Sir, I spent 8 dollars on that soundcard, and you called it "garbage". How dare you? It even has 3D stereo. Yes, you read that right. 3. D.

In reality though, the 3d stereo claims are just for marketing. The stereo image sounds normal.

On 12/14/20 4:42 PM, David Kastrup wrote:

Brandon Hale <bthaleproductions@gmail.com> writes:

One last thing you can try, if the headphone jack still doesn't work
after a fresh install, is getting a cheap usb audio soundcard. It will
have less noise and give you a reliable dac in the future on
Linux. Here
<https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IRVQ0F8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1>
is one that I have personally used that has saved my life a number of
times.

I'd be wary about the "3D stereo" thing.  My own "garbage for the win"
sound card looks like this:

Yes, those are 3.5mm connectors.  I think the line input is dead by now
(but mic inputs can be misused well enough) and the soundcard mixer is
such a mess that I haven't gotten the headphone output to work under
Windows (but abusing the front 2.1 output by using a headphone in it
works reasonably).  The latency is suboptimal and I think it cuts off
around 15kHz.  Backside has an optical S/PDIF input and an output.

Another option worth considering are handheld recorders: those tend to
have a "soundcard mode" as well.  Unfortunately, with my Zoom H2
recorder I haven't found a way to use recording (built-in mics or
external) and playback (headphone or line output) at the same time
without the input unconditionally also appearing at the output.
Undesirable for the application I was considering it for (Jamulus).

Possibly newer models fare better in that regard.