gaming sound card

[kevin42635]

Looking at two sound cards Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Soundcard