Creative Sound Blaster GC7

Moving a bit further up the USB sound card chain, we come to the $170/€150 Creative Sound Blaster GC7. Dubbed as a "game streaming USB DAC and amp," this stereo sound card brings a rich feature set and expands it with elaborate onboard controls particularly suited for streamers. It also offers a number of media and gaming-oriented features, such as the Super X-Fi and Super X-Fi Battle Mode surround sound tech, as well as versatile connectivity including a 3.5-mm line output and input, optical (TOSLINK) output and input, and USB-C input (also used to power the sound card).

Creative entrusted the job of digital-to-analog conversion to the AKM AK4377 DAC, which can work with up to 24-bit/192 kHz PCM audio files. Dolby Digital decoding is also supported provided an optical input is used. The Sound Blaster GC7 uses the Maxim MAX97220A headphone amplifier, which has two gain settings, Low and High. In low gain mode, it delivers 125 mW of output power to 32 Ω headphones.


The Creative Sound Blaster GC7 is rectangular in shape. Its exterior is dominated by two large dials. The left one is a simple volume dial, while the right one, dubbed the GameVoice Mix dial, is used to volume mix between two sources. Both knobs have an integrated orange LED indicating their current position. Located between them is the so-called EFX Control Panel. This segment consists of a tall knob, round two-digit display, and grand total of five buttons. The buttons are Surround, Microphone, Bass, Treble, and SXFI. They're used to switch between the accompanying sound options, which you can then increase or decrease by using the aforementioned knob. The Surround and Microphone options can be adjusted on a scale from 0 to 99, while the Bass and Treble have a ±9 adjustment range. The SXFI button turns on Super X-Fi and Super X-Fi Battle Mode. These modes can be recognized by the color of the SXFI lettering. Orange means off, green equals on, and blue is Battle Mode.


The bottom row of the Sound Blaster GC7 is occupied by four fully configurable buttons, marked as C1, C2, C3, and C4. A number of functions can be assigned to these buttons through the official desktop or mobile app. They can be used to cycle through equalizer presets, activate or deactivate microphone monitoring and Scout Mode, switch outputs (headphones, speakers, or both), play/pause music, skip between songs, write custom text or emojis, launch an application, or activate keyboard shortcuts. Finally, there's a handy dedicated microphone mute button.


Software-wise, Creative App, available for desktop PCs (Windows, macOS) and mobile devices (Android, iOS), is used to configure the Sound Blaster GC7 and tap into its many features. It contains almost everything offered by the Sound Blaster X4, like the 10-band system-wide equalizer, Acoustic Engine section with various DSP settings, Sound Mode menu with a ton of premade sound profiles, CrystalVoice menu with various microphone filters and effects, Super X-Fi and Super X-Fi Battle Mode toggles, and an entire section dedicated to C1–C4 button customization. As there is a mobile app, many features of the sound card are accessible and configurable even for console users, which is a nice touch.

The Creative Sound Blaster GC7 is a great stereo USB sound card whose extensive control scheme is unmatched by anything the competition has to offer. Also speaking for it are its lively acoustics and reliable microphone performance, along with an extensive list of other gaming-oriented features, many of which are accessible regardless of the gaming platform you want to combine it with. For a much more detailed look at the Sound Blaster GC7, definitely do check out my full review.

You can get a 15% discount on the Creative Sound Blaster GC7 by using the POWERUP15 discount code kindly provided by Creative for TechPowerUp readers.