Guys (& Gals),
I have just decided to go for a new sound card (My SB Live is dead, and I am glad it is as it gives me an excuse to make the change).
Anyone have any experiance with this card?
Yes I have read most of the reviews and also visited the website but what I am looking for is someone to tell me if they had any trouble getting it installed or had to deal with conflicts.
Any information would be appreciated.
Doesn't Flops or Mucks have a SC? How much is the SC selling? Here I go plugging for Philips Acoustic Edge again. Actually, any sound card in the Edge series w/ 4.1 or above is top notch compare to all other sound cards, but that's just me. Now a days, I just use the integrated AC97 onboard sound 'cause the max volume on my PAE is so low.
The price is around US$75-80. Not sure if Flops or Mucks use it, if they do they will surely read this post and I am sure contribute something. I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Nope, not me I use a hearing aid.
Just got a new "gadget", actually it’s just a bit of wire ... plugs into my mobile phone and the other end into my hearing aid. A loop thingy or something.
Mucks,
Need not worry I am following in your footsteps! I will come back to this very forum soon and get your input on "WHAT HEARING AID?".
Now where did I put my damn "WHAT HIFI?"
Nope, me neither, not using the Santa Cruz, unless it has the same chipset as Videologic's Vortex 2 soundcard. I used the Vortex for a while with my Abit KT7, no probs at all and excellent sound quality.
Although Paul's FAQ suggested there may be compatibility probs, I didn't experience any. Eventually put that card into my daughter's K6-2 setup and I'm now using a Hercules Muse.
The bundled software with the Muse card just wouldn't workand prior to using the Muse I was using a humble SB PCI128. I do miss Creative's Recorder, I'm now using dbPowerAmp for recording external sources (turntable with independent phono pre-amp and a cassette deck) but I can't seem to get a high enough recording level.
I wonder if the Creative recorder would work with the Hercules Muse?
Wouldn't mind getting something new with more quality myself, tempted by the Audigy to be honest.
Oops, I'm rambling a bit, this thread was about the Turtle Beach card, right?
Flops,
If it was not for my daughters Yamaha PSR-280 keyboard (with the works) which I bought on Saturday for 300 quid, I would be going for, not one, but two Audigy's.
Did I hear someone mention the wire thingy in this thread? I believe if you attach one between two Audigy's, it sounds twice as good!
Quad: Don't know if you've seen this site (3D Sound Surge) yet, but they got some really detailed reviews on PC sound related stuff. And they know what they are talking about; none of that ooh aaah and endless praises 'cause they got it for free. Anyway, here's their take on SC. http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/reviews/...santacruz.html
I think it was Mad Dog that has the card. Have you looked at the Philips Acoustic Edge Quad? I've heard the Santa Cruz, SB, and AE all in 4.1 and the AE has the best imaging by far. I have used this card in W98, Me, and W2K with no problems. 0-60 has it now since I hardly play games so my onboard C-media 4.1 chip is good enough for me.
Both the Santa Cruz and Acoustic Edge get very good reviews. What's nice about the AE is that it can take ANY stereo input and map it to 4.1!
Yes, I did read this before posting in this thread. It is certainly well written. I also came across another link which is on the Turtle Beach website but the link no longer works. Seems the quy really knows what he is talking about since he is a seasoned audiophile and very much into HIFI.Originally posted by AmStoned
Quad: Don't know if you've seen this site (3D Sound Surge) yet, but they got some really detailed reviews on PC sound related stuff. And they know what they are talking about; none of that ooh aaah and endless praises 'cause they got it for free. Anyway, here's their take on SC. http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/reviews/...santacruz.html
Anyway, thanks for the link as it would certainly be useful had I not come across it.
IA, I agree with you as far as sound quality of both cards is concerned, however I have come across information about Acoustice Edge giving problems in terms of drivers with certain combination of hardware. I did not think it was worth the risk taking this route. It may or may not work. So far I have not come across any negative thing on the net as far as Santa Cruz is concerned.Originally posted by ImaginAsian
I think it was Mad Dog that has the card. Have you looked at the Philips Acoustic Edge Quad? I've heard the Santa Cruz, SB, and AE all in 4.1 and the AE has the best imaging by far. I have used this card in W98, Me, and W2K with no problems. 0-60 has it now since I hardly play games so my onboard C-media 4.1 chip is good enough for me.
