Turtle Beach Santa cruz sound card

[fatfish888]

Hi,
I just got a new TB sound card after reading so many good comments for video capture. B4 replacing this one. I got a vibra128 and everything work fine. However, when I install this card. The Win2k cannot be shut down. I do d/l the lastest driver from their web site. Anyone can make some help for me. Thanks.
My config.
Tusl2c
cele1.2g
PCtvpro
Turtlebeach santa cruz
G400
Asus 1394 Ti chipset card
Win2k with SP2

[Elie]

Make sure you completely uninstalled the vibra drivers.
Also try a different PCI slot.

Regards,
Elie

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup, that sure sounds like some other drivers are sill installed. Many drivers don't uninstall properly. Creatives the worst at this, but they aren't alone.

I've got 6 Santa Cruz systems now and none have this problem, but then most of them have had it installed from the get-go.

Dr. Mordrid

[kwmarriott]

What a funny world: I have stopped using my Santa Cruz becaues it was causing jerky video playback on my via based athlon system. Tried everything under the sun to fix this but it only cleared when I removed the santa cruz and went to a generic yamaha sound card...

[Brian Ellis]

KW

Not really surprising. According to comparative reports published some time ago in the mags, there was nothing to choose between Live! and SCTB as far as use of systems resources are concerned. There was a difference in the sound quality because SCTB had a peak in the trebles, boosting them by about 10 dB over the more linear response curve of the Live! This gave the sound a more "brilliant" feel which appeals to some, although not to purists. Signal-to-Noise ratio was about the same, slightly better at 1 kHz for SCTB. Total harmonic distortion depends on the signal level, being better with Live! at low levels (less crossover distortion with Class AB amplis, compared with Class B for SCTB), but the other way round at high signal levels, due to ampli saturation kicking in earlier with the Live! The overall consensus in 3 articles that I read was that there was little to choose between them. Personally, I've always maintained there is no way you can or should pretend that a PC is a good base for a hi-fi system, so all this is academic anyway.

[Dr Mordrid]

Better take a look at the review FiringSquad did on the TBSC vs. SBLive X-Gamer;

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/santacruz/page5.asp

Note particularly the Audio WinBench99 DirectSound static and streaming results. They couldn't even measure the TBSC's CPU usage, which is what I'm also seeing here.

Since DirectSound output is what we typically use in editing, how do you improve on that kind of result?

Full review of TBSC on FiringSquad;

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/santacruz/

NOTE: the latest drivers, especially those for Win2K, are much better for the other functions than those tested by FiringSquad. They are now fully WDM and certified.

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

I also bought a Hercules Game theater XP and it too performs way way better than the Soundblaster live in trems of CPU utilization and audio fidelity.

So both my SC and GTXP perform great in two different PC's, and guess where my Live is

Check out review here...

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/gtxpreview/page9.asp

[kwmarriott]

I notice most people using the Santa Cruz are on windows 2000. I am using windows 98 on an athlon based system and had problems with this setup: maybe win 2000 does handle this configuration better.

I tried everything to fix jerky video playback and failed. I then noticed that when I was audio recording (multitrack studio stuff) the recording software stuttered too: replaced the audio card and that fixed my studio software and much to my surprise greatly improved the video playback too.

Just goes to show how seemingly unrelated problems (jerky video caused by a soundcard?) can catch you out..

[Dr Mordrid]

Previously there were only VxD drivers for Win9x, but recently TB put up some WDM beta drivers for Win9x that some are reporting work rather well.

Another problem can arise if you place the TBSC in a PCI slot that isn't busmastered. Suprisingly there are still boards out there that don't busmaster all their PCI slots.

Dr. Mordrid