Excellent audio card . Great sound and smooth setup
Written: Dec 23 '05 (Updated Dec 23 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Smooth setup, great value, excellent sound quality.
Cons: None in particular.
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended setup!
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| sigurdk's Full Review: Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card |
Though being 5.1. surround, the onboard sound card in my new Dell XPS 400, a.k.a. Dimension 9150, was much too low quality to serve my Altec Lansing GT 5051 5.1.loudspeakers right: The sound was flat, with little or no bass, ambience or sense of depth (Although very happy with my Dells in general, you would think that a dedicated gaming system such as the XPS would have an audio card already in it!)
When doing my audio card research to complement my GT5051 speakers, I concluded that it was between a Creative Soundblaster Live! or a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (or similar). I went with the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz as other reviewers had suggested that the setup was pretty straightforward and were complementary about the sound.
I can recommend it, too: The card slipped right into one of my empty PCI slots and the color coding of the card outputs matched the inputs of my Altec Lansing 5.1 speakers for quick and easy hookup. Upon restart, my XP immediately recognized the card (make sure to “Cancel” XP’s offer to install the drivers itself – instead, install the drivers from the CD-ROM that comes with the card once the computer booted up).
Software installation went without a hitch. The associated software is excellent, with plenty of adjustments and settings, so you can set it up exactly for your hardware requirements, taste and applications. If you are replacing an onboard sound card (as opposed to a dedicated sound card), PLEASE note that you will need to turn off the onboard sound card in the computer BIOS (F2 or F11 on startup) – if you don’t, you will get NO sound off your new Turtle Beach card. This is NOT explained in the Quick Guide that comes with the card AT ALL.
The sound quality coming off this system now is absolutely incredible: Playing MP3s I hear effects and sounds that I did not even know existed from my old PC or even home stereo.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 40
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Epinions.com ID:
sigurdk
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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