The Icemat USB soundcard comes in an attractive glossy pale blue box with a description of its capabilities on the front and back. Upon opening the box you pull out a white card box insert that houses the USB soundcard and its accessories. Although not really a factor in the grading process, I do like how Icemat has kept the same theme/tone in their packaging for all of their products.
Inside the box, Icemat includes:
1 x USB soundcard
1 x driver CD
1 x USB cable.
Specifications:
USB 2.0
Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound
12 Channel Equalizer
USB Cable Included
Taking a Closer Look:
The USB Soundcard is really small and I almost thought they didn’t put it in the box when I emptied the contents out! On the front of the unit are four buttons, Mute, Volume up, Volume down and Microphone mute. On the back is a small screw for taking apart the unit, and Icemat’s logo.
On each end of the soundcard are connectors. On the top end is a mini-USB plug for attaching to the supplied USB cable, which then goes into the PC. On the bottom end there are two female 3.5mm jacks, one for a stereo output (such as headphones) and one for a microphone input. This differs from the volume control box that comes with the Siberia headset as it only has one port for the headphones, the microphone has to be connected directly to the PC.
The included USB soundcard adds a virtual 7.1 surround driver that, through intelligent sound panning and manipulation of frequencies, enables the sound to "circle" around one's ears, albeit via software means. Note that this is not a real substitute for a true 7.1, or even a 5.1 surround system - a bit of testing proved that only the left and right earpieces actually responded accordingly when tested on a 5.1 sound testing panel. It makes for an interesting listen though; music, audio files, and even in-game sounds can be shifted round and round as one pleases. There was little instruction on the matter of switching the sound output though back and forth between speaker and headphones though, which had to be done manually via the host machine's control panel.
The bottom line on the USB sound card is that it works. It provide great positional audio, which more than makes up for any imperceptible loss in quality they have. Most of all, at only a $20 price premium, it is still $30 cheaper than the least expensive Audigy2 on the market, the Audigy2 Value, and you can transport it with you to any system, as long as you have the conveniently small mini-CD.
