Features & Specifications
The PureAudio USB-SA sound card has a 3.5mm microphone jack and a 3.5mm speaker jack built-in. All the power needed for the sound card comes from the USB port. Output from the sound card is dual channel stereo and sampling rate is 48K/44.1KHz/16K/8K. The device is compatible with both Mac and Windows systems.

Installation & Use
Andrea, the maker of the PureAudio USB-SA sound card, promises CD quality sample rates and sound. Physically the device is about the size of an average flash drive. I actually have some flash drives that are larger than the PureAudio USB-SA sound card.

The device is thin enough that you can plug it into crowded USB ports and docks on most notebook or desktops without having to remove something else first. The mic port on the sound card is accelerated by Andrea PureAudio voice solutions that features EchoStop, digital super directional array technology, AudioCommander, VoiceCenter and more.

Installation of the PureAudio USB-SA sound card is as simple as plugging it into a USB port on your PC. On my Windows Vista test notebook the drivers were installed automatically and within a minute the PureAudio USB-SA sound card was ready to use.

One odd thing on my review sample was that the ports for the headphones and the mic weren't color-coded the green and pink you expect audio jacks to be. There are images of a mic or headphones on the bottom of the PureAudio USB-SA sound card to show where to plug them in, but it's a pain to need to stand on your head to see which port is which. The Andrea Electronics website now shows that the ports are color coded so it seems the maker has already addressed this issue.

Once installed and headphones were connected, the sound quality was significantly better than the quality of sound the onboard sound system of my Hypersonic test notebook. Voices were much louder and clearer, and music was fuller and had much better bass. The overall movie watching experience went from something akin to watching shows on a TV's integrated speakers to watching with a quality 2.1 sound system with the PureAudio USB-SA sound card. Voice quality with the mic was improved with a reduction in echoes and cleaner audio for VOIP and chat services.

The only real downside to the PureAudio USB-SA sound card is that it sticks out of the side of your notebook by about two inches. This makes it easy to hit the sound card if you try to move the notebook with the PureAudio USB-SA sound card installed.