Both the Santa Cruz and Acoustic Edge get very good reviews. What's nice about the AE is that it can take ANY stereo input and map it to 4.1!
Lately, I have had a bit of bad luck in terms of my laptop HD going kaput, my sound card on my Desktop dying in my arms (very emotional scene), and not to mention reconfiguring my laptop after the new drive was installed. I cannot take any more chances.
So far none of you guys came up with anything negative so I guess I will go ahead and place the order.
I will post my comments once it is installed and working, for those who are curious about the results.
Skamp,
Very relevant, yes indeed you are absolutely right about "What Speakers?”
I am not using the computer for any entertainment myself, but, my son is into 3d games and I have passed on to him my old standby amp a NAD 3225 and Mission 760iSE speakers which we have hooked up to the computer. For rear, we use the PC Works from Cambridge Soundworks. Last weekend I got a Yamaha PSR-280 keyboard for my daughter which I intend to hook up to the PC so that she can utilise the custom software for her learning and obviously a better sound card is needed here, if not a high end card.
I mainly use the Plextor for my audio and Santa Cruz has the facility of S/PDIF input which surely would come in handy. I did not have this facility in the SB LIVE Value.
At times I also rip MP3's from my collection of CD's for the laptop on the go.
That just sums up my needs from the sound card.
Skamp,
Thanks for the one liner, it made me think!
I am checking the options available and will get back as soon as I have made up my mind - gotta check both Audigy and Acoustic Edge.
I just typed a whole page of stuff then hit the esc button by mistake and lost it all. Oh Sh_t!!
Anyway, Go with the Santa Cruz. It works with a 266a chipset and XP Pro no problem on my K7T266 Pro 2 RU. I've tried to put a SBLive mp3+ 5.1 card into 3 different computers but couldn't make any of them stable. Santa Cruz worked even without the xp drivers on their site!! Creative's drivers/programs are pretty to look at when they work but that is so seldom that it's hardly worth the effort and expense for me.
Good Luck,
Flint
word Flint...the problems with SB and Via chipsets is well documented. Doesn't affect all...but more then my likings. I have had no problems with the AE although I haven't tried it in XP.
BTW...nice to see you back again!
I had to go to VA to help my sister who's going through an Hellacious divorce and was gone for a week. It is nice to be back though!
Thanks,
Flint:joy:
Stoner... wtf ?? you are always pluggin the AE yet you dont use it "because the volume is too low"?? practise what you preach Kiwi..
IA: MD doesnt have a Sana Cruz.. he uses an SB Live! 1024 Player.
Quad: sorry I didnt answer your q...
Guys,
Like it or not, I finally got the Audigy DE (Digital Entertainment). My friend is bringing it in tomorrow from Singapore. Strange but true Santa Cruz is not available in Singapore! I could not believe it but when I visited the Turtle Beach website sure enough they have no representation there.
Just for information sake it cost me $82 (S$150)
If I get it tomorrow during the day, will try to hook it up and let you know what difference I found between Audigy and SB Live.
I may not be able to do everything that I planned to do in one day but will try a few things. Till then..............
hope it works out for you Quad.. let us know if it is much better than the Live! (I'm looking for an excuse to upgrade
Originally posted by KaraK
hope it works out for you Quad.. let us know if it is much better than the Live! (I'm looking for an excuse to upgrade
KaraK
If you need me to check anything particular do let me know. I will be posting my comments on the card in general and what I think about it. As soon as I have done a few experiments.
Skamp
As you say it is the best card so it better be. If not I am taking a trip down under to beat the crap outta ya!
Originally posted by skamp
Good choice matey,after all it is the best sounding card on the market!!
I read the horror story on VIA forum, would you take a look and tell me what do you think?
Audigy Sucks
My Audigy is going to be delivered in the next few hours! I am keeping my fingers as well as toes crossed. If anything goes wrong, I am stuck with the card!
Skamp, what about you? Did you go through any problems?
Skamp:
most expensive? really? over here in the UK the Phillips stuff is way more expensive.Originally posted by skamp
Well as you know,Creative cards can be a pain in the ass when they wanna be,but you never hear anyone say they sound bad when they work.
Considering Creatives troubled VIA past,they still are the most popular Sound Cards around,so that has to be for a reason,even the fact that they are also the most expensive!
