The Former King of Sound Cards
Written: Dec 15 '04 (Updated Dec 16 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great sound quality, incredibly affordable today
Cons: Uncertain, unlikely driver future
The Bottom Line: CL discontinued the reference drivers needed for further development, but even today it's a great sounding card. Proceed with -extreme- caution, considering the card's future driver availability.
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| americanbear's Full Review: Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card |
A Somewhat Historical Look At A Top-Quality Card
I've had my Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for two and a half years. And it was a quite dated product at the time I bought it, so we're definitely talking an ancient card. I've heard M-Audio's Revolution cards and they make the Santa Cruz sound inferior. So take this review in a historical context of what this card is, and I'll address what it isn't and my buying recommendation towards the end.
A Rising King, Voyetra
I remember my first x86 computer way back when (I initially used Macs - back in the days of System 6 and System 7) had Voyetra AudioStation on it. Voyetra was the "king" of Windows music and MIDI programs. While not well known, Turtle Beach made respectable audio hardware for musicians. These companies merged on the verge of death and in the year 2000 they shocked the world with a product known as the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Finally, the Voyetra Turtle Beach name had managed to regain some respect, but why was this, and what made this truly the king of sound cards.
The King of Sound Cards – The quality of this unit
Based on the Cirrus Logic SoundFusion CS4630 DSP, this card provided superb audio quality, and (extremely important at the time) very low CPU load. This DSP is even capable of accelerating MP3 playback in supported software (which I think may only be Voyetra AudioStation, I'm not sure on that one). When I unpacked this beauty from the box - two years after first release, I was impressed with a big, solid sound card with a lot of circuitry and connections. I think this is always a good sign. First things first, to use this card you'll need:
- A Celeron 400 with Windows 2000/XP (or a Pentium 200MMX with Windows 98 but the Windows 98 driver is awful because Turtle Beach ignored it long before the outside driver problems I'll mention below, so you'll really need 98SE/Me/2000/XP (all of which can use the WDM driver) to enjoy the card).
- 800x600 16-bit display (for the software inc. the driver control panel)
- A PCI slot
- A CD drive or Internet connection to get the drivers
- 64 MB RAM
- 30 MB Hard disk space
- Some speakers or headphones for it to be of any use :)
Noise Levels
In testing, this sound card doesn't disappoint my ears. The sound output is extremely clean with minimal noise. My OEM sound card has horrible blitter noise (noise interference from 2D graphics drawing such as mouse movements), which is a sign of a poorly designed sound card. It also had quite a bit of other electrical noise and hiss. In comparison, this card is crisp and clean in the same system with very minimal detectable noise. Overall score: 10/10 in the noise department
Sound Clarity
I don’t have fancy testing equipment, but I can say that in every speaker set I’ve tested it on (Klipsch ProMedia 2.1, Panasonic Home Theater in a Box type setup, Apple iPod headphones, cheapo Philips headphones, and most importantly the professional level sound system we have at church consisting of three clusters of JBL speakers and high-end Crown amps (sorry I don’t have the model numbers on me) mixed through a Soundcraft K2 24-ch) this is one of the best sounding cards I’ve heard. Even on the high-end sound system at our church the output is clear. From high quality sources, it has clean bass and crisp highs, with no “muddiness” and great dynamic range. On our sound system at church, you can easily tell it apart (when playing a CD in the computer) from a professional CD player but not by much. Other computer sound cards (all OEM though) sound awful on this system. Overall score: 10/10 for sound clarity
Other features
This card also supports 5.1 audio, state of the art at the time and digital S/PDIF audio output. A convenient "VersaJack" connection serves as one of several types of connection jack depending on your needs. You couldn't go wrong with this card. Especially considering the excellent software bundle that comes with it.
Unfortunately, and this was more of an issue at the time, many games with high end sound were designed around Creative Labs’ EAX3 extensions, this has became less of an issue in recent years because Microsoft offers many capabilities through DirectSound (just as Direct3D and OpenGL practically eliminated 3D card specific games)
Voyetra, being a music software company, includes a fantastic software bundle with the retail version of this card. If you buy this card today, you're unlikely to get this software (most of the ones I've seen today are OEM), but if you are lucky enough to grab a retail card, here's what you'll get:
Voyetra AudioStation
This is actually a free software program for the basic version, but it's worth noting it's a nice MP3 jukebox (nothing like iTunes though) with fantastic sound quality and hardware accelerated MP3 playback
Recording Station
A nice little virtual mixboard app which should be great for musicians.
Lots of demos
Basic or "demo" versions (they're limited versions but not the traditional idea of demo) of various Voyetra audio packages. A lot of it is MIDI editing (Digital Orchestrator Pro and MusicWrite). They look valuable but I'm not a musician. My favorite of these is AudioSurgeon. It's a nice sound editor I found highly useful when converting some records to CD (taking advantage of this card's excellent recording quality).
But you said it was once the king, what happened?
Sadly for Turtle Beach, Cirrus Logic discontinued the chipset used in this card and all driver development for the card. This left Turtle Beach with a limited supply of the chipset and no reference drivers from which to work. It's probably fortunate that Microsoft has been slow in getting Longhorn out, who knows what will happen to this card's support in Longhorn. As it is, the current driver is an unsigned Release Candidate made available in summer of 2003, with the last signed drivers being from 2002. The 2003 update was to Turtle Beach's own portion of the driver in all honesty. I think it's safe to say those are likely the last Santa Cruz drivers we'll see.
But that's not really Turtle Beach's fault, where are they as a company today?
Left in a poor situation, the Santa Cruz remain Turtle Beach's flagship card until this year when the VIA Envy24 based Catalina was released. I haven't used this card, so I won't make judgment; those who have reviewed it have reported it to be incredibly disappointing. Apparently Turtle Beach just didn’t produce the same “noise-free” card as this card. That’s totally irrelevant though when considering the Santa Cruz.
Overall, for the $35 an OEM Santa Cruz card costs it still might not be a bad choice even today, if you recognize it's not likely to see new drivers, ever, and Longhorn support of any kind is uncertain. It's a top-notch sounding card, even compared to many of today's cards and certainly compared to anything else (with a more certain future) at the same price point. I wouldn't buy one myself today, but I still like mine a lot. With very low noise, clear sound, and an impressive feature set, it's something to consider if you're on a low budget and don’t expect it to last you more than a couple years.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 79
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Epinions.com ID:
americanbear
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Member: Mark Uhde
Location: Montana, USA
Reviews written: 67
Trusted by: 13 members
About Me:
Thanks for reading my reviews! Learn more in my profile or at markuhde.com
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