Compared to high-end products, we are short some 40 dB! Definitely not splitting hairs here. We have lots of distortion components together with mains leakage. Performance though is not all that great with SINAD in the high 70s. I was pleased that feeding the G6 2 volt, resulted in 0 dBFS showing no overflow. He really liked the Sound BlasterX G6 and the review is full of charts and measurements conducted with a $28,300 Audio Precision APx555. The last issue that irritated him was the lack of a properly working ASIO driver on Creative's website. The headphone amplifier measured great, and the output was decent but 'there is no sensation of infinite power and you would be operating near or at max volume' when using the amp with a pair of Sennheiser HD-650 headphones. He speculated that '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.' Amirm discovered that dialing down the device by 2dBFS fixed the issue. During DAC testing it was discovered that the device's SINAD would rocket up to 112 dB if the level was dialed down by 2 dBFS (digitally.) Linearity was spot on but intermodulation distortion was a concern. Audio Science Review has tested the Sound BlasterX G6 and found it to be surprisingly good for a budget device in a feature-filled package.
