Methods, systems, and devices are described for modulating data for optical transmissions and demodulating data from optical transmissions. During modulation, bits are mapped to symbols using an 8-ary modulation scheme. The modulation scheme may be based on 8 Phase Shift Keying (8-PSK), Dual Polarization 8-PSK, or 7-1 PSK for which one of the symbols is located at or near the origin of the constellation. Streams with the symbol-mapped bits are modulated onto a waveform in the digital domain that is converted into a waveform in the analog domain before is output for conversion to an optical signal. The streams may be filtered at baseband with at least one discrete pulse-shaping filter. During demodulation, pulse-shaped data received from an optical signal and comprising symbol-mapped bits based on the 8-ary modulation scheme is sampled. The sampled data is filtered with at least one discrete pulse-shaping filter, and then equalized and demodulated.