This is a review and detailed measurements of the Sound BlasterX G6. I purchased it last month for USD $150 from Amazon including shipping.
Typical of PC audio connectivity devices, the Sound BlasterX G6 is a combo device which includes an audio DAC, ADC, and headphone amplifier. This being targeted towards gamers, there are a lot of specific features in that regard which I did not test. My focus here is the pure audio performance.
The Sound BlasterX G6 looks better in pictures than in person due to lightweight, plastic case:
No, there are no batteries. The unit is USB powered and I used photoshop to erase the USB cable. I hope those of you picking on my photography are happy!
The volume control is a rotary encoder so turns forever in either direction. There are no notches but overall feel/stiffness is not bad. I did however find that there was a lag between turning the dial and my Roon player registering the change.
As you see, the front panel has headphone out and microphone input. The back end has nice combo digital and analog 3.5mm jacks:
Creative nicely includes the 3.5mm mini Toslink cable which was a good thing as I once again lost mine.
There are headphone gain button, one called SBX and the other "SCOUT" which if you hold down, causes an annoying blinking white LED to light up indicating you are bypassing all the effects.
As usual, there is a crapware called Sound Blaster Connect 2 to control the G6 from the PC. I found it attractive unlike most out there and functional in some cases such as selecting the digital audio filter type:
There is also a nice mixer to control what is happening although it was hard to figure out at times.
Anyway, let's get into the measurements and see how the G6 performs.
DAC Measurements
I initially ran into lots of difficulty measuring the G6. Even though Windows and ASIO4ALL wrapper would recognize it, the latter could not send it any signal. Nothing would happen. I downloaded a driver package from Creative website but that didn't fix anything. I don't know if it installed an ASIO driver or I had one from testing previous Creative products. Selecting that gave me audio but horrendous results. Even simple things like frequency response were all over the place.
As a workaround I played my 1 kHz tone through Roon player to G6 which worked fine so I knew the problem was the ASIO driver:
I must stay, I did not expect the results to be this good! Distortion products are kept to -120 dB so what we see in SINAD must be noise dominated.
As with the 1 kHz tone, I also played the J-test signal manually to get our jitter and noise response:
It is not picture perfect and we have the clear signature of jitter in the symmetrical 4 and 20 kHz indicating that the jitter frequency is 8 kHz (12-8 = 8; 12+8 = 20). Levels are below 120 db.
Problem with manual testing like this is that I can't run the full suite of tests. Then it hit me that there was Toslink input so I used that for balance of my testing to good results:
Toslink input is a bit cleaner than USB. What is even more interesting is that if I dialed down the level by 2 dBFS (digitally), SINAD would rocket up to 112 dB! That would drop the output voltage to below 2 volt so for the purposes of comparison, I used the full dB value in our SINAD chart:
Creative sells its audio products seeming by signal to noise ratio, usually boasting unbelievable numbers. The G6 marketing material was no exception:
We are getting almost 120 dB here which is excellent so not sure why they play games to advertise 130 dB.
Frequency response was nice and flat:
There is a lot to show in this review so I am omitting the usual filter response for now.
Linearity is nailed, absolutely nailed with flat and noise-free response:
Unfortunately problem was waiting for us around the corner in the form of intermodulation distortion:
What is going on here? The G6 was doing exceptionally well, beating my reference Topping DX3 Pro but then it shoots up like crazy. We have not seen this before in any DAC. And how is it that we are seeing clipping behavior here but not in the Dashboard which is at full amplitude just the same? The clue is in THD+N versus frequency (the dashboard is at 1 kHz):
Focus on the blue line first. Starting from right (higher frequencies) response is fine but the moment we get down to 300 Hz, distortion starts to shoot up and keeps getting worse and worse. By the time we get to 20 Hz, we are talking nearly 1% THD+N!!! A quick FFT (not shown) showed a spray of harmonic distortion at low frequencies. Dialing down the output by 2 dBFS completely fixed the issue.
The G6 is USB powered and likely doesn't have enough capacitance in its DC input to ride out the lasting peaks at low frequencies.
How did this get caught in the IMD test? It did because I use the SMPTE IMD test signal which consists of a pair of frequencies: 60 Hz and 7 kHz:
It was the 60 Hz tone that got severely distorted. In other words, the SMPTE signal not only shows intermodulation but also plain THD of low frequency tones. Those of you who advocate dual tone 20+21 kHz CCIF IMD would not have seen this benefit there.
Headphone Amplifier Measurements
Switching to headphone jack and measuring the power versus distortion using 300 ohm load we get this:
Considering that the G6 is purely USB powered, the power ratings in high gain mode are quite respectable. While I like to see more than 100 milliwatts, 85 is almost there so I expect good subjective performance in listening tests.
