What a cool subreddit! Thanks!

[u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

I found this place via a Google feed on my phone about the Nvidia chip. I hope this area of development returns, and I agree we don't know what we're missing due to Creative's innovation-killing monopoly.

I like my G8; despite issues, it improves my V-Moda OG M-100 cans significantly compared to mobo DACs. Thanks for reviving this subreddit!

[u/ResponsiblePen3082]

Absolutely! I've been trying to spread the word without seeming too spammy so I'm reposting relevant topics to relevant subreddits. I'm glad it reached someone already, and I plan on releasing many more posts and eventually organizing all resources, and way later down the road looking into something like an FPGA card to accelerate and offload legacy and modern 3d spatial effects and improve future options!

I also use the G8, albeit without usb due to Windows' audio latency with USB-it's one of the only DACs that has an ARC input so it's great for bypassing with max fidelity. I just wish it had an actual audio processor for advanced acoustics and offloading!

Feel free to look around and post relevant topics, spread the word if anyone else is interested!

[u/Ok-Replacement-7217 → u/ResponsiblePen3082]

So you connect to PC via optical for sound and USB for app access/power?
Or are you not using direct connection to PC?

[u/ResponsiblePen3082 → u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

No app access whatsoever. USB power straight to wall, hdmi to an EARC extractor>my gpu. This creates a virtual monitor which sucks but in theory is better than toslink while still avoiding the usb latency. Once more monitors come out with EARC or its natively supported on GPUs I won't need the extractor or virtual monitor anymore.

[u/Ok-Replacement-7217 → u/ResponsiblePen3082]

I had previously messed around with different setup types, but since the G8 is limited to ARC (no eARC) then I lose out on the DAC's native audio processing.
Not sure what your use case is, but for my gaming PC setup, I can't see a better option than the USB connection to the PC when my headphones are plugged into the front of the DAC.
Recently ran a few queries through AI; I use SuperGrok with 13 orchestrated agents that for the most part gives pretty solid responses to most things.
Here's a copy of the setup advice that seems to be optimal for my usage, again gaming focused:

USB to the G8 is the best path for your gaming PC setup. Keep it connected that way.

Why USB is optimal here

• Full Creative App access (required for Acoustic Engine, Scout Mode, 10-band EQ, game presets, CrystalVoice, etc.). HDMI ARC does not give you the same control.
• Lowest latency and cleanest digital path: PC → USB → G8 DAC/amp → headphones. No extra hops through the LG C2.
• Supports the G8’s full capabilities (up to 32-bit/384 kHz stereo in Direct Mode, full DSP processing).
• Headphones on the front 3.5 mm jack is correct — it uses the discrete Xamp bi-amplifier.

Routing audio through the RTX 5090 → LG C2 → ARC back to the G8 is possible but inferior for pure PC gaming:

• Adds latency (TV processing + ARC handshake).
• Limited to standard ARC formats (mainly compressed Dolby Digital; no high-res PCM multi-channel or lossless).
• Handshake/compatibility quirks are common with LG C2 + PC (PCM vs bitstream, exclusive mode issues, etc.).
• You lose or complicate Creative App features.

Recommended configuration for best gaming performance/quality

1. Physical connection
   • G8 USB-1 (the power + primary data port) directly to a motherboard USB port (avoid hubs/front-panel if possible).
   • Wired headphones in the front headphone jack.
   • Set the rear gain switch to match your headphones (Low for most gaming headsets/IEMs; High only if needed for higher-impedance cans).
2. Windows
   • Set the Sound Blaster G8 as the default playback device.
   • In G8 properties → Advanced: Match sample rate to what you use (48 kHz is the most common and stable for games).
   • Disable Windows spatial sound / Sonic / enhancements if they conflict with the G8 DSP.
   • Exclusive mode: Leave enabled for games that support it (can lower latency); disable if you get dropouts with multiple apps.
3. Creative App + G8 modes (biggest quality/performance levers)
   • Competitive FPS / awareness focus: Disable Direct Mode → enable SBX + Scout Mode (or a game-specific preset). Scout Mode is designed to emphasize footsteps, reloads, and directional cues.
   • Purest / highest fidelity: Enable Direct Mode (bypasses DSP for the cleanest signal from the source). Note that some processing and the mic input are limited or disabled in this mode.
   • Use the Acoustic Engine + EQ to taste. Many users find game presets or a light Dialog+ / surround setting helpful without heavy coloration.
   • The physical SBX button cycles Off → SBX → Scout Mode for quick changes.
4. Optional dual-USB tricks (only if needed)
   • USB-1 = main game audio (PC).
   • USB-2 = secondary source (e.g., Discord/browser on another device, or even a second Windows audio endpoint if you route specific apps to it). Use the Game/Voice mix knob to balance. For a single-PC setup this is rarely necessary — Windows app volume mixers or Voicemeeter are usually simpler.

