Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or Audigy 2 ??

[Pyramus]

Hi all,

I have a Dell pc from about 2 years ago that came with the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card and some decent 5.1 Altec Lanzing speakers.

I have no complaints about the sound quality but as I am building a new pc with games in mind (half life 2) should I get an Audigy 2 or is there little difference between the two??

Also, will my 5.1 speakers work on a 6.1 card or 7.1 card?

Thanks guys!!!

[directhex]

5.1 speakers will work on a 6.1 or 7.1 card, you just don't plug anything into the 4th speaker jack on the card.

and in my humble opinion creative kit is vastly overrated.

[Pyramus]

Thanks for the reply!

Will I not loose out on sound quality though by using 5.1 speakers on a 6.1 card?

[spazman]

No loss in sound quality, you will just have an audio channel spare. The onboard sound on my nforce2 board is better than my audigy ever was.

[floppybootstomp]

Consider a Philips Accoustic Edge 5.1, excellent sound quality. In my experience, much cleaner and fuller sounding than the Creative Cards. Cheaper, too. Can you still get the Santa Cruz sound cards? I thought they were discontinued.

[LayZeh]

No loss in sound quality, you will just have an audio channel spare. The onboard sound on my nforce2 board is better than my audigy ever was.

That's your experience, not the majorities.

[floppybootstomp]

LayZeh: Just happens to be my experience too. I have two NForce2 boards, sound quality on both is excellent (they're both Gigabyte). I was never impressed with Creative. jmho.

[directhex]

/me rubs his philips acoustic edge

[Pyramus]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I have a Turtle Beach from a couple years ago and was wondering was it worth my while "upgrading" an Audigy 2.

Is it an upgrade?

[overfloe]

if you're getting the A2 ZS then yes it is an upgrade. a worthy one

[Pyramus]

Whats the difference between the Audigy 2 and the Audigy 2 ZS as far as sound quality goes???

I know the zs is 7.1 and the normal A2 is 6.1

Is that the only difference?

[Aaron]

That's your experience, not the majorities.

I found the nForce2 digital audio to be superior to the Audigy 2's. For analogue, I thought they were roughly on par with each other.

Creative's range of sound cards has been dissappointing for quite some time now.

[directhex]

since 1994, you mean?

[unrealrocks]

That's your experience, not the majorities.

Mine too - I had an Audigy2 for a few weeks and although I did like the EAX on it, apart from that it didn't really have anything going for it.

[Lexeus]

I have a videologic sonicfury sound card which has that audio chipset, it was always a great card, it is just sitting in its box now though as I am pretty happy with the Nforce2 audio on my MSI board, so don't really need it. It is really hard to tell the difference between cards if you ask me, there is an obvious difference between really bad quality sound cards and speakers, but once you step up from those it is very hard to make any genuinely noticable difference.
When I first started using the nforce 2 audio I wasn't sure if it was as good as my sonicfury, but I dont know whether I just forgot but now it seems fine , I think I may have just been trying to make my self think onboard sound couldn't be as good

To be honest, Audigy really dont have a very bright future. They have stuck different ports on the frront panels and things to try and increase their appeal, but they have really just been re-, badging, facing, colouring etc for a few years now, and people are starting to realise that analogue audio does nto have to be an expensive addon, even if you want 7.1 speakers. 7.1 sounds cards can be had for relatively small ammounts, it just isn't as complicated, and mainly Expensive as they would like us to think

[directhex]

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz = USA version of Videologic Sonic Fury

or vice versa.