Creative Sound BlasterX G6

Originally introduced back in 2016, the Creative Sound BlasterX G6 is still the company's flagship USB sound card, at least when it comes to raw sonic performance. Unlike the Sound Blaster X4 and GC7 based on a single chip headphone amplifier design, the Sound BlasterX G6 was built from the ground up with a fully balanced, discrete component design. While focused on providing excellent sound quality, the G6 doesn't shy away from gaming-oriented features, including 7.1 virtual surround sound for headphones and game-voice balancing. It is capable of decoding Dolby Digital via its optical input and compatible with multiple platforms, including PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The Sound BlasterX G6 is currently available for $140/€120, making it an interesting proposition to anyone looking for a substantial upgrade of their system's sound quality while keeping all of the features of a full-fledged sound card.

The Creative Sound BlasterX G6 is built around the Cirrus Logic CS43131 DAC chip, which can handle up to 32-bit/384 kHz PCM files, but also DSD64 and DSD128 files with Direct Mode activated. DSD files are played back by using the DoP (DSD over PCM) method, where the DSD signal is camouflaged as PCM without a loss of quality. The headphone amplification is handled by a custom-designed discrete dual mono Class AB amplifier, in which the left and right channels have their own separate signal amplification electronics. The headphone output supports a very wide 16–600 Ω headphone impedance range and has an impressive 130 dB specified dynamic range with a total harmonic distortion as low as 0.0002%.


On the front of the Sound BlasterX G6 is a volume knob, which can be used to control the loudness of the sound, as well as the volume of the microphone monitoring feature. With the latest available version of the firmware installed, the knob also has a GameVoice Mix functionality, letting us seamlessly balance the volume between two sources, which are most likely going to be the game we're playing and Discord. GameVoice Mix is supported on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, along with PC. The side buttons activate Scout Mode (used to amplify distant, otherwise quiet sounds, such as enemy footsteps) and switch between various sound profiles. Holding down the Scout Mode button activates Direct Mode, which bypasses all forms of digital audio signal processing in order to obtain the cleanest sound possible. Here you'll also find a headphone amplifier gain switch. The Sound BlasterX G6 has a massive amount of power on tap, so it's fully capable of confidently driving almost any headphones on the market.


The front of the sound card has a hybrid 4-pole TRRS headphone output and microphone input, but also a separate 3-pole TRS microphone input for those older analog headsets that use separate plugs for the headphones and microphone. On the back is a combined line and optical input, combined line and optical output, and Micro-USB input, which also powers the sound card.


The Creative Sound BlasterX G6 is configured through the Sound Blaster Command software driver. It contains many features we saw in the Creative App used by the Sound Blaster X4 and GC7, such as various sound profiles, DSP settings (Acoustic Engine), a 10-band system-wide equalizer, the aforementioned Scout Mode, playback and microphone settings, and a headphone/speaker output switch, which comes in handy when swapping between the two.

From a features perspective, you can get even more by going with the Sound Blaster X4 or GC7, primarily because they're chronologically newer USB sound cards with better platform support and the addition of an advanced virtual surround sound technology that didn't exist when the Sound BlasterX G6 came out—namely, Super X-Fi and Super X-Fi Battle Mode. However, in terms of pure sonic performance and technical prowess of the integrated headphone amplifier, the Sound BlasterX G6 is unmatched. It sounds terrific and has a ton of driving power, so it's no wonder Creative still keeps it in its USB sound card portfolio.

You can get a 15% discount on the Creative Sound BlasterX G6 by using the POWERUP15 discount code kindly provided by Creative for TechPowerUp readers.