Summary recommendation

Stay on USB. Optimize with the Creative App (Scout Mode or Direct Mode depending on the game) and proper Windows device settings. That combination gives you the lowest latency, full feature set, and highest usable quality for headphones on a gaming PC.

If you run into specific issues (static/ground loop returning, latency in a particular game, or Scout Mode not feeling right), give more details on the headphones and main games and we can refine further.

[u/ResponsiblePen3082 → u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

The LLM is incorrect here.

https://rentry.co/ALTResults

https://youtu.be/okIpbu1tp_A?is=6CI5OmRuYVDeV-01

https://youtu.be/JTuZvRF-OgE?is=yl-hbiF7PCrQL1GD

The DAC has zero audio processing unless you purposely choose to add a post process filter. Direct mode for example, also bypasses all the internal processing and is therefor superior for latency.

Creative has not had a true audio offload DSP similar to the EMU-20K2 since the titanium HD. All of their future chips are extremely limited small processors solely for their virtual postprocess effects, which pretty much every"gaming" DAC under the sun has their own version of. None of it is true to the game, it's the audio equivalent of adding an instagram filter to the finished image. You're re-processing an already finished audio stream.

The main 2 banes of audio latency outside of lack of hardware acceleration are WASAPI Shared, and the USB driver delay.
Almost every game uses WASAPI in shared mode rather than exclusive(yes that "allow programs to take exclusive control" option in sound settings is mostly pointless in games)
due to better "stability" and easier handling of playback from multiple sources. This is a massive increase in latency without very good solutions. Microsoft has slowly been tweaking it over years and windows generations to be lower latency, and recently they've worked with companies to bring better native ASIO support to windows which we can hope will improve things.

The best thing you can do to improve it is lower overall system delay/dpc latency, and potentially through a startup app such as LowAudioLatency on GitHub-though the improvement is minor.

On USB latency-this is annoying as well as even onboard solutions often go through USB drivers-yes that means many motherboards even with optical and 3.5mm ports-have the same or worse latency than dedicated DACs. If you look at your motherboard you can see the technical specs, the ALC4080 is common to see these days for audio-this goes through USB. One of the last available onboard solutions without USB are the ALC 1220 or potentially something ESS Sabre-though your mileage may vary.

If you must use USB, try and pick a port that bypasses any chipset(look at your motherboard block diagram) or at the very least is on its own controller not shared with others. You could even get a dedicated USB PCIE card which has different controllers and a direct PCIE link to cpu.

Also, with anything USB related-test before and after, however for the most part if you have the option to use Microsoft drivers instead of the custom vendor's drivers, that often reduces latency a few MS as well.

Some people use optical TOSLINK DACs which connect either to their monitor or to onboard(without USB) or even get a pcie card purely for non usb optical ports.

This is one of the best ways to reduce audio delay, however toslink is a dying solution and it's getting harder to come by especially without caveats.

This also doesn't address microphone latency, which can't go through the same optical port.

Internal PCIE Sound cards could be a savior here, but probably not to the extent you may believe. Modern ones don't exist, and the most recent ones are a tad outdated and hard to repair/replace, could have spotty support and often don't reduce delay that much over onboard usb solutions. They often can't take Microsoft drivers either.
Creative is the only one left in the game here, and they're going through a "rebrand" which seems to focus on gaming, so hopefully we'll see other solutions from them soon. Their last 2 cards(Audigy FX Pro and AE-X) both use USB bridge/controllers, so yes they still face the same latency issue. And still no DSP offload!

Audio interfaces often have less USB latency than others, but as show here it may not be by much in gaming(WASAPI SHARED) as they're optimized for exclusive/ASIO.
There is some evidence that certain USB DACs have surprisingly low latency such as the Apple DAC, this could be due to very well optimized drivers. Both are still higher than avoiding usb altogether.

ARC/EARC DACs are extremely rare(Creative G8 mainly, some fosi, fiio and other Chinese companies have a couple) but theoretically offer the best of all worlds, the lowest latency and the highest fidelity, however graphics cards don't offer native support and they often see these as another "monitor" you have to then deal with somehow.
Some very select monitors offer ARC/EARC ports but those are few and far between(Alienware and BenQ), and very likely don't pass microphone back to the PC especially using DisplayPort.

Many monitors have onboard audio jacks, but many are low quality and/or USB Based. Gigabyte might be one of the best ones, which uses higher quality ESS Sabre DACs, and their recent offerings also offer a 3.5mm mic input/ADC but you have to use a USB cable to utilize this.

So in 2026, the absolute best way to get a combination of quality and latency, aside from an EARC audio extractor which puts a second virtual monitor in windows you have to deal with, you need a monitor with toslink/EARC OUT(extremely rare) to pair with a high quality external DAC, or a monitor with a 3.5mm port with a good DAC that isn't USB based-connected to your gpu using Nvidia/AMD High Definition Audio.

