THE music is so pristine clear that one may even be able to make out the various musical instruments that are playing.

I am not referring to music from an orchestra in a concert, but music from an MP3 file that is playing on your trusty old laptop.

While a laptop is usually not the best tool to play your music files, you can actually give its sound department a big boost by adding a sound card to it.

This used to sound like a tall order because most tech-challenged consumers would not know how to do this.

But thanks to Creative Technology, the maker of the world-renown Sound Blasters, anyone can just do this easily now, and within a few seconds too.

This is because new generation Sound Blasters, such as the X-Fi Go!, are designed to look like a flash memory device that can be plugged into the computer's USB port easily.

After that, just connect your headphone to the device and you are literally ready to rock and roll.

The X-Fi Go! (Xtreme Fidelity audio technology) is primarily designed to enhance the gaming experience, by making gunshots or the distinct hum of the lightsaber more realistic.

For me, I enjoyed the way it enriched my music.

I had listened to Steve Jablonsky's Transformer's movie soundtrack on my MP3 player countless times while I was in the gym and yet, I didn't realise that there were other background scores until I heard it through the X-Fi Go!

Finally, the sound card looks like a memory device because it can actually be used to store your files too.

It has a 1GB memory which allows you transport your custom gaming profiles, plug-ins, add-ons or any other files easily. It even has a button to enable file protection to prevent your files from being accidentally deleted.

The X-Fi Go! costs $79 and this is certainly a small price to pay, for an orchestra to play inside your laptop.

Rating: ****

This story was first published in The New Paper on 8 October 2008.