Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card(Great DEAL!) $49

[BabyJesusDC]

Both in store and website..

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...mid=&pfp=srch1

Review here..

http://www.3dss.com/reviews/SantaCruz/santacruz.html

[sbp]

Good deal for a good sound card.

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz has good sound clarity and solid WinXP/Win2000 drivers {Philips take note you have abandoned the Acoustic Edge!). Unfortunately there may be issues with the latest games due to its using an old Sensaura build.

The Santa Cruz is great for music listening, although recently its been surpassed by the M-Audio Revolution which costs more and is newer.

Just realize folks that the Santa Cruz is an end of life product since Turtle Beach is stepping out of the sound card market. That means no more drivers. Not a big deal though since this soundcard has solid WinXP drivers and the next Windows won't be coming for a while. Even then there will probably be basic support built in.

[BabyJesusDC]

Which games would those be? I haven't had a single issue with mine and I have a lot of newer games.. Mafia, Morrowind, Unreal2, Generals, Warcraft3, BF1942, more. They all seem to be fine in my box.

[sbp]

Originally posted by BabyJesusDC
Which games would those be? I haven't had a single issue with mine and I have a lot of newer games.. Mafia, Morrowind, Unreal2, Generals, Warcraft3, BF1942, more. They all seem to be fine in my box.

Well thats the thing BabyJesusDC, some games like BF1942 may be adequate but not as good as an Audigy though. For past games, some Infinity Engine titles were problematic and you never tried UT2003? And then there is the matter of EAX Advanced HD...

[BabyJesusDC]

Inifinity engine? Isnt that BIOWARE Baldurs gate engine? Never played those. But I don't care for RPG's much..

They may sound better slightly, but it just wasn't worth the hassle.. Creative newsgroup is still littered with people having the squeal of death problem though. Especially with VIA chipsets.

But thats cool, it works for you. Just wanted to voice my experience with creative.

[Brian48]

I still use my Santa Cruz in my second system. Still a great card for music, but as far a gaming engines go, the Audigy/Audigy2 has always been better. Not that the SC is bad by any means. The biggest Archilles heel the CS4630/CS4624 has always had is that it's got a relatively weak reverb engine compared to the Creative cards. The Philips cards are just as weak, but the QMSS algorythms make up for it in other areas. Also, early SC drivers were not optimized for games. Search Microsoft database for the Santa Cruz and you'll see that some very unflattering comments about this card, especially with their MechWarrior4 series. Happily, these issues have long been ironed out.

It also doesn't hurt that game developers use the Creative cards for the bulk of their testing platforms and design of their sound renderers. With maybe the exception the nForce2, which is attracting a lot developer interest, this is not going to change anytime soon. That's just how market dictates. Especially now that EAX HD, which is VERY impressive when implemented correctly, is becoming more common and the performance hit with the A2 is not anywhere near as severe as it was with the original Audigy.

I don't have BF1942 nor do I have any experience with the games using the Infinity engine (although there's a lot of Santa Cruz users over at 3dsoundsurge.com's forums a while back that corroborate what sbp is saying). I blame this more on the fact that Voyetra has never updated nor renewed their license for the latest build of Sensaura rather than any hardware problems with the Cirrus Logic CS4360. In fact, Voyetra has confirmed to me via email that they have dropped all further driver development for this card. What you see is what you get.

In regards to Unreal2 and UT2003, I've played both these two games extensively on my Santa Cruz machine and haven't encountered any problems at all with the caveat that I leave 3d HW disabled in the game menu. With 3D HW enabled, some sounds are distinctly muddled or missing altogether. Also, EAX is only functional with these games if you have a Creative based card, EVEN THOUGH you can select it in the game menu. The sound engine simply defaults to generic 3d HW audio, which is why you don't see a performance hit with it disabled/enabled in the game. It just doesn't work. You can thank Epic for this one.

[uberares]

funny..
I post what I thought to be a good deal, based on it being a good deal. You flame it, then find a good deal on your preffered card. It smells of some juvenile attempt to say "nah nah Im right your wrong".

49$ is a great price for a sound card of this level, however the point was that 82$ is an equally good price BASED on current market conditions for an a2. Dont like a2s.. fine, but this isnt really the forum to launch an all out flame war on the creative front.

Does the turtle beach card have a digital connection like the a2 ? does it have dolby digital 6.1 ? Theres alot of reasons I can see to buying an a2, and only one reason not too.. customer support.

[Brian48]

Are you talking to me? I don't think anything I've posted is a direct flame. I still have and like this card. I think the $49.95 sale price great. In fact, I posted the same thing over at 3dsoundsurge.com's forum yesterday as soon as I saw it at CompUSA. It's a great card at a great price, but it's not without it's weaknesses, just like all the other consumer level sound cards out there. Nothing is perfect.

[BabyJesusDC]

"I post what I thought to be a good deal, based on it being a good deal. You flame it, then find a good deal on your preffered card. It smells of some juvenile attempt to say "nah nah Im right your wrong"."

Not really I planned to post the deal, jumped to the forums saw the audigy post, replied to it, then posted the deal I found.

I do like to contribute deals to the site now and again...

I do prefer the SC because I have had great sucess with it.