Andrea Electronics C1-1021450-1 Model USB-SA-1 High Fidelity External Digital Sound Card with Noise Reduction Technology

Works better than the soundblaster in my opinion. Not top of the line but not a basic model.

Great sound card. I've been using these Andreas for almost 20 years in court reporting. Great quality.

I use mine with a lavaliere microphone that has a 3.5mm mini-plug, to record training videos onto my laptop for work. I have tried similar devices including those by Sabrent (noisiest, and does not work at all on some laptops), Turtle Beach (worked on my older laptops, useless on new ones), Audio-Technica (an improvement, but still noisy) and Plantronics (OK). This one is the best, because of the noise reduction when recording -- there's still some hiss, but so little that it's easily removed in Audacity or just ignored. My son also has one, which he uses as a headphone amplifier and it also works better with headphones than any similar device we have tried. So, between us we have found this the best choice for both sound in, and sound out, where USB is the best available interface but your listening or recording device has a standard mini-plug. Well worth the few extra dollars.

I am a voice court reporter and have bought multiple Andrea Sound cards over the years. They are awful. Just purchased this one, and it arrived defective. I tried multiple different ports, and they were all the same. The sound card is defective. Not only is this not the first time, but they usually fail within a year, causing lost backup audio every time. Buy a different brand that is usually a lower price but works a lot better. Now, I have to waste my time bringing this to Staples to return it to get a refund. Waste of time and money. n

This is the first time I have purchased this USB soundcard. I had another one that was way too sensitive for the kind of work that I was doing but this one has been terrific! I use Dragon Medical Practice Edition Version 4 for all of my dictation needs and I also market it and I recommend an external soundcard for all my customers simply because the sound cards inside computers and laptops are definitely inferior and will not be able to handle the kind of dictation needs that this Andrea Electronics external soundcard provides. I use it for my tabletop gooseneck microphone and also for my stereo dictation headphones. The sound comes through very well and the accuracy with dictation is terrific. There is no instability as I experienced with the other soundcard. I highly recommend it!

works perfectly

I needed this for my classes, and it does a pretty good job. I have had a few instances where I had to wiggle my microphone around to get it to recognize the mic from the computer, but I haven't had that problem lately.

As far as I can tell, this particular adapter doesn't fail and start sounding robotic after extended (~1 hour) use. If you don't know what I'm talking about, good for you. But if you do know the problem where USB headset adapters go all robotic after a certain amount of time, buy this one. I'll update this review if I do experience it, but at present it's the only USB adapter I've used that doesn't have this problem. One negative: WOW is the blue LED bright. Easy enough to cover with a bit of Gorilla tape, but jeez, if you try to use this at night, the flashing blue will demand an immediate cover up.

A classic example of getting what you pay for. There are less expensive USB audio adapters, but many of them feature low sampling rates and monaural recording. This one can playback and record with 2 channel, 16 bit, 48kHz digital audio.

Drivers have problems with Windows 10. They very rarely change sample rate when in use causing pitch to drop. Otherwise this would be a 5 star review.