USB Sound Cards

Has anyone tried a inexpensive USB external sound card? There are a lot of them for less than $18 at Walmart. Most say they are compatible with Windows 7, XP, etc. Here are a few examples:

Simyoung Virtual 7.1 USB Stereo Audio Adapter External Sound Card

7.1 Channel USB External Sound Card Audio Adapter

StarTech Virtual 7.1 USB Stereo Audio Adapter External Sound Card, ICUSBAUDIO7

icdrIesnte 7.1 Channel USB External Sound Card Audio Adapter

I'm just curious. I am considering buying one as a back-up for my older computers.

Thanks,

Phredtx

Yes, I use one now to allow two Mic inputs for two police scanners connected to a laptop. At one time I had 10 connected to a powered USB hub. However, don't buy the 7.1 channel crap. It's not. It's some kind of matrix audio trickery with stereo. True 5.1 or 7.1 will have separate jacks for those channels. S0 for 5.1 you'd have 6 jacks (the sixth is the sub woofer).

Note: I bought all mine on eBay for around $2 and change I think it was. Go here, pick U.S. only and sort lowest to highest.

Mine look like this.

They are plug and play. Even in XP and in VMware. Here's what ten instances of XP looks like. LOL

Thanks!

Now I have some more info to work with. I use my old emachine with XP SP3 to make audio cassettes (old country, hillbilly, western, etc. from 78s) for my father. It has a good Nvidia sound card. I have it hooked up to a SANSUI tape deck. You never can tell when something's going to go out on these old PCs. I have some sound cards salvaged from PCs but finding them, installing them, etc. - a cheap plug & play USB is easier and worth a try.

Phredtx

I should never have said, "You never can tell when something's going to go out on these old PCs".
Old computers in the same house don't need wifi or internet. They can communicate over the AC wires. They're sensitive, fast to take offense and ready to retaliate. The old XP emachine committed catastrophic failure. I'll fix it, but I better let it alone for a while...

In the meantime I wired a connection from my main pc to the tape deck...

Phredtx

If you're using a powerline adapter for Internet they can be problematic depending on the grade of your wiring and other things. In lieu of powerline, and if you already have coax in the house, check out MoCA adapters like these here.


MoCA stands for Multimedia over Coax Alliance.


If you have cable you need one of these on the input side of the coax to the house at the network interface box, what ever they call it. It's attached to the house. A plastic cover...

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, I just read your post again and now understand what you mean by "communicating over AC." You should have used italics...

I guess I should use italics when I'm kidding. Maybe I should have posted it in "Chillout Room". Is there a way to link a 'Reply to Thread' to a post in another forum?

Anyway, I was just having a marginally paranoid anthropomorphic imagining.

Some devices (copy machines, printers, speakers) can "communicate" over a shared power circuit. High voltage transmission cables on a grid are used for communication.

Maybe I've been reading too much old science fiction and hearing too much about AI on the TV...

Phredtx said:

Is there a way to link a 'Reply to Thread' to a post in another forum?

Not in the way you're thinking.

Phredtx said:

Some devices (copy machines, printers, speakers) can "communicate" over a shared power circuit. High voltage transmission cables on a grid are used for communication.

Maybe I've been reading too much old science fiction and hearing too much about AI on the TV...

You might be thinking of something called TEMPEST. It's why the NSA and what have you use filters on mains power...

For high voltage lines it's called SCADA.

F22 Simpilot mentioned:
"You might be thinking of something called TEMPEST. It's why the NSA and what have you use filters on mains power..."
I can't keep from adding something...
https://www.sevenforums.com/attachme...1&d=1681917079

This is the end. It's getting to far off topic....

PhredtxTEMPEST_Boak_NSA_1973.pdf

From page 7, second paragraph.

The next difficulty we found in the corrective action program was the great difference in cost
and efficiency between developing new relatively clean equipment by incorporating good suppression features in the basic design, and in retrofitting the tens of thousands of equipments-- particularly the ancillaries such as teletypewriters-which we do not build ourselves but, rather, acquire from commercial sources.

This today is an issue...


Anyway...