- USB External Sound Card with SPDIF Digital Sound for 5.1 & 7.1 Surround Sound Systems, Aluminum Body

It's a widely used CM106. It works and works well. Other reviews say the optical ports don't work, it's because they don't know what they're doing (Google). There other models that are in a small case those have the CM6206 , unless you have at least mid range equipment you'll notice some difference not a lot. Hopefully this helps.

The optical ports on this dont work

Works fine. Keep in mind that this will be 16-bit audio only.

Easily cost-effective and simple to install -

Doesn't work.

S/pdif ports do not work. The reason I purchased this item was for its s/dif ports, however they did not receive or send any signals rendering the item useless.

Worked as it should right out the box no issues at all

Does not appear to be fully backwards compatible. While i tested it out on various systems and OS's ( Windows 8/10/11 & Android/Chrome) it only worked on the Chromebook, which had a USB 3.0/1 port. On the systems that had USB 2.0/2.1, which i had got this for, the S/PDIF port on this device did not light up. Appears to be a power management issue, but i did not try to determine if it is due to a driver resource (which on two windows systems showed to be incompatible or a hardwire issue on the device its self.