Quad: essentially I want to know whether improvement in sound quality is worth replacing the Live! 5.1. Also I skimmed that thread over at Via and it seems that about the 5th post down seems to be saying that it has nothing to do with the Audigy...
Guys,
Here is my report on installation, use and my own thoughts on the Creative Audigy DE (Digital Entertainment).
Out of the box:
I had a few pleasant surprises when I unpacked the sealed box. First of all, I did not expect all the connectors to be gold plated. The manual which is included on the driver CD has an image displaying the connectors as traditional Creative Colours (pink, blue green, yellow). I should say this is a bonus. Two cables were also included, one being the analogue and the other digital for connection of CD Drives audio output. The game port/Joystick connector is mounted on an additional plate to be installed in one of the other slots. The build quality of the card looks much better than the SB Live.
Software/Drivers
I remember I had a lot of problems installing the SB Live back in October 2000. Basically the processor’s vxd file somehow gave me innumerable BSOD’s and I was really frustrated for a couple of days until I found out at the Creative’s Forum that most folks who bought the card at that time were having similar problem. The fix was to download the new driver and install that before shutting down the PC as a replacement of the original driver which came with the Card. After installing the new drivers, SB Live worked fine. Until it it died a sudden death a little over a month back without any warnings. I was using a Vibra 128 as a makeshift arrangement which is now back in the drawer as a standby/substitute.
The Audigy drivers installed like a breeze and no BSOD’s this time. The software that is bundled with the drivers is basically all crap and I guess it would be a waste of time and space on the computer as it serves no purpose. The play centre although is more powerful compared to the previous one, but it looks awful with multi-colours. I preferred the one bundled with Live. I guess it is a matter of personal taste.
Configuration
The card needs to be tweaked somewhat for best performance. Before the actual listening I made a few adjustment and set preferences for the evaluation. I have set the system to play only on two channel stereo as this is how I make the judgement as to the sound quality. I installed the Plextor CD Writer with the digital cable supplied and the Asus CD Rom with the analogue cable. I made sure that all the other drivers were updated before installation of the Audigy which included the motherboard (ASUS P3V4X/Bios 1005/Via 4 in 1driver Version 4.36) Matrox G400/Bios 2.1-35/WHQL Driver 5.72, DirectX 8.1, running on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 2. Since I dual boot with Win2k as well as Win98SE (for my son’s games) I later installed the drivers for Windows 98SE as well and that too went on smoothly.
Sound Quality
I remember the sound quality of SB Live was not bad at all but it definitely did not have a black background so to say, meaning the music was not very clean sounding by any standards. The background noise was there. For the price it was a decent card with reasonable facilities. The Audigy on the other hand, I found to be much better in that respect. The tone quality is slightly different and more towards natural, the background noise is negligible. The highs were very very clear and I noticed it the first time. Because of this, the card's imaging has also improved dramatically. The card is, dare I say having an almost black background. The SNR of 100db is definitely a big improvement I tested the card with some of the familiar music at hand “Hotel California” from the Hell Freezes Over album, Sting's "Brand New Day", Pat Metheny’s Letter from Home, some of the ripped MP3’s from my own collection and some midi’s I am very much familiar with. My evaluation of the sound is with respect to the computer and not the real HIFI in any way.
Conclusion
I am at a loss not having heard either the Santa Cruz or the Acoustic Edge, but, my review is based on what the SB Live had to offer which I was using till about a couple of months back.
I have not used the SB1394 port, the digital output, neither have tested the 5.1 Surround Sound quality, I have also yet to connect my daughter’s Yamaha Keyboard but I concentrated only on the sound quality of the card compared to the SB Live. For the price, the card is worth buying. The improvement in technology is very much evident here. Even those who wish to upgrade from an older SB Live should not think twice about it, provided they utilise all the facilities this card has to offer.
It just dawned on me while checking the messages posted earlier that this thread started out as "Turtle Beach Santa Cruz" but ended up being "Creative's Audigy" I wish I could change the name of the thread to something like "In the market for a new sound card" or something. This way it would not be misleading to those who read the posts later.
KK: Let me elaborate on the volume a bit more. The sound and clarity on PAE is IMO the best on the market, and I pair it w/ a set of 4.1 Cambridge speakers when watching movies. But at night time, I use the headphone 'cause I ain't some selfish mother fuckers (my mexican neighbors) who dance to the beat at full blast. It could be my dated headphones or PAE wires (for 5.1 speaker hookup. I plug the headphones in the Center/LFE jack, didn't bother w/ the Front), but the volume's so low that I have to use the other system's AC97 sound to watch DVDs if I were to use the headphones during movie viewing. Hope that answered your question.
