Microphone Input Performance

The Creative Sound Blaster GC7 is equipped with a line input and a microphone input. Creative again doesn't mention the exact ADC chips they use, but does give us their specifications. Both inputs support a 24-bit/192 kHz bit depth/sample rate. The ADC chip has a dynamic range of 114 dB and a total harmonic distortion of 0.0006%. To test the microphone input of the Sound Blaster GC7, I used the V-Moda BoomPro microphone.

This following sample was recorded after I set the microphone gain to 100% and left all other of its features (Noise Reduction, Smart Volume, Voice Morph, and Microphone Equalizer) off.



Here's the same microphone recorded on two different sound cards: the EVGA NU Audio Pro, a beast of a PCI Express sound card, and an integrated sound card which uses the ASUS SupremeFX S1220 audio codec. The microphone preamplifier in the EVGA card is very powerful, so I had to lower its gain to 80%. The integrated sound card sample was recorded with microphone gain set to 100%.




The microphone input of the Sound Blaster GC7 performs very similarly to that of the company's very own Sound Blaster X3, which means the microphone sounds clean and natural; it effectively manages to bring the best out of the connected microphone, but is slightly quieter than expected at even maximum gain. If you find it too quiet for your usual usage, which I didn't, you can always make use of the automatic gain control (AGC) feature, which is activated in Windows Control Panel. Here's a sample recorded after turning AGC on and reducing microphone gain to 65%, as the capsule is otherwise far too sensitive.



My voice is now significantly louder, with plenty of room left for further gain adjustments in either direction, while no background noise or compression is introduced. The AGC feature is a part of Windows Control Panel, and it does a much better job than Creative's Smart Volume technology found in the CrystalVoice section of the Creative App. Here's a sample of the same microphone recorded after turning Smart Volume on and deactivating AGC. In this sample, microphone gain is set to 100%.



Although it increases the microphone volume, the Smart Volume feature also introduces a lot of compression, making the microphone sound much worse than AGC. This is why I recommend Windows users go with AGC rather than Smart Volume if they want to increase the volume of their voice beyond what's possible by simply setting the microphone gain to 100%.

I'm not crazy about the microphone equalizer presets either. Here are two more samples of the V-Moda BoomPro microphone, recorded with Preset 7 "reduce vocals and improve bass/clarity," and Preset 11 "improve vocals and clarity."




Both microphone equalizer presets do change the sound of my voice, but not for the better as it becomes much more compressed and less pleasant to listen to compared to its clean, unmodified form.

The Sound Blaster GC7 supports the microphone-monitoring feature, which works great, with next to no perceivable delay. You can turn it on in the Mixer section of the Creative App and may assign a Mic Monitoring toggle to any of the custom (C1–C4) buttons.