I was looking for an upgrade for my laptop sound card, but this little dac/amp has so much more to offer. The sound is clean and crisp, with no distortion. On Windows 8.1 it's plug and play and works straight away. The amp section is quite decent too. The device has pre-amped RCA outputs, so you can control the volume. This is extremely useful with powered studio monitors for example. Sometimes you need to switch it on and off if the spdif input isn't detected and you don't hear any sound. Keep in mind that the spdif input has the priority...