Hi,
I also have problems under win8, the drivers and support by Alo is almost non existant.
So fustrating. Only drivers which seem to work are the ones that come with the unit, but even these tend to have problems.
Oh man, really?
The CD?
The first thing I did was throwing that ancient relic of the XXth century era to the trashbin.
Who needs these weird things when today the internets are all over the place.
Good thing that I found it today in the trash pile.
I found a PC with a CDROM at my workplace (I have none of those ancient things left in my house) and copied the contents to the Cloud.
Here it is for those who are, like me, googling the hell out of it:
https://yadi.sk/d/MbP0SFgfg4rJ8
These are ALO Audio the Island Windows 8.1 drivers, and they seem to work (well, they didn't refuse to install at least, unlike the ones found on the official ALO website).
Update: It's been a week now and I confirm that these drivers work on my Windows 8.1 machine without issues (so far).
So if you're having issues (problems) making ALO the Island work on Windows - give these drivers a try.
The ones on the official website simply refuse to install with the message:
Setup requires that the device is plugged in. Please connect the device you want to install and make sure it is turned on. If your device is currently connected, please unplug and replug it.
And don't try to download the manual from the official ALO website because the hyperlink leads nowhere.
And yes, the ALO support seems actually nonexistent.
I thought you guys ment it literally, but seems that you didn't (they haven't contacted me yet and I think they nevel will because no one seems to be there).
I centainly won't be so impulsive next time considering buying another ALO product.
Given the fact that you are on your own with all the possible issues and that when a new version of Windows comes out your device can magically turn into a cool-loking brick (again, not literally in this case) because the old drivers might work no more and no one would be bothered to roll out the new ones...
And they just say:
High-fidelity asynchronous, balanced performance on both PC and Mac. (PC’s need the included drivers for 24 Bit /192 kHz playback.)
What they'll never admit to their potential unaware customers is that:
High-fidelity asynchronous, balanced performance on Mac. High-fidelity asynchronous, balanced performance on the current version of Windows on PC (but first you'll have to play our little game: we've hidden the drivers on that bulky CD you've just thrown out so you'd never have a clue, and the drivers on this page actually won't work; oh, and when you try to contact us on this matter your help requests would vanish into the void). And when a new version of Windows comes out for which the old drivers won't work you'll just be left with a little brick with a cool knob.
By the way, the sound is actually good.
The bass has punch, I can hear many details.
One drawback of the sound is that it lacks the "body" compared to Burson Conductor SL (of course body needs power, and Conductor's power supply unit is a beast compared to the USB power the Island is getting).
It can explain the strange sense of fatigue I'm kind of getting when listening to this unit (with HD650s)
I have owned one for over a year now I think. Drives my vintage 600Ohm AKG K240 Sextettes (LP) and K240 Studio Monitors just fine 