Low gain mode doesn't do much here seeing how it just stops early. With a digital volume control, I don't expect to have channel balance issues either (sorry, forgot to run that test).
Switching to 33 ohm load, the emphasis on current delivery causes more issues:
Power once again is respectable but now our THD+N has risen fair bit. This is all with 1 kHz tone so it is without the issues we saw in IMD test.
Output impedance is comfortably low:
Headphone Listening Tests
As usual, I started with my Sennheiser HD-650 and found the experience quite good. Mind you, there is no sensation of infinite power and you would be operating near or at max volume. But what is there is dynamic which is an issue I find with lesser powered headphone amplifiers.
Switching to Hifiman HE-400i on one loud track, I thought I was hearing static which is the signal of clipping. There was plenty of volume although the sound did get bright towards the end.
Overall, a good passing grade for most people who are not as picky as I am.
ADC Audio Measurements
Usually I am too lazy to go this far into testing a budget product but somehow I mustered extra energy energy last night and this morning to test the Analog to Digital (ADC) of the G6. Here is the dashboard with Toslink capture:
I was pleased that feeding the G6 2 volt, resulted in 0 dBFS showing no overflow. Performance though is not all that great with SINAD in the high 70s. We have lots of distortion components together with mains leakage.
Realizing we don't have good frame of reference and killing two birds with one stone with people asking for ADC measurements of Behringer UMC204HD, here is its dashboard:
I had trouble getting to 0 dBFS as the UMC204HD would severely distort there. Above is with 0.53 volts with analog gain controls set to minimum. Balanced input is used which nicely eliminates any hint of mains noise. And we are using USB interface that we like. SINAD performance though is not much better than Creative G6.
This is a good time to start our SINAD graph for ADCs:
Compared to high-end products, we are short some 40 dB! Definitely not splitting hairs here.
Hopefully over time we can fill out the table with bargain ADCs with excellent performance.
Conclusions
The Creative Labs BlasterX G6 delivers surprisingly good performance in this feature-filled package. It definitely erases my impression of them of shipping audio junk these days. This is all the more impressive given the USB powered nature of the device.
I am unhappy about lack of good ASIO support. This is listed on the website as supported but I could not find any ASIO drivers to download and what I have is badly, badly broken.
The ADC input is passable but don't look to it to provide transparency.
Overall for someone looking for a gaming sound card with good audio performance, they have it in Sound Blaster G6.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
I will make this simple: you can never have enough money. So please consider donating using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
Typical of PC audio connectivity devices, the Sound BlasterX G6 is a combo device which includes an audio DAC, ADC, and headphone amplifier. This being targeted towards gamers, there are a lot of specific features in that regard which I did not test. My focus here is the pure audio performance.
The Sound BlasterX G6 looks better in pictures than in person due to lightweight, plastic case:
No, there are no batteries. The unit is USB powered and I used photoshop to erase the USB cable. I hope those of you picking on my photography are happy!
The volume control is a rotary encoder so turns forever in either direction. There are no notches but overall feel/stiffness is not bad. I did however find that there was a lag between turning the dial and my Roon player registering the change.
As you see, the front panel has headphone out and microphone input. The back end has nice combo digital and analog 3.5mm jacks:
Creative nicely includes the 3.5mm mini Toslink cable which was a good thing as I once again lost mine.
There are headphone gain button, one called SBX and the other "SCOUT" which if you hold down, causes an annoying blinking white LED to light up indicating you are bypassing all the effects.
As usual, there is a crapware called Sound Blaster Connect 2 to control the G6 from the PC. I found it attractive unlike most out there and functional in some cases such as selecting the digital audio filter type:
There is also a nice mixer to control what is happening although it was hard to figure out at times.
Anyway, let's get into the measurements and see how the G6 performs.
DAC Measurements
I initially ran into lots of difficulty measuring the G6. Even though Windows and ASIO4ALL wrapper would recognize it, the latter could not send it any signal. Nothing would happen. I downloaded a driver package from Creative website but that didn't fix anything. I don't know if it installed an ASIO driver or I had one from testing previous Creative products. Selecting that gave me audio but horrendous results. Even simple things like frequency response were all over the place.
As a workaround I played my 1 kHz tone through Roon player to G6 which worked fine so I knew the problem was the ASIO driver:
I must stay, I did not expect the results to be this good! Distortion products are kept to -120 dB so what we see in SINAD must be noise dominated.
As with the 1 kHz tone, I also played the J-test signal manually to get our jitter and noise response:
It is not picture perfect and we have the clear signature of jitter in the symmetrical 4 and 20 kHz indicating that the jitter frequency is 8 kHz (12-8 = 8; 12+8 = 20). Levels are below 120 db.
Problem with manual testing like this is that I can't run the full suite of tests. Then it hit me that there was Toslink input so I used that for balance of my testing to good results:
Toslink input is a bit cleaner than USB. What is even more interesting is that if I dialed down the level by 2 dBFS (digitally), SINAD would rocket up to 112 dB! That would drop the output voltage to below 2 volt so for the purposes of comparison, I used the full dB value in our SINAD chart:
Creative sells its audio products seeming by signal to noise ratio, usually boasting unbelievable numbers. The G6 marketing material was no exception:
We are getting almost 120 dB here which is excellent so not sure why they play games to advertise 130 dB.
Frequency response was nice and flat:
There is a lot to show in this review so I am omitting the usual filter response for now.
Linearity is nailed, absolutely nailed with flat and noise-free response:
Unfortunately problem was waiting for us around the corner in the form of intermodulation distortion:
What is going on here? The G6 was doing exceptionally well, beating my reference Topping DX3 Pro but then it shoots up like crazy. We have not seen this before in any DAC. And how is it that we are seeing clipping behavior here but not in the Dashboard which is at full amplitude just the same? The clue is in THD+N versus frequency (the dashboard is at 1 kHz):
Focus on the blue line first. Starting from right (higher frequencies) response is fine but the moment we get down to 300 Hz, distortion starts to shoot up and keeps getting worse and worse. By the time we get to 20 Hz, we are talking nearly 1% THD+N!!! A quick FFT (not shown) showed a spray of harmonic distortion at low frequencies. Dialing down the output by 2 dBFS completely fixed the issue.
The G6 is USB powered and likely doesn't have enough capacitance in its DC input to ride out the lasting peaks at low frequencies.
How did this get caught in the IMD test? It did because I use the SMPTE IMD test signal which consists of a pair of frequencies: 60 Hz and 7 kHz:
It was the 60 Hz tone that got severely distorted. In other words, the SMPTE signal not only shows intermodulation but also plain THD of low frequency tones. Those of you who advocate dual tone 20+21 kHz CCIF IMD would not have seen this benefit there.
Headphone Amplifier Measurements
Switching to headphone jack and measuring the power versus distortion using 300 ohm load we get this:
Considering that the G6 is purely USB powered, the power ratings in high gain mode are quite respectable. While I like to see more than 100 milliwatts, 85 is almost there so I expect good subjective performance in listening tests.
Low gain mode doesn't do much here seeing how it just stops early. With a digital volume control, I don't expect to have channel balance issues either (sorry, forgot to run that test).
Switching to 33 ohm load, the emphasis on current delivery causes more issues:
Power once again is respectable but now our THD+N has risen fair bit. This is all with 1 kHz tone so it is without the issues we saw in IMD test.
Output impedance is comfortably low:
Headphone Listening Tests
As usual, I started with my Sennheiser HD-650 and found the experience quite good. Mind you, there is no sensation of infinite power and you would be operating near or at max volume. But what is there is dynamic which is an issue I find with lesser powered headphone amplifiers.
Switching to Hifiman HE-400i on one loud track, I thought I was hearing static which is the signal of clipping. There was plenty of volume although the sound did get bright towards the end.
Overall, a good passing grade for most people who are not as picky as I am.
ADC Audio Measurements
Usually I am too lazy to go this far into testing a budget product but somehow I mustered extra energy energy last night and this morning to test the Analog to Digital (ADC) of the G6. Here is the dashboard with Toslink capture:
I was pleased that feeding the G6 2 volt, resulted in 0 dBFS showing no overflow. Performance though is not all that great with SINAD in the high 70s. We have lots of distortion components together with mains leakage.
Realizing we don't have good frame of reference and killing two birds with one stone with people asking for ADC measurements of Behringer UMC204HD, here is its dashboard:
I had trouble getting to 0 dBFS as the UMC204HD would severely distort there. Above is with 0.53 volts with analog gain controls set to minimum. Balanced input is used which nicely eliminates any hint of mains noise. And we are using USB interface that we like. SINAD performance though is not much better than Creative G6.
This is a good time to start our SINAD graph for ADCs:
Compared to high-end products, we are short some 40 dB! Definitely not splitting hairs here.
Hopefully over time we can fill out the table with bargain ADCs with excellent performance.
Conclusions
The Creative Labs BlasterX G6 delivers surprisingly good performance in this feature-filled package. It definitely erases my impression of them of shipping audio junk these days. This is all the more impressive given the USB powered nature of the device.
I am unhappy about lack of good ASIO support. This is listed on the website as supported but I could not find any ASIO drivers to download and what I have is badly, badly broken.
The ADC input is passable but don't look to it to provide transparency.
Overall for someone looking for a gaming sound card with good audio performance, they have it in Sound Blaster G6.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
I will make this simple: you can never have enough money. So please consider donating using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
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