CompGeeks Special - Turtle Beach Montego II Vortex 2 card $15
- Thread starter unhuman
- Start date
Those sound cards arent that great. 300 someodd voice itns' thta great. I work for dell and I work with those sound cards all the time. If you want a cheap card, yeah it'll be okay for that price. It's good for that price, but if you want quality, dont bother
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Any comments on this card/deal. For $15 I wouldn't be expecting crystal clear sound, but will it be enough for games/mp3s? I'd probably just get it until a hot deal came along for a good sound card.
i dont know too much about turtle beach, but i know a bit about Aureal.
the vortex 2 had Creative Labs $HITTING in their PANTS!!
A3D is pretty good. only problem is i dont think you should expect too much driver support seeing as how CL dissolved Aureal. hopefully NVidia will be doing some wonderful things with all those recently employed engineers
the vortex 2 had Creative Labs $HITTING in their PANTS!!
A3D is pretty good. only problem is i dont think you should expect too much driver support seeing as how CL dissolved Aureal. hopefully NVidia will be doing some wonderful things with all those recently employed engineers
This thing is an IRQ hog; takes up 2 or 3 of them. It installs fine in W2K, but when I put it in my 98 machine, it was conflicting with my NIC and/or modem. I'd pass on this deal. Damn; I should get back to work...
Yes the turtle beach is an okay decent sound card... it'll work for games and music and mp3's what now.. it's a lil lower than the SBLIVE, 384 or whatever kinda sucks, i' rather have 512.. but for 15 bux, what do u want..
hummmmmmmmm no quad support and no spdif plug............may be not that great. I do believe it is a pretty good card, because I have the first version (vortex 1)card.
The sad thing about the complain for using 2 IRQs ....... sigh......even SoundBlaster uses two, for SB pro emulation.
The sad thing about the complain for using 2 IRQs ....... sigh......even SoundBlaster uses two, for SB pro emulation.
$15 is a good deal, but vortex 2 has irq conflicts like mentioned above, Lots of problems with ME with my intel nic card, and my ISA scsi. It's horrible. I use to be a tech, and those vortex are nightmares somethings. Especially the sound blaster emulation oh god! Putting IRQ5 on ISA legacy instead of PCI in bios sometimes solve this problem. WIn2k is fine. If u are willing to spending time with this card then get it. I like my Monster sound mx300 when it works. Last time that happened was a year ago, when I went to win2k there is no A3D support. Oh well better than lots of other soundcards out there, besides the creative line. my 2 cents.
What are you going to use it for? If it's for games, the Aureal drivers support EAX (up to 2.0, I think) and A3D 1.0/2.0. A3D is generally recognized as being superior for four speaker systems and sounds awesome in such games as Thief and Half-Life. Win2K/WinME support is an issue, however, since no one is developing drivers anymore (and CL certainly won't release any, da bastids). For MP3 or CD audio or MPEG, any card will do within reason. For DVD digital output, you're talking more money (and it's somewhat stupid since standalone players with a nice stereo will sound better and look better on a TV). If you have conflicts with the SB emulation, disable it -- does anyone honestly play DOS games with any regularity?
384 v. 512 voices? How in the hell cares? Tell me you honestly notice and in what applications. I'd be interested.
For $15, it's a nice card for the price. Turtle Beach is certainly not known for producing trash.
384 v. 512 voices? How in the hell cares? Tell me you honestly notice and in what applications. I'd be interested.
For $15, it's a nice card for the price. Turtle Beach is certainly not known for producing trash.
i was wondering why my sound card was choking my AMD box.
thanks for the tip. went with live! value but it's nice to get some resolution.
thanks for the tip. went with live! value but it's nice to get some resolution.
Rant: misunderstandings about about MIDI
How many of you guys whom complain about 384 or 512 voice MIDI _EVER_ use them? The quality of the patch is much more important than the quantity of the polyphony. This specification means the card can play 384 simultaneous sounds (or musical notes)... general MIDI specifies only 24. 32 note polyphony (voices) was the standard on pro gear for many years. Now the gaming cards keep uping the numbers to impress consumers. 384 vs 512 vs 1024 vs MOOT POINT.
I can't speak for this card (don't own it), but Turtle Beach has a good reputation in the audio world. I bought a TB Santa Cruz and am very impressed with it. Hell, I didn't even realize it until now, but it states "64 hardware + unlimited software" voices...
If you want good gaming MIDI, Creative sucks *ss. My Yamaha DB50XG daughtercard still beats any DLS font or soundfont I've tried on my TB Santa Cruz or on my Awe32 with 8mb for playing MIDI files or video games. The daughtercard just rocks for playing stock MIDI "." To let you know my criteria.... leaning over I can look at my 3 EMU rack mounted modules and mixer... UltraProteus, Proteus2 and my Kawai K5000W workstation. If you want serious MIDI for your games, go get a card that have a waveblaster daughtercard connector and buy a DB50XG or a Roland Sound Canvas.... then snicker at every add Creative writes about their DLS/soundfont stuff. Their soundfonts actually work well as a sampler, or for custom patches in a composition (especially if you get some of the EMU libraries available)... but I have yet to hear anything that uses them *well* in a game context. The best MIDI games I've heard in recent times are: Age of Empires, HOMM2 (MIDI optional), X-tension (MIDI optional) and they all sound best (IMHO) on a DB50XG daughtercard.
End rant... we now return you to your normally scheduled bargain hunting
How many of you guys whom complain about 384 or 512 voice MIDI _EVER_ use them? The quality of the patch is much more important than the quantity of the polyphony. This specification means the card can play 384 simultaneous sounds (or musical notes)... general MIDI specifies only 24. 32 note polyphony (voices) was the standard on pro gear for many years. Now the gaming cards keep uping the numbers to impress consumers. 384 vs 512 vs 1024 vs MOOT POINT.
I can't speak for this card (don't own it), but Turtle Beach has a good reputation in the audio world. I bought a TB Santa Cruz and am very impressed with it. Hell, I didn't even realize it until now, but it states "64 hardware + unlimited software" voices...
If you want good gaming MIDI, Creative sucks *ss. My Yamaha DB50XG daughtercard still beats any DLS font or soundfont I've tried on my TB Santa Cruz or on my Awe32 with 8mb for playing MIDI files or video games. The daughtercard just rocks for playing stock MIDI "." To let you know my criteria.... leaning over I can look at my 3 EMU rack mounted modules and mixer... UltraProteus, Proteus2 and my Kawai K5000W workstation. If you want serious MIDI for your games, go get a card that have a waveblaster daughtercard connector and buy a DB50XG or a Roland Sound Canvas.... then snicker at every add Creative writes about their DLS/soundfont stuff. Their soundfonts actually work well as a sampler, or for custom patches in a composition (especially if you get some of the EMU libraries available)... but I have yet to hear anything that uses them *well* in a game context. The best MIDI games I've heard in recent times are: Age of Empires, HOMM2 (MIDI optional), X-tension (MIDI optional) and they all sound best (IMHO) on a DB50XG daughtercard.
End rant... we now return you to your normally scheduled bargain hunting
This is a very decent sound card as others have said. There is still support for it in at least 2 places that I know of. First there is
TurtleBeach
The latest drivers will install the card using only 1 IRQ, without SB emulation. I used these drivers 2 weeks ago in a Duron/A7V setup with no issues whatsoever.
The next is this site
VortexofSound
They have the Aureal reference drivers including the Win2K drivers.
TurtleBeach
The latest drivers will install the card using only 1 IRQ, without SB emulation. I used these drivers 2 weeks ago in a Duron/A7V setup with no issues whatsoever.
The next is this site
VortexofSound
They have the Aureal reference drivers including the Win2K drivers.
You can disable the Vortex 2 Soundblaster emulation, freeing up an IRQ. Just disable it in Control Panel/System. This is a good deal, although you can get 2 Montego II's at overstock.com for $52, then apply $20 and free shipping, making the pair $32.
Unlike the Montego "Quadzilla," this version can use the Aureal reference drivers. There's probably a 50/50 chance that Creative will continue to provide Aureal driver support, so it's your choice.
Btw, I use my MX300 (essentially the same thing, only 4 channels) on my Abit KT7Raid with no problems. I think it's the SlotA VIA chipset that was having the problems; I haven't heard anything about the SocketA KT133.
Here's a website explaining all things Aureal:
Vortex
Unlike the Montego "Quadzilla," this version can use the Aureal reference drivers. There's probably a 50/50 chance that Creative will continue to provide Aureal driver support, so it's your choice.
Btw, I use my MX300 (essentially the same thing, only 4 channels) on my Abit KT7Raid with no problems. I think it's the SlotA VIA chipset that was having the problems; I haven't heard anything about the SocketA KT133.
Here's a website explaining all things Aureal:
Vortex
If you just want a sound card but don?t need all the latest stuff this is an excellent card allot better than those $hitty one's they sell at Fry's for the same price.
While that's not a bad price for a Vortex 2 card, the Aureal OEM SuperQuad with 4 speaker support and digital out for $28-30 or even the MX300 with 4 speaker support are probably better deals. A3D with 4 speakers is really great. By the way, all three cards have the WaveBlaster wavetable header. I personally prefer the MX300 because the "spacier" board layout makes mounting a larger daughterboard a bit easier than the other two.
Couple of other points:
1) Like wizz0bang said, if you're using MIDI, the daughterboard is the way to go. I've got a Korg MIDI daughterboard (and a Turtle Beach Rio with uploadable samples, but that's another story) mounted on the MX300 that I'm very happy with. The Korg is maybe a notch below the Roland SoundCanvas (which I had tried) but was a heck of a lot cheaper ($10 on clearance vs $200). Definitely better than Aureal's default patch set and most DLS sets I've found.
2) As I've posted repeatedly, the Vortex 2/KT133 problem is timing related and is fixed with Aureal's 2048 drivers under Win98 (don't know about Win2K since I don't run it). If the reference drivers don't solve the problem there's either an IRQ conflict (which isn't uncommon with loaded KT133's in general) or the user didn't completely remove the OEM's custom drivers. Also the Aureal reference drivers add the equalizer that Diamond's drivers didn't include.
3) The issue of the SB emulation and taking up an extra IRQ can be solved permanently by editing the reference driver's INF file so the SB emulation isn't installed. A basic Vortex 2 install without SB emulation requires exactly one IRQ.
Couple of other points:
1) Like wizz0bang said, if you're using MIDI, the daughterboard is the way to go. I've got a Korg MIDI daughterboard (and a Turtle Beach Rio with uploadable samples, but that's another story) mounted on the MX300 that I'm very happy with. The Korg is maybe a notch below the Roland SoundCanvas (which I had tried) but was a heck of a lot cheaper ($10 on clearance vs $200). Definitely better than Aureal's default patch set and most DLS sets I've found.
2) As I've posted repeatedly, the Vortex 2/KT133 problem is timing related and is fixed with Aureal's 2048 drivers under Win98 (don't know about Win2K since I don't run it). If the reference drivers don't solve the problem there's either an IRQ conflict (which isn't uncommon with loaded KT133's in general) or the user didn't completely remove the OEM's custom drivers. Also the Aureal reference drivers add the equalizer that Diamond's drivers didn't include.
3) The issue of the SB emulation and taking up an extra IRQ can be solved permanently by editing the reference driver's INF file so the SB emulation isn't installed. A basic Vortex 2 install without SB emulation requires exactly one IRQ.
I miss my MX300. I had to buy a Live! card *egads* because the MX300 doesn't want to work with the KT133 chipsets (sound crackling popping YES with the 2048 drivers, fresh windows install, no IRQ conflicts). The MX300 sounded so much better in games. Creative should do some R&D into Aureal since they bought them.
Fumiup,
What system board were you running on? I'd be curious to know because this also happens sporadically with some of the "safe" SB Live! cards as well. There have also been rather odd causes for popping and cracking from unusual sources like SETI clients and Norton AV.
And you're right about the MX300. After you've used A3D, it's tough to use anything else.
What system board were you running on? I'd be curious to know because this also happens sporadically with some of the "safe" SB Live! cards as well. There have also been rather odd causes for popping and cracking from unusual sources like SETI clients and Norton AV.
And you're right about the MX300. After you've used A3D, it's tough to use anything else.
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