I had given up on this deal ever coming back! In for one! Thanks Ben. This is perfect for those of you on work computers with craptastic built-in sound cards. It's basically a usb sound card with sound shaping.

Wont really help if you have crappy speakers.

I bought one of these thinking my sound card was on the fritz. Turned out to be my craptastic speakers (another Creative product).
I took an old 3-piece AM/FM, 3-disc stereo and use that now.

Overall it works ok. I don't know if makes music sound any better. I like it cause it gives me a big volume knob for easy cranking/silencing. All you do is press it for instant muting.

won't help my taste in music either. but,looks like a good refurb deal to me.

Thanks, Ben! The article is enlightening. Sounds like a great device.

picking this up for laptop, thanks.
cnet liked it pretty well.

deal is now $25 for a non-refurb xmod.

I ordered this on 3/30 and it arrived yesterday. THIS THING IS AWESOME. No drivers are needed. It plugs into USB and the volume knob works for both volume up/down and mute.

#7 is right. The non refurb is $25... But this refurb for $20, there was not a single scratch on it. It was nicely packed too.

I have a hotaudio USB DAC (hotaudio dot ,com) that I was using here at work, but that cost me $100... now I can bring that home and just use this low-cost (but good value!) xmod here at work.

THANKS BEN!

Man, I might get another one of these as a spare.

BTW, it also has an audio IN port that I can plug my iPhone into. This way I can play back mp3's on my iphone and have it mixed in with computer sounds (IM and new email sounds). I don't keep mp3s on my computer here at work, that's why.

As far as audio quality goes, it sounds great without the x-fi and 3d turned off so I leave it off. It's a little more "bass-y" compared to my hotaudio, but not too unbearable. With the x-fi turned on, the highs are crisper. I'm just happy to have decent stereo sound compared to the crap built-in dell headphone jacks.

[Edited a typo]