I manged to scare ya, didn't I?Originally posted by skamp
Quad, Well im glad it went well,I can sleep at night now knowing you wont knock on my door at any minute!!
By the way I downloaded the latest drivers from the creative website and installed it. Everything is going OK so far. The sound is pretty good for the price.
The driver CD bundled with the Audigy had drivers dated July XX 2001. and the one on the site is dated January 2002.
I am posting it just for information sake.
Hey Quad...nice bit of synopsis on the Audigy. Good to hear the install went well and you are pleased with the card. You got journalistic talents for sure...ever considering writing reviews or previews for *cough* BBF *cough*
I will be interested to see what your thoughts on the 4.1/5.1 implementation of the Audigy. I haven't heard the Audigy yet so I am curious if they made an improvement in that area of the SB Live series. To my ears, the PAE kicked ass over the SB Live in that department hands down.
Did you check CPU utilization?
IA,Originally posted by ImaginAsian
Hey Quad...nice bit of synopsis on the Audigy. Good to hear the install went well and you are pleased with the card. You got journalistic talents for sure...ever considering writing reviews or previews for *cough* BBF *cough*
I will be interested to see what your thoughts on the 4.1/5.1 implementation of the Audigy. I haven't heard the Audigy yet so I am curious if they made an improvement in that area of the SB Live series. To my ears, the PAE kicked ass over the SB Live in that department hands down.
Did you check CPU utilization?
Thanks for the compliment. Coming from YOU it does carry a lot of weight! At the moment I am so much occupied with my post graduation studies that I am afraid I may not be able to fulfil the commitment. However, I can and will try to put in more time once I am through with the studies coming September. I sure will be a more active member as far as participation is concerned. For the time being I am trying to contribute whatever I can with the time I have at hand.
I plan to do some more audio experiments soon (ripping, DAE etc.) and will report my findings as and when they are available.
Actually my CD Rom Drive (Asus 52X) was giving me problems (tray mechanism getting stuck, and PC freezing frequently for split seconds). Since I got it just a couple of months back and it is still under warranty, I decided to get a replacement.
I need to rearrange the setup (PC wise and room wise) which hopfully I will be doing this weekend, and if so, I may have something to report.
Kewl Bro...keep us informed on your findings! And I totally understand ya about time and articles. Gosh if I had more time myself, I would be writing articles too although my writing skills are not anything to be proud of
A bit off topic but You still using a CD Rom Drive? Replacing with a DVD drive I hope...I don't see much use for a pure CD drive anymore myself.
I use to have the Asus DVD just before I installed this one, I gave it away to my friend after I got a stand alone DVD player and a Flat TV. You probably know that even today 99 percent of the software is still on CD and my son needs it for playing his games. I hardly use it. I rip audio through the Plextor which is faster in terms of DAE and also very accurate.A bit off topic but You still using a CD Rom Drive? Replacing with a DVD drive I hope...I don't see much use for a pure CD drive anymore myself. [/B]
Folks,
One more thing to report on the Audigy.:dir:
I had installed the software from the bundled Cd which came with the card. However, on the Creative website new drivers were available (January 2002) which I downloaded and installed accordingly. All seems OK.
I checked the quality of the Audigy output from the line out fed to the NAD amp and listening it through the Sennheiser 580's. The sound was very clean and the low end surprisingly was having the adequate weight so to say for such a low price card. Note that the out put is not from the built in amp (audigy does not have a built in amp) but straight Line Output. The specifications says that the Line out can be used with a Headphone of only 32 ohm impedence. I have not tried it directly as I do not have a proper headphone with such low impedence. The Sennheiser's have an impedence of 300 ohms and it would be necessary to drive them with an amp.
My son does have a headphone which came with the portable CD (Philips Active 7583) but I would not use it for testing the sound quality. Just for information any cheap headphone would do, for connection to the line out as long as it is 32 ohms. Higher impedence would not sound right in the sense that there would be no bass output and the volume would be very low other than that you would not be harming the card in anyway.
Next I would be ripping some MP3's and will let you know the result soon on this very thread.
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