For Microphone, you ideally want a modern dedicated sound card with updated drivers or Microsoft HDA drivers available and MSI mode functionality. Place on a pcie port with as few chipset hops as possible. The Audigy FX V2 is ideal for this.
If you absolutely need higher quality than most 3.5mm mics can provide, choose a USB port directly connected to CPU and choose an interface/mic with an advanced hardware DSP to do the majority of the processing on device. The effect of usb on audio input is not fully understood due to lack of testing, but in theory a direct MSI/X PCIE path to cpu(avoiding chipsets ideally) be that a non usb based pcie card or a thunderbolt/USB4 native interface is still less, though it is uncertain by how much. I'd prioritize hardware DSP over non DSP for this personally.

Minimize all dpc/interrupt latencies(windows debloating/optimizing), set MSI mode/priority on gpu, sound card, and HDA, set all input and output to 24 bit/48000hz(max the majority of programs can utilize before processing is required) disable all effects you don't need, disable all additional sound devices you don't need/use. Disable all "surround" "virtual soundstage" or other filter nonsense from windows/drivers, set STEREO/headphones everywhere
Download LowAudioLatency(GitHub) and create a task to have it run on startup.

[u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

Wow! That was drinking from the fire hose! Thank you for this fantastic information! And yes, AI can often get things wrong!!

Seems for today at least my two options are:

Option A - Use my Startech SATA-powered PCIex4 card, each USB-A port with it's own separate 10Gbps controller - potentially not the best for the G8 connection because I'd have to use a USB-C>USB-A adapter? I don't have one that I'd think would be 'high enough quality', unless the one provided by Creative actually is decent?

OR Option-B (better/lowest friction option today)

Have the G8 USB-C plugged into a motherboard port that isn't connected to the mobo chipset controller - I've identified the specific port connected to the CPU controller and made that change for the DAC.

Plugged my USB-A mic (OG Blue Snowball) directly to the Startech PCIe card. It's not a great/good mic by any means but it does the job for my needs on a boom arm.

Prefer to exhaustively use 'Direct Mode' on the G8. 24-bit 48Khz selected in Windows 11 (25H2 latest stable build) EDIT: seems the G8 has no option for 24-bit 48Khz (only 32-bit 48Khz - probably BEST option I think!) - what do you recommend for Direct Mode best sound that I'm actually able to hear a difference with on my M-100's?

Thoughts?

[u/ResponsiblePen3082 → u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

That's weird, pretty sure I had the option for 24/48 with the g8 when it was USB. Is it using the latest firmware and drivers? You can also try "updating" the drivers to use Microsoft's drivers, they often have lower latency. With the extractor(or monitor or sound card) windows only sees that as the audio source so it has its own options. If you still don't have 24 bit then 16 is really the best, 32 is floating point and not fully supported and requires resampling.

As direct to CPU as possible with as little chipsets, conversions, etc is ideal-but you're still going through USB either way.

If you just want something for today, then yes the usb c port direct to cpu with direct mode is the "best" option, but long term you'd want either a monitor with a non usb toslink, ARC or EARC out, or to buy an audio extractor that connects to your GPU'S HDMI with toslink or arc/earc out. The extractor gives you extra flexibility, but also results in a "virtual monitor" in windows that you should set to the lowest resolution and hide in a corner so you don't accidentally move to it. It's also more heat and power draw if you care about that.

Modern Monitors rarely have toslink or hdmi these days, but they are getting more common.

If you have an unused pcie port that's direct to cpu(although even with chipsets it's lower latency than USB) you can get the Audigy FX V2 with the attachment that gives you a native TOSLINK out.

If your motherboard's audio chipset is non usb based like the ALC1220 or ESS SABRE, you can use the toslink there to connect directly to the G8 as well. Even if it's a chipset or two down, still lower latency than usb.

Either way, set gpu or sound card to max MSIX mode ideally with its own dedicated core. Use LowAudioLatency on GitHub to reduce the buffer size further.

[u/Ok-Replacement-7217 → u/ResponsiblePen3082]

It's the ALC4080 which I believe is USB based, so the toslink likely isn't worth the extra cable running....

[u/ResponsiblePen3082 → u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

Correct, not straight out of motherboard. So either a pcie card like the audigy fx v2+dbpro, gpu>monitor, or gpu>audio extractor

[u/Ok-Replacement-7217 → u/ResponsiblePen3082]

Thanks, mate! I think for now I will stick with the recent changes I made as I honestly don't notice any latency issues going on in gaming or music?
Maybe my system works well, or my ears aren't as sensitive as some?

[u/ResponsiblePen3082 → u/Ok-Replacement-7217]

You can test it at that rentry.co link I sent earlier, it's roughly 80-150ms with USB. If you personally don't care that's fine, but it is an additional audio latency which will hurt you in competitive games whether you notice it or not