What are some good sound cards?

[eyor]

I have a montego right now that I need to return because it is not compatible with my KT7. Does the Cruz have the same problem?

 

[Zucchini]

no probs that i know of

 

[thornc]

Forgive my ignorance, but I never heard of those "Santa Cruz" cards...

Where can I see/read about them?...Specs and stuff...
Who makes them??

Thanks

 

[StickHead]

What difference does it make? They are all Sound Blaster peices o' crap.

 

[Zucchini]

The company is turtle beach The santa cruz is reviewed on 3dsoundsurge.com firingsquad.com sharkyextreme.com gamersdepot.com (from memory so its kinda sketchy)and a ton of other places

 

[Rigoletto]

phew!
I have an SBlive! myself and never got to use 80% of the features because no software to make them work right. Didn't try too hard though...
The way Creative updates their soundcards seems to be very admirable and they have a lot of experience in the industry. I would have bought a LiveDrive! but it turned out just as expensive as the whole thing, really, so I stay with the older version.

 

[Wingznut]

The Santa Cruz.

You'll find all sorts of links to reviews of the card, on that site.

 

[LXi]

Priit:

<<why to you think that software synths are better than hardware ? I've tested Yamaha's software synth and it wasn'n even as good as SBLive's (mixing wasn't smooth etc.). It's like comparing software and hardware 3D graphics rendering (well, not that bad, but close ). IMHO there's no way that any software MIDI synth would come close to the the quality of Yamaha SW1000XG.>>

Have you ever played the PC version of Final Fantasy VII? Its THE ONLY game that still uses MIDI in the recent years. I tell ya, the Yamaha software synth sounded better than anything else, of course I havent tried professional or MIDI-enhanced soundcards, but for free, its probably the best you can get, the only downside is that it eats some CPU and resource, but its well worth it to have great music in that game. I listen to amateur made MIDI music a lot, and the Yamaha also sounded on top of the CL. As for hardware MIDI, I have yet to see a competing soundcard within the same price range that can outdo the Live!.


<<About that 80db SNR: that was what I saw by myself, using little soundcard-testing program (full-duplex measurement, sorry that I can't give you the link of that program's homepage, I'll try to find it when I get home. I've seen online review with pretty much same results, too).>>

Ok I give that to you, but can you explain how a soundcard with higher db can enhance my audio experience?


<<I have tried Terratec's EWS64 S sndcard, and it's MIDI sounded better thab on Live, output/recording quality was bit better also (frequency response falled down by 3db at 19Khz, SBLive had it on scale till 18,2Khz). There probably isn't soundcard, that would make your mp3-s sound better when they are encoded @ 128Kbit>>

Terratec soundcard huh? How much does it cost? Does it support any major 3D sound APIs? Does it have a bundle? How about support and Win2K drivers? Will it be compatible with major OSes and motherboards based on popular chipsets? Furthermore, does it offer everything CL Live! brings to the table? If no soundcards can make my 128kbps sound better, how about my CDs and 320kbps MP3s?



Wingznut PEZ:

Can you list some of the real advantages the Santa Cruz has over the Live! Make it as convincing as possible.

 

[Zucchini]

Jeez god lxi, do you have something to lose here? You must own a creative card i guess I've owned many so i can say that the santa cruz is a small step up, its not revolutionary by any standard but it does have full compatibility (eax/a3d) and great sound/features. I dumped my xgamer for the santa cruz. Another reason to not buy creative is that they are a bloated company that doesn't innovate unless forced to.

I feel more control over my setup using the santa cruz, i can set front to rear and left to right sliders for each source. There are many sound profiles and enviromental audio settings just like the live. As i've said, the versa jack is very convenient.. allows me to have 4.1 hooked up as well as headphones, no manual switching needed. It has all the features a creative card has, and more. Adjustable 3d sound .. i forgot what they named it.. and mp3 acceleration. I know the acceleration is broken in the current drivers, but it might be a nice feature once it gets fixed. Mp3s might not be burdensome to most systems, but it'll probably help if you want to play mp3s during a new 3d game. That and games in the future may use mp3. If your in the market to upgrade.. there's no downside with going santa cruz I wish there were a card with a3d 4.0 or something, but thats not going to happen soon.

By the way my card b4 the x-gamer was a diamond monster sound mx300.. i loved that card Had to toss it because of incompatibility between new m/b.

 

[Zucchini]

&quot;Ok I give that to you, but can you explain how a soundcard with higher db can enhance my audio experience?&quot;

how is less noise bad? Turtle beach has a very good record of making very clean soundcards I had the original montego, that was sweet

 

[Wingznut]

Lxi always gets passionate about hardware. Go on... tell him that the CUSL-2 is the best 815 mobo out there. Go ahead, I dare you!

Anyway, I'm not going to get into details, or even try to justify an argument. I'm just saying that in MY experience of owning the above mentioned sound cards, the Santa Cruz is the best.

 

[LXi]

I have nothing to lose, I just dont think its worth the money and trouble upgrading to Santa Cruz which doesnt really give me any kind of real advantages. It's like upgrading from a 32x CD-ROM to a 40x CD-ROM, whats the point? I already play 3D games with MP3 on and Im experiencing no slowdowns whatsoever. I have a POS 3 piece speakers which I rarely use, and I mostly use headphones. I play UT with 3D sound on and it's proven to have the lowest CPU utilization, plus I never use EAX. Do you think I should run out immediately and waste how much ever Santa Cruz might cost and dump my MP3+?


<<how is less noise bad? Turtle beach has a very good record of making very clean soundcards I had the original montego, that was sweet>>

Tell me, what's the good in it if you can't hear the difference?

 

[LXi]

<<Anyway, I'm not going to get into details, or even try to justify an argument. I'm just saying that in MY experience of owning the above mentioned sound cards, the Santa Cruz is the best.>>

Convince me why I should dump my Live! and waste my hard earned money on the Santa Cruz? What's am I gonna get that I dont already have now?

 

[Zucchini]

i didn't realize this thread was created to convince a live! (xgamer/mp3+) user to drop his card for a santa cruz. Its clearly stated that the live is adequet for most uses, but the santa cruz does things a little better. Yes, it is almost the difference between a 32x/40x, but we are convincing someone who doesn't own a live or santa cruz to choose the better card. Then again a the analogy isn't perfect since good speakers will bring out the defects in your card and drive you nutty. We're talking bang for buck here.

Also, since you only use headphones, and pos 2.1 speakers, you shouldn't be arguing over this. You shouldn't be thinking about it.. its a waste of your time.

&quot;Tell me, what's the good in it if you can't hear the difference?&quot;
I could hear the difference. When i got a mx300 it was inferior, but i stuck with it for the 4 speaker output. The live was no better then the mx300.


I go through soundcards like a madman
Here's my card history.
sb16 mcd, sb16 gold, sb32 awe, TB montego ax3d, Monster 3d mx300, SB Live! Xgamer, TB Santa Cruz.

 

[Possum]

Zucchini, what did you notice when you switched from a MX300 to a Live! ? I just want to see if I'm going to see the same differences that you see when I get my Santa Cruz, if your perspective of Live! vs. MX300 is similar to mine. I too went from a MX300 and currently have a Live! value.

 

[Zucchini]

Possum,

I only got the live because of incompatibility between my new m/b and the mx300.

&quot;Does it have the internal connectors for a 2-wire SPDIF cable from a CD-ROM drive?&quot;
Yes

&quot;Any way to get optical out for minidisc recorders?&quot;
Yes

Does anyone &quot;notice&quot; sound quality differences between their Live! and Santa Cruz?
It has less noise, any other sound differences from the dacs are very hard to describe. I don't have a double blind test here to figure out if its just in my head that the sound is slightly clearer too

Is the equalizer any good? (I got &quot;richer&quot; sound using the simple Bass and Treble slider on the Live! than using the 5-7 slider setup on the MX300
Yes the equalizer is very good

Zucchini, what did you notice when you switched from a MX300 to a Live! ? I just want to see if I'm going to see the same differences that you see when I get my Santa Cruz, if your perspective of Live! vs. MX300 is similar to mine. I too went from a MX300 and currently have a Live! value.

I didn't notice much besides loss of good 3d sound *sniff* most other things worked fine though. I hated the creative software though, too much decorative garbage, should make interfaces clean and simple.

 

[Possum]

Thanks for all the information - I had a Santa Cruz ordered earlier from buy.com. Does it come with the 2-pin internal SP/DIF connetor for CD-ROM drives? I remember reading somewhere that a sound card didn't come with that, and didn't remember if I was reading about the Santa Cruz or the Live! Value OEM.

 

[Techno]

I didn't see anyone answer the question on MP3s (or i'm just blind) the sound quality when playing MP3's is outstanding. Before i left my Platinum for the can hear instruments in songs now (w/ the SC card) that i NEVER knew were in the song before (when i was using the Live Platinum).

 

[Zucchini]

nope, that was my only gripe, no digi cable for cdrom I guess you can pick those up from a computer store for a buck or two.. its just two wires

 

[LXi]

Techno:

Woo... tell me about it, is the Santa Cruz gonna make my MP3s sound better?

 

[Techno]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&amp;threadid=290523

 

[xyyz]

how does the Santa Cruz meansure up to the new Live 5.1 cards?

 

[Zucchini]

when doing our comparisons we basically do compare it to the 5.1 live! since its basically unchanged from previous live!s
Its called great marketing to squeeze more money out of a 3 year old design