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santa cruz vs sb live!

spanky

spanky

Lifer
alright... so i got trigger happy and bought a santa cruz (with logitech z540's) from compusa. i thought it was a good deal... so i splurged. now the thing is... i already have a sb live! and do not have any problems with it (running win xp). right now, i am having second thoughts about keeping the santa cruz (and speakers), becuz i seem content with my sb live (and atp3s). can anyone tell me what (if any) are the advantages of the santa cruz over a sb live? i'm looking for a reason to not return the santa cruz (and z540's)... if i can't find convincing evidence that the santa cruz is worth the $40 upgrade... i'm going back to compusa tomorrow for a refund 😛
 
Just listen to them to hear the difference 🙂

Santa Cruz is SMP friendly
Santa Cruz has great driver support.
It supports 5.1 🙂
 
Since you're content with your Live!, I don't suggest upgrading to the SC. The main difference would be better frequency response in the upper-end (>16KHz), but you may not notice it unless you're saavy with audio and music (let alone if your ear can even pick up the frequencies).
 
Originally posted by: spankyOO7
Originally posted by: joohang
Originally posted by: spankyOO7
Originally posted by: joohang
I am now a happy user of TB Santa Cruz and gave my SB Live! to my sister.
Click to expand...

is it worth $40 tho?
Click to expand...

To me, the VersaJack alone is worth 40 bucks. 😀
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wanna buy it for $50? 😛
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Nah. 🙂

I do think that Santa Cruz sounds a bit better than Live! when I play music, but then I got cheap speakers any ways.

I made a wise choice though because Santa Cruz is more compatible with dual Athlon motherboards. Also, I'm biased against Creative. 😛
 
If you have the time and the latest release of Ghost, I's try swapping parts around to see if you really notice the difference. Oh yeah, start identifying folks who may be inneed of a nsound card and speakers. 🙂

-SUO
 
It's a great card, and if I needed a new card I would buy it for $40, but I don't (I'm still using my old SB Live Retail too).
I'm sure that someone would pay that much for an unused TBSC card. Is it a Retail or OEM?
 
The SC just plain sounds better and cleaner than the SB Live under XP. I gave up my SBLive for an SC about 9 months ago and the improvement was immediately noticable. Better drivers and straight forward control panel (i.e. no Live ware crap) give it the edge.
 
u guys r slowly brainwashing me to keep the SC 😱

i think i might just keep it and like SUOrangeman said... i will prolly start ghosting this weekend. but in the meantime, i am thinking of ways to chop down the price.... like two weeks ago, i got in on a "free" belkin router deal from compusa. but the catch was i had to buy a $25 patch cable. i am thinking about bringing everything back... returning everything... and hopefully get store credit for the patch cable and use that to re-buy the SC and z540's. anyone think that will work? 😛
 
The Santa Cruz sucks. Its horrible. I think you should get rid of it immediately. I would be happy to take it off your hands. 😉
 
You have a tough decision to make 😉, I actually think the Philips AE and SE sound better then the Santa Cruz and even prefer my Audigy in gaming to the SC 😀 ,however sound quality is always subjective .

Don`t let the Santa Cruz AT members brainwash you 😉,yes the SC is a better sounding card but`s it`s your money and you`ve to decide if it`s worth keeping or not,maybe with better speakers the difference might be bigger (the Z540 speakers are not bad but you can do better),so no easy answer here except use your ears harder 😉.
 
If you really want to keep your santa cruz, why don't you just keep it. 🙂
and about your sb live! you can just e-bay it or put it on sale/trade forums 🙂
so it mean you not doing $40 upgrade 🙂
 
In the end, if you're not going to notice the difference it's not worth the upgrade. The Santa Cruz has better, less clunky drivers. That said, I did a comparison using a decent pair of 200W (RMS) speakers and I prefer the live's sound. (note the subjective) Unless you're a closet Audiophile however, you won't notice the difference and it's probably not $40 for better drivers.
 
Heh, I wouldn't touch a SB Live! with a 10 foot pole if you're running a VIA chipset.

I love my SC. Only ever had 1 hardware conflict with it (Highpoint + Win2k + SC drivers - this may have been fixed by now, not sure.). All the stories about the SB Live and VIA chipsets has made me avoid Creative sound cards for quite some time.
 
The thing with the whole creative/via thing is partially due to the fact that VIA has a large chunk of the chipset market share and Creative has an even larger chunk of the Sound Card market. This makes the two a very common combination so any bugs will affect a lot more users than say, a bug affecting SIS chipsets and Turtle Beach soundcards.

I've never had any problems with the two myself. (although before I get flamed, I am entirely aware that other people have had problems 😉)
 
Originally posted by: Woodchuck2000
The thing with the whole creative/via thing is partially due to the fact that VIA has a large chunk of the chipset market share and Creative has an even larger chunk of the Sound Card market. This makes the two a very common combination so any bugs will affect a lot more users than say, a bug affecting SIS chipsets and Turtle Beach soundcards.

I've never had any problems with the two myself. (although before I get flamed, I am entirely aware that other people have had problems 😉)
Click to expand...

I thought this was because Creative seemed to have some sort of issue properly implementing the PCI 2.1 standard. That's what I've heard at any rate, although I have the KT133A chipset and a Live and I have 0 problems with it.
 
I liked the sound of my friends TBSC card, I thought for at least MP3s it sounded better then the live card.
 
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