A Card Worth Supporting
Written: Dec 28 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: VersaJack, price, support, customizable
Cons: No EAX3, not true 5.1
The Bottom Line: The Santa Cruz easily holds its own among the best out there; with a mid-range sound card price tag, its unbeatable for anyone who takes PC sound seriously.
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| jakemgold's Full Review: Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card |
A BIT OF HISTORY
Unfortunately, there's not too many good sound card choices out there. Creative Labs dominates the market with over-rated audio cards, and does their best to ensure that they continue to. My last card, an Aureal Vortex SQ2500, was another excellent, well priced audio board. I bought it about two years, when Aureal was at its peak, bringing heavy competition to the PC audio market. Aureal's 3D audio technology was way ahead of its competition; Creative Labs is just now offering some of its abilities. Unfortunately, Aureal didn't last long enough to develop any real or reliable Windows 2000/XP drivers. Why? Because Creative Lab's response to this new found competition was to sue and then buy and throw away Aureal and all of their support. A shame and an injustice. But alas, there was nothing I could do about it, and when I finally decided I was going to upgrade my operating system, I knew I would need a new audio board. In promising myself I would not support Creative Labs, I wondered if I really had any hope of finding a decent alternative. In doing some research, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz fell into my lap like a gift from heaven.
AUDIO STANDARDS COMPLIANT
As a gamer, in doing my search, the number one checkpoint on my list was compliance with gaming audio standards. In other words, the audio board had to support all the major "audio languages" that were being used by games. The Santa Cruz blew by this checkpoint with *almost* no hesitation. It fully supports DirectSound and DirectSound3D (the basic and 3D audio components of Microsoft's DirectX), EAX 1 and 2 (Creative Lab's 3D audio protocols), IA3D, A3D 1 (Aureal's original 3D audio protocols, very common in first generation 3D audio games), and a few other audio "enhancement / extension" languages. I refer to them as extension languages, because they mostly optimize, extend upon, and tweak the existing ones. The specific additional protocols include Sensaura (a very popular, excellent technology), MacroFX, MultiDrive, and Virtual Ear.
While the standards I've listed above will more than cover any existing game, and will probably cover future games for a while, as I mentioned before, there is still reason to hesitate. First of all, I was disappointed that the card didn't offer A3D 2 or A3D 3 support (the 2nd and 3rd Aureal standards). However, I was not surprised, and this should not be a reason to turn this card away. These standards were never opened up by Creative Labs, and thus, will most likely never be adapted by any future cards (or game programmers); for that matter there are no cards on the market *today* that support these standards. I do believe you can emulate A3D 2/3 support through emulation drivers that Aureal released before its demise, but I doubt if this will work in Windows 2000/XP. The bigger reason to hesitate is EAX3, Creative Lab's new audio language supported only by its new Audigy line of cards. In fairness, if you buy your audio board almost entirely for state-of-the-art gaming, the Audigy may last a bit longer.
DRIVERS TOO!
After having to give up my Aureal Vortex to the realm of no drivers, my second checkpoint had to be full driver support. No complaints here. For the little bit of time I tried them, the VxD (Win9x/ME) drivers worked like a charm in Win 98SE. Turtle Beach had a Microsoft certified Windows XP driver before RC2 of XP was even out, and it worked with RC2 and the final build for me without a hitch. Just the other day Turtle Beach released new Microsoft Certified drivers that apparently fix some obscure bugs and significantly optimize performance during multiple 3D audio streams (in games), and reduce CPU load for all audio tasks. Meanwhile, it took Creative Labs over a week after Windows XP's release to get customized, reliable drivers available. Mandrake Linux 8.1 also recongized the Cirrus Logic chipset and was able to play audio immediately after installation.
CABLES AND CONNECTORS
One of the headaches in the audio card market today is making sure your speakers will work right (and optimally). Between analogue 5.1, digital 5.1, digital 4.1, standard quad, headphones, and regular stereo speakers, it can be quite a headache. But not with the Santa Cruz! The Santa Cruz includes 2 standard output jacks, and one jack called the VersaJack (plus a microphone and audio-in jack). These jacks can be set to virtually any combination in the Santa Cruz Control Panel.
You can use standard quad (4 point) speakers with the front output and rear output jack, like I do. You can use the front or rear jack for standard two speaker output. You can set the front, rear, or VersaJack output for headphones. You can set the VersaJack to connect with digital 4.1 speakers. You can set the VersaJack to connect with a Dolby Digital decoder via AC3(for digital 5.1, which is unfortunately not natively supported without a seperate decoder). You can turn on Virtual 5.1 -- a Santa Cruz only feature that emulates true digital 5.1 by connecting quad speakers to the front and rear jack and a center and/or subwoofer channel to the VersaJack. You can even set the VersaJack to be another audio-in source.
The control panel will also turn off jacks you are not using. For example, suppose you have the control panel set to "Quad Speakers", so its using the front and rear outputs. If you have your headphones plugged into the VersaJack, you can switch to "Headphones (VersaJack)" and it will switch off the quad outputs and turn on the VersaJack. The Santa Cruz also includes one gameport / MIDI port.
There are also internal connectors for CD/DVD-ROM drive audio (1 digital and 2 analogue), modem sound, a MIDI daughterboard, and a "future expansion card."
A TWEAKER'S DREAM
The Santa Cruz Control Panel (which is part of the drivers and opens up by double clicking the audio button down by the clock) is an excellent controller. One can tweak every aspect of the card from here, customizing output levels of different sources, tweaking the output with the 10-band equilizer, optionally setting up to two "effects" channels, easily changing speaker settings and so forth. You can literally port every custom change to individual speakers in quad set up. Aside from left right balance, you also control forward / rear balance. For example, you can set wave audio to play in front speakers, while CD audio plays in rear speakers. Or you can set an audio effect to only occur in the rear speakers while the music plays in all 4. Fiddling with all these different customizations can be fun and useful.
ITS GOT MIDI TOO
The Santa Cruz has excellent MIDI support, with 64 voice hardware support and 1024 voice software support (via the drivers). The onboard DLS wavetable synthezier has 8 megabytes of memory. The MIDI properties and "effects" are easily changed from the Santa Cruz Control Panel. In my limited MIDI usage and testing, I found the audio quality to be superb -- the best I'd heard. There's also a connector for a MIDI daughtercard if you need more extensive MIDI features.
INTELLIGENT PERFORMANCE
If your looking to upgrade your existing audio solution, a large question weighing on your mind might be "does the audio stutter or drag down performance??" As far as I've experienced, NO. While the onboard processor is "only" 400 mips, a bit less than half of the Sound Blaster Live's 1,000, it handles the onboard processing much more intelligently. The processor actually adapts to the task your doing and optimizes the entire chip for that task. If your listening to MP3s, it will optimize itself for MP3 acceleration, while it will reset itself to be optimized for, say, EAX2 if you start playing a game. The result is high end audio, immediate, audio performance.
YOUR OTHER CONERNS ANSWERED
User's of Creative Lab's Sound Blaster Live!, known for compatibility issues with some VIA chipsets with Athlon processors, can put their worries aside. The Santa Cruz does not suffer from the same crackling and compatibility issues suffered by the Live!. The product has fully passed both Microsoft certification for Windows 9x, ME, NT4, 2000, and XP, and the intensive tests of audio enthusiasts. If the test of a product's quality can be measured by who uses it, than, again, look no further than the Santa Cruz. It is used in both Dell's and IBM's high end line of PCs.
ALSO...
The Santa Cruz also supports Sound Blaster Pro DOS emulation in Windows 9x / ME. The board also has excellent output and recording ranges, with 18-bit recording input and 20-bit output. It also has full-duplex capability (multiple simultaneous audio streams) at the full 48 khz sampling rate. The software that comes with the Santa Cruz is also a welcome addition, including an audio player, MIDI composer, a fancy mixer, and several songs and product demos.
CONCLUSION
The Santa Cruz is a top notch card. It easily ranks up there with the best cards on the market today, with a slew of unique features and broad standards support. At a retail of about $80, this card is practically a steal! If your purely a hardcore gamer, you may want to consider the Audigy as a future investment. If you're looking for a true digital 5.1 audio card, you will also want to look elsewhere. But for anyone else, especially MP3 / music lovers, and average gamers, this card is pretty close to perfect.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 63
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Epinions.com ID:
jakemgold
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Member: Jacob Goldman
Location: West Hartford, CT
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 4 members
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