[tshephard]

I intend to mount a Surface Pro 7 (3.5 stereo) in a F150.
I hope to find a USB (C) 'dongle'/card to supply 4 channels sometimes, and 5.1 sometimes. (Sometimes classic fader setup, sometime movies. Hope to 'save' USB slot for OBD reader.)
I hope to find 5.1 (6) 3.5/rca outs, and optical in and out.
(I understand 5.1 will be bandwidth limited.)
Oh, and all for $30!!

No, I would rather know I got the good stuff, but it seems so many things at different prices all have the same Realtek chips for instance.

Any suggestions, are my plans aligned with experience / common sense?

 

[Kalmangar]

I am making a car pc project soon from my research the best sound card with 8 channel is ASUS RAIDSTRIX DLX,
It has sebra 9016 dac and 8 channel everything u need.
plannig on tunnig it using Equlizer APO which has delay, multichanel paramatric eq, crosovers, all pass, loudness correction(currently the is not 1 single dsp on the market which can do it).
best of luck my friend i also though about the surface as a car pc sinch it has a touchscreen and can run windows.
but of the isn't and hi-fi external usb card i have switch to normal car pc with PCI-E for the sound card.
i will use the PC as a DSP only.
and feed it via my HU wireless carplay -> Optical -> PC.

basically this is my plan.

 

[Novumsound]

Whatever you do don't get the Asus xonar u7. It worked great for me until the weather got cold. Apparently the oscillator crystal is very finicky and anything below 60° and it won't start.