good and with awesome software had to be using old a*s technology or plug.

So I don't know if this is a common issue with all motherboards, but the PCI-E x16 plug/strip on this sound card is backwards and is therefore incompatible with my Z97 mobo. 2 stars for the packaging and delivery though. Got here fast and in 1 piece as far as I could tell. Sadly never knew if it worked though, since I was unable to plug it in and unwilling to by a cord to solve it.

I can't use because my pc dont have pci slot :(

It is a great sound card but i wish it was smart enough to determine when to play the sounds out of my astro A40 and when to play the sounds out of my 5.1 speakers. You have to switch between by launching the software it comes with. Overall it's a pretty great card for nice clear sound.

This is probably the most expensive card I've ever purchased, and before the Windows XP shut down completely, the Hercules Digifire 7.1 also followed the strike, and I wanted to choose a sound card that could handle a wide range of applications in the new build system. Buy HT OMEGA sound card, I really hesitated for some days, mainly to compare different brands and the same quality of the sound card, whether in some of the major performance improvement, rather than for some new features and blindly follow the final loss Resulting in overall performance degradation and the occurrence of large and small system failures, but these comments are more mixed, after repeated comparison and consultation and found that this is what I want, Windows 7 64-bit system successfully install the sound card, and all of the features mentioned in the test No problem, feel great! Mainly to build music appreciation and multimedia video platform, especially the sound card comes with ASIO driver, unparalleled excitement, making audio directly bypass the system, the output is the most original distortion of the smallest music, the right to buy. It is highly recommended!

Can't get it to work under Linux. I can't really rate it and I knew it was minimally supported under Linux when I bought it. If I could make Linux headers and Modules I'm sure it would work fine.

The sound is fantastic. Not sure how hot it gets when playing games but I have not had any issues so far. Only problem is the only way to utilize the sound card is with the 3.5 jacks. It has a plug to plug in the front audio panel into it.A gaming headset with a usb connection will not use the sound card because you cant plug into the sound card and they apparently have their own built in sound card in the headset with is not as good as this sound card so that kind of sucks, im going to have to buy a new gaming headset with the 3.5 jacks so i can utilize this fantastic sound quality with this card.