Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI Sound Card
by TURTLE BEACH SYSTEMS
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI Sound Card
Customer Review: A "Sound" investment
Summary: 5 Stars
Great card. Have used it in 3 machines now and not a single problem with installation or usage.
Puzzled by the negative reviews but then I figured it out. Odds are that these people are hearing what actually is on their machines. The Santa Cruz board plays true sound. So if you have a lousy copy of music or a game with lousy sound, that is what you are going to hear.
I have found this with some of my music. What sounded OK using my Creative sound board sounded lousy with the Santa Cruz board. The reason was that the music was lousy and the Creative board muddied the sound so much that it masked the flaws in the music. When I reloaded songs directly from clean CD's, the music was great.
Also the choice of outputs is a great feature. It allows you to have multiple outputs.
So the only caveat I have is, if you want to hear superb music from the Santa Cruz board, make sure the music you are trying to play is clean and not the 25th copy of the song. Every time you copy music or video on a computer it picks up flaws and drops notes. After a few iterations you have muddy music and the Santa Cruz board will play just what you input into it. Garbage In Garbage Out.
Customer Review: Excellent ,"A no-brainer" to set up"
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a music fanatic,I want to hear those footsteps comeup behind me,when i do gaming, Iwant to hear my music clearly,
without turning the music down ,because it was distoring. First
of all I had a Sounblaster 512,I though it was the speaker fault,
I went and bought Altec's best,that did not work. I returned
it.I went through about 6 sound systems,just sounded ok. So
when I get frustrated about computers and sound,I go to another
store for advice,so I did. This guy at the other store,said"hey
did you ever hear about Turtle Beach Systems?". I growing up with
only Sound Blaster,stated "Is there anything better than SB?"
He stated,"you wont be sorry" So again I bought it from Amazon,and gosh the diferrence between night and day. Theclarity
the ease of setting it up, loading was very easy!!! If your
a "picky person on hearing what you want to hear",please get this.I admit it was a name a had not heard ever,but if you know someone in the "computer field",they will tell you. This will
be the last sound card you need. The price was very very
reasonable.
Customer Review: Terrifc sound card; superb value for a a modest price
Summary: 5 Stars
I am currently happily using this card in two machines. The first was the choice of a local custom builder four years ago, and the second was my own choice based on the wonderful sound this card delivers.
I'm using them to power a trio of very modest Altec Lansing speakers (subwoofer and two satellites) and a top of line set of Klipsch 5.1 THD speakers. It brings out the best in the both the $40 and the $400 speakers.
Let's face it: most current motherboards deliver decent sound with their onboard audio processors these days, and if you are working near the upper limit of your budget, then this may be something you can drop off the raft.
However, if you are of a certain age, you'll remember the days when the rule of thumb for stereo compoents was that separate components delivered better sound than integrated ones. While this may not be true in the domain of personal computer audio, if you have an avaialable PCI slot and $40, these will add life to your audio output.
Installation was trouble free, and the bundled software package is superb.....
Customer Review: Gamers Beware
Summary: 3 Stars
First off I have never had any problems with this sound card outside of gaming. But when playing games (GTA 3, Neverwinter Nights, Wizardry 8, Jedi Knight 2, etc.) the sound card often cuts out for several seconds and the audio quality can be quite scratchy at times. The technical support for this issue suggests turning off the hardware acceleration for games as a possible fix for the above problems. Not only does this not fix the problems, games are when you most need your sound card to be processing audio, not your CPU. I can say with certainty that it was my Santa Cruz sound card that was causing my game related audio problems because I now use a Sound Blaster Audigy and it has none previously mentioned problems. Also worth mentioning is the documentation states that it supports 5.1 surround sound. This is true but it does not support DIGITAL 5.1 surround, it only supports digital 4.1 surround sound. If you're going to play games, don't buy this card. If you're not going to play games this card is just fine.
Customer Review: A dissenting view...
Summary: 2 Stars
There are so many positive reviews of this card here that I thought I would describe my experience with it by way of contrast. The installation (Win98SE) hung twice, but finally worked on the third try (nothing out of the ordinary there). As everyone else mentions, the digital audio is fine (ie playing MP3s or wave files). However, here are three down sides: 1) the MIDI implementation is poor. The card distorts if several voices sound at once; it occasionally plays the wrong notes, and the chorus effect (making mono sounds into stereo) is terrible. But this is moot as many of the voices sound so cheezy you would never listen to MIDI for any length of time anyway. 2) 3D positional audio has a bug in games that makes close things sound far away or inaudible, so that enemy can sneak up on you and you can't hear him. 3) There is no full application software included, all are limited use demo versions. ... Bottom line for me: the card is going to be removed and discarded. Your mileage will undoubtedly vary.