Review on 🎶 External USB Sound Card - CREATIVE Sound BlasterX G6 by Hoon Alvin ᠌

Name: 🎶 External USB Sound Card - CREATIVE Sound BlasterX G6
Item: 🎶 External USB Sound Card - CREATIVE Sound BlasterX G6
Rating: 2

October 16, 2022

So-so quality, price doesn't match quality.

I took it with plans, but I use it with simple ears (Sennh PX80, AT M50x, M40x, Logitech G PRO (old and X versions), EarPods) and for inexpensive intra-channels on LANs (TRN v80, V90s). Tested with buyers 770 pro, Fiio FD5, 7Hz Timeless, TRN Kirin, but this is too much for the G6.

In my old computer, the mother Asus P8Z77-V PRO with Realtek 892 does not sound much worse . Yes, there is no VCL, and they don’t plow high-ohm there, but, damn it, G6 is not worth the money compared to this built-in.

With flat-EQ without effects or in Direct, a third of the instruments pour into mush, a third disappears, the rest does not sound detailed, nasal. The bass is booming, drowning out the lower mids. The scene is clamped, the location of the instruments is blurry. At the same time, the sound is painted more like a V-shaped (and I actually like that) with an excess of bass.

I twisted EQ, all sorts of effects, changed frequencies / bits, applied virtualization technologies 5.1-7.1, filters - you can’t really get away from Direct here because of problems, is it possible to make KAKAphony “surround sound” when everything is simply rearranged to random places.

In Scout, the same part of a track can sound different, it's dynamic.

As a result, I got something similar to Realtek with an equalizer, albeit better in details. But I was waiting for more.

For games, it is also debatable - in shooters with different settings, distant sounds are often very hard to hear, and near ones are loud. As a result, you drown yourself with the sound of your own footsteps. The top/bottom is poorly positioned, and the rear "hemisphere" also sounds not from behind, but overhead. Moreover, even gaming G PROs of the first generation, which, no matter how I twisted the settings of other cards and built-ins, always gave excellent positioning - they completely get stuck with the G6 and almost nothing is clear by ear. You can get used to the new sound. But you still lose a lot of audio-infe.

I don’t understand what kind of installation after 2022 can sound much worse than this device. All G6 praise. The big difference is described from the built-ins. Maybe everyone without settings listens to the built-in?
IMHO it is better to invest the same money in the motherboard / headphones.
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Pros

BACKLIGHT - works =) You can add to the number of effects, but the device should not be about this at all. POWERFUL HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER - almost any headphone will play loudly INTERESTING DESIGN, looks cool, futuristic, but stylish and strict at the same time. WEAKLY HEATS (unlike older generations such as E5 or G5). And in LO and HI amp mode. In high-resistance, of course more, but not critical.

Cons

SOUND - that's all they write here, they say the sound is fire . As for me, it's such an ordinary sound that it's terrible for an external device. Sound, how to describe . synthetic or something. Level Realtek 892 in a good harness, only louder and for ears up to 600 ohms and with a slightly different stylistic color. In the Edifier R2700, IMHO, the DAC sounds better, even if it is coordinated with the speaker components at the factory. Although the speakers completely with him cost like G6, and they are not ideal. The VOLUME / MICROPHONE LEVEL CONTROL, when turned vigorously, skips "cutoffs" (the wheel itself is without cutoffs, I mean in terms of influencing the volume), and sometimes it "twirls" the volume on the other side. Perhaps this is a protection against stunning - listening to music louder than 50% already hurts on the ears, about 100db of sensitivity and 32 Ohm (average value for the market), otherwise you can’t sharply increase the volume by accident. Terrible ERGONOMICS - the wheel is not conveniently recessed into the body; the force on the buttons and the weight of the device require you to hold the card when you press it; it is impossible to let the sound on several outputs at the same time (for example, on the ears and the line output). CURVE SOFT - the settings often fall off, when changing modes, the equalizer sometimes, in principle, "randomizes", the control logic of everything and everything is very C grade, the first time not everyone will have a complete understanding of what goes where. Sometimes a disabled item actually works, but to turn it off, you need to turn it on and unscrew it to zero, and only then turn it off. Often the software forgets the profiles and resets the SBX or EQ profile settings. MICROPHONE INPUT . well, it kind of is. Kind of works. But sometimes the built-in realtek writes sound better. Let's just say - the minimum level so that your breathing with interference and noise can be heard normally in the discord. PRICE - incommensurable with the issued sound. Its sound is better than the built-in ones, but so little that it's better to throw a third or a half of the cost of the G6 into the mother and get more goodies in the computer as a whole. Buying a G6, IMHO, is justified only for LANs (to have a custom-built sound on the road) and for consoles.