Looking for an Audiophile sound card for server win2012 R2?

The Creative Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD USB Audiophile sound card might be the one for you.

Managed to loan(from my colleague) a Creative Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD USB sound card to test whether it will work on Windows Server 2012 R2 OS.  There are no official support for Windows Server OS for this particular USB sound card on Creative's website. That’s the reason for this test to try to see if it will work.

In this test, the USB sound card will be plugged into a HP ProLiant DL380Gen8 2U server running Windows Server 2012 R2 OS. As I did not have the driver installation CD with me, I went ahead and downloaded the driver that is meant for Windows 8. The filename of the driver is “XUHD_PCDRV_L11_1_02_0021a.exe”. You can download the driver here.

As usual with all the Creative USB Sound card that I have tested so far, the moment I plug it into the USB port, the OS will start installing the generic USB sound card driver for the device.

If you are quick enough, you will notice this pop up window (in the background minimized) indicating that it is installing the device driver.

Once the generic driver installation has completed. The volume knob on the Premium HD USB sound card will start working. Turning it will bring up the volume control.

And when you check the device manager, you can find the device detected and installed.

Here’s the details of the generic windows OS sound card driver.

But in order to access the full features of this Premium HD USB sound card, you will need to install the driver/software.

There’s no issue when running the driver/software installation file “XUHD_PCDRV_L11_1_02_0021a.exe” that I have downloaded from Creative’s website.

The driver/software installation was relatively smooth.

Here’s a look at the driver details from the device manager for the USB sound card after the driver/software installation has completed.

The control panel software is working fine.

The Entertainment Console is running fine too and so is the front panel volume knob on the USB sound card.

Here’s the details from Control Panel->Sound.

If you are considering getting an Audiophile USB sound card for server, the Creative Sound Blaster Premium HD USB sound card is not a bad choice.

Overall, I found the audio quality (in terms of clarity) of this sound card to be slightly better than my current USB sound card (Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro USB sound card) that I am using.

If you are interested, you can get the Premium HD USB sound card from Amazon.

Click on the picture below to check out the current price of this USB sound card.

Oh, i almost forgotten about this. The Premium HD USB sound card comes only with a 6.35mm audio output jack. You will need to get hold of a 6.35mm to 3.5mm stereo plug adapter for your 3.5mm headphone/earphone as it does not come with one.

You can pick one up from Amazon as well.

Click on the picture below to check out the price.

Hope this helps :)