22. Terratec Aureon USB: Simple Is Beautiful

With its original rounded format, the Aureon USB looks like none of its rivals. It looks stylish and business-like. And it takes up little room. One thing that may be considered inconvenient is that it has no controls on it: it's nice to be able to adjust volume, especially when using earphones, directly on the card itself. All of one side is taken up with Cinch sockets, with six output channels (5.1) and two line-ins.

On the small side opposite the (non-removable) USB cable are two 3.5mm jack sockets for the mike input and earphone output, plus an optical digital input and output. Two adaptors for TOSLINK connectors are included, so it is easy to hook up to any device with a standard optic fiber. There is a set of Cinch/Cinch cables; we would have preferred Cinch/jack because jack inputs are more common than Cinch on loudspeaker systems.