Fosi C3, subjective listening notes (no measurements, posting for what it's worth)

[Lishen99]

For full transparency this is a free beta unit supplied by Fosi Audio, unpaid, and they had no sight of it before posting. Flagging immediately that this is impressions only, I have no measurement equipment, and I know the house style here leans on data. So treat it accordingly.

Comparison was against a Sound Blaster G8 via a wired HyperX Cloud II, switched back and forth. Subjectively the C3 came across cleaner and more spacious than I expected at the price, and the perceived gap to the G8 was smaller than I'd have guessed. For music I sometimes preferred it, though I'd want measurements before reading anything into that.

Gaming DSP (tested in Valorant) is subtle. Mic noise cancellation subjectively performs well. Two concrete functional limitations rather than sound quality claims: no dual USB simultaneous input, where the G8 does this and the C3 doesn't, and a mode split where UAC 1.0 keeps mic, spatial and FPS DSP at 24-bit/48kHz while UAC 2.0 reaches 32-bit/384kHz but drops mic, spatial and gaming features. If anyone here has measured one, I'd be curious how the subjective impression holds up.

 

[antcollinet]

You know the story here. Nearly all modern DACs sound identical under blind and level matched conditions.

On the other hand the devices you are comparing are both targetted at gaming, and both have all sorts of DSP built in - so if you have not turned off the DSP (if that is even possible), then all bets are off. But in this case you are not comparing DAC performance, you are comparing the different effects those devices are applying to the sound, so what is the point? Or you've simply failed to level match accurately.