With last month's price drop of the Quadzilla to around $79 retail, I highly recommend this sound card. The sound itself is clean and the card has several of the features of the Sound Blaster Platinum Live! (which costs $199!!).

The Quadzilla has the standard Line In, Mic In, Spk Out, and MIDI connectors on the back bracket of the main card. In addition, a secondary bracket plugs into the main card providing Rear Spk Out, and S/PDIF digital out connectors. If you have speakers that support the Sony digital (S/PDIF) connector (such as the Cambridge SoundWorks Digitial series speakers), the S/PDIF connector provides a very clean connection to your speakers.

I have been extremely pleased with the sound and operation of this sound card and have recommended to several of my friends (even those that I want to keep as friends). As with any card, however, there are a few minor things to watch out. The Quadzilla software supports the Aureal 3D API for 3D sound. Most games support the older v1 Aureal 3D protocol, but only a few support the newer v2.0 standard. I haven't noticed this as a problem, although I do not play some of the most popular games. If you use a hardware MPEG card or some other sound source that used the Line In, you may need to switch back to the analog Spk Out connections (instead of the S/PDIF). When playing DVD movies, the movie soundtrack (which fed into the Line In) was very hard to hear using the digital S/PDIF connectors to the speakers.

Overall, I high recommend this soundcard. I would also like to add that the Turtle Beach Montego II (not the Quadzilla) is basically the same card without the extra bracket (i.e. it lacks the Rear Spk Out and the S/PDIF connectors). As of a month ago, this card was retailing for about $59. I also recommend the Turtle Beach Montego A3D Xstream, which uses an older sound chip but provides good sound and bargain prices (about $39). I have used all three sound cards with good results.





Recommended: Yes