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(More customer reviews)Turtle Beach's Santa Cruz is a welcome alternative to the everpresent Creative line of sound cards.
When I first opened the box, I was disappointed. The box is enormous, but there is almost nothing in it. There is a PCI card, a CD in a paper sleeve, a quick start fold-out, and a warranty registration card. I expected at least a dozen-page manual, and its ommission made me cautious.
Installation is easy, though it did require at least two reboots to complete. The full product manual is available on the install CD as a PDF.
I upgraded to a Santa Cruz from a Creative SB Live! Value. I upgraded for a few specific reasons. My old card had all the features I wanted - it supported quadraphonic sound, had all the inputs and outputs (digital and analog) that I wanted. Technically, though, it was lacking - the Live! line has notorious problems with interrupt sharing, which modern Windows systems use incessantly. Despite driver upgrades, I had popping, stuttering audio.
No more with the Santa Cruz. The new soundcard is much more reliable than the old. I did not expect to hear an audible difference in the sound quality, but I did. The Santa Cruz is crisp and clear, with a very low noise floor. The positional audio is also impeccable. A last unexpected benefit is that it runs much, much cooler than my old Live! did. The main chip on my Live! would be noticibly warm to the touch, but the Santa Cruz stays nice and cold. With summer upon us, every bit of cooling in your PC helps.
The bundled software is not flashy, but it is definitely adequate. The tools provided are small and unobtrusive. There is one utility that loads into the tray by default, replacing the standard volume control. I haven't tried disabling that yet, but it is hardly noticeable. There is an eq and an effects selector, with the ability to save presets for quick retrieval.
Although I have only quad speakers, the Santa Cruz supports everything from headphones (with virtual surround!) to 5.1 format audio. It also supports several environmental effect standards: In addition to the DirectSound3d, it supports EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0, A3D, IA3D, and Sensaura.
The bottom line is that this is a great card. Turtle Beach has a good reputation for good sound cards, and I'm glad that I finally made the switch.
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A next generation PCI sound card that drives up to 6 powered speakers or enhanced to sound like 6 with programmable DSP effects Simultaneous record & playback up to 48kHzDigital Outputs - 48kHz PCM or AC-3 for external processors10-band graphic EQ with presets and peak meters3 20-bit DACs10Hz-120kHz (-3dB)SNR - 96dB FS A-weightedTHD+N - (-3dB) - < -91 dB FS (0.0027%)Requires Pentium 200MHz processor w/MMX or better, 32MB RAM, Win95/98/NT 4.0 (w/SP.4 or higher), PCI 2.1 slot, CD-ROM drive and 69MB disk space
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