Question about USB sound cards

Hi everyone, first post and hope to get some help.

I have been working on a project for a friend for the past week. He had an older machine loaded with Vista that was running very slow. Long story short I reloaded the computer with XP pro and got all of his drivers working except sound.

I have spent hours researching and trying to find a driver for his onboard driver and nothing has worked. I do not want to waste any more time with (he lives 30 minutes away and I have already been out there 3 times). My question is this, can I plug in his speakers to a USB sound card and be done with it? Do these USB sound cards require the onboard sound card to be operational or can I just plug and play and never have to worry about this problem?

Thanks for the help!

 

Welcome to the forum Yes your can plug a usb soundcard straight into the USB socket and plug his speakers into that.

If you know the make and model of the motherboard or the make and model of the computer post it,I'm sure if the driver exists someone on here can find it.:major

 

If you decide to purchase the USB sound card, you need powered speakers. The speakers that just plug into the sound card jack and do not use AC power will not work. Earphones should work fine.

Edit: Every thing I have read on USB sound cards says that powered speakers are required so I may be wrong. I found these speakers that are powered via USB and have built in sound cards.

http://www.usbgear.com/USB-Speakers.html

 

Yeah the usb sound card just does the same as a regular soundcard the speakers still need an amp,personally I wouldn't use USB powered speakers they have no power at all as the USB port can only put out 4.5watts,that's fine for headphones though my headphones are usb powered and are plenty loud.

I was thinking something on the lines of this,all your problems solved for 2 bucks!

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/dynamode-external-usb2-sound-card-20-adaptor-(usb-stick)-pc-mac

Only problem is if you want to go up to 5.1 surround which practically all on board sound cards do or something with a little audio quality the price goes up dramatically.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/creative-x-fi-surround-51-pro-thx-certified-external-sound-card-usb

TBH though I wouldn't use any of those I've linked to either :confused The key fob ones won't have the kind of sound processing and driver support of even the most basic soundcard for a few £'s more and the proper external cards with on board audio processing are quite expensive.

A basic cheap realtek soundcard would be best IMO.

 

Thanks for the responses.

This guy only uses his computer for basic surfing (facebook and youtube). He has a single powered speaker so I think this will work! Thanks a lot of the help.