Unfortunately, this deal has expired 25 August 2023.
Creative Sound Blaster GC7
*
174°
Posted 14 August 2023

Creative Sound Blaster GC7

£89.99£124.9928% off
Free from United Kingdom ·
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Seems like a decent chuck of money off a decent looking USB DAC and Amp. Free shipping if you create an account, and next best price seems to be Amazon. Two year warranty (confirmed at checkout having just ordered one myself)

Not going to bother with the marketing spiel as it's on their website!
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Edited by a community support team member, 25 August 2023
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  1. Zafir's avatar
    I bought this back in june from them for about £76(cheaper if I count the TCB cashback + TCB bonus that was on at the time) so it's not the cheapest it's been but still a solid price for it. It's a bit of a kind of sidegrade from the Soundblasterx G6 which can also routeinly found this low. The headphone jack in it has less power than the G6, but this has more software features, like being able to control via your phone, buttons on the device to make controlling easier, and it has SXFI surround. It also doesn't need a custom driver on windows, which is actually a positive over the G6, since I did have the G6 cause some BSODs when the driver went funny after a windows update (reinstalling the driver did fix it, but it shouldnt have happened in the first place).

    There is some slight annoyances, like the software in windows occasionally freezing up and you have to restart it, but it's not too much of an issue with most stuff being adjustable via buttons on the device. The volume knobs feel nice, but they are software based ones, so they can get out of sync with the audio level if you adjust inside windows or whatever - I'd probably recommend only using the knobs if you don't want confusion. If you're into virtual surround is has both the old SBX style as well as SXFI, but unfortunately only the former works over optical out, which is something that I find kind of annoying since I do use the optical out to headphones.
  2. St1ng3r's avatar
    This or a ifi Zen Dac V2?
    Zafir's avatar
    I think it depends what you want it for. This device is a gaming device through and through really. You're buying it mainly for it's processing capability. It does have a dac/amp and an analog out for your headphones/speakers but it's not the main focus, it'll be good enough for the majority of most peoples headphones/headsets though. What you do buy it for is features like audio mixing, you can get the audio from both your consoles(including accepting dolby digital input) and PC at the same time as one example, or you can control the mixing of the voice audio and the game audio. You've also got virtual surround, scout mode and so on to make the game experience better.

    The ifi Zen Dac on the other hand is purely a audio device. It accepts more music/audio types including MQA (which admittedly is losing popularity these days) or DSD(I believe the g6 did support DSD via direct mode, but I couldn't find anything about the GC7), audio types that the general population probably know nothing about, but audiophiles will and might like the feature. It also has a balanced output, which again likely wouldn't be used by the general audience, but for people who spend a lot of money on headphones, it is very useful to have. They don't post the output power of the GC7 but I'd wager it's going to be lower than the Ifi, so if you have harder to drive headphones, the Ifi would give you more volume too. However it is worth noting most popular headphones are easy to drive so they work with mobile dongles etc, so again probably audiophile specific.

    TLDR: They're similar devices but they're for specific purposes and you should pick which one fits what you want out of it. The GC7 is a sound card with audio processing that is focused on gaming. The Ifi Zen is a audiophile dac+amp really, it's got a feature set targeted at that market with a higher output power, better audio support, and more output jacks, though many people might not necessarily need all those features if they aren't part of that audience.
  3. Dervman_'s avatar
    I have this soundcard, had it for ages and paid a LOT more than this deal price. I needed a USB sound card with optical output, optical input, and Dolby encoding so the optical could output 5.1 to my amplifier. Basically the same functionality as the Soundblaster Z, but USB instead of internal. Unfortunately the youtube review I watched lied about it having Dolby encoding, so it’s limited to stereo output, which was a disappointment.

    I nearly returned but, but the game/voice mixer dial ended up being a game changer and now I can’t be without this feature. Basically it gives you two output devices in Windows (speakers & headset).Speakers represents the “game” part of the dial, and headset represents the “voice” part of the dial. Leave speakers as your default output device so it’s used by games, and then set Discord (or whatever comms program you use) to use the headset output. Then you can twiddle the dial on the fly in-game to adjust the relative loudness between the game and your teammates. Also great for listening to music while gaming. Set Chrome to also use the headset output and then you can use the dial to adjust between game loudness and youtube/Spotify playing in the browser. I love it.

    I've had some issues though. For a while (about a year) the lights on the macro buttons stopped illuminating. Then all of a sudden (probably a firmware update happened) they started working again.
  4. driver8's avatar
    I have no idea what this is, yet I'm strangely drawn...
    Lynchony's avatar
    It's a PC sound card and interface (edited)
  5. mr_johnsie's avatar
    I had a sound blaster in the 90s 
    hedgyhog's avatar
    I found a Soundblaster card during a recent house move. And an ATI All-in-Winder (I think) GFX card with TV tuner
  6. Darthballs's avatar
    sound blaster awe 64 + yamaha db50xg daughterboard

    ..good times
    Bungle2's avatar
    Ahh yes, fond memories, wonderfully clear wavetable on that device
  7. CAL23's avatar
    Sound Blaster, there's a name I haven't seen for years!
    Had no idea it was still going.
  8. zearthlink's avatar
    How does this fare vs Arctis Pro dac that comes with the headphones? Totally noob here... steelseries.com/gam…ack
    Alex_H's avatar
    I wouldn't say it's worth changing what you have at all. Sound quality is likely no better and the software won't give you anything extra you don't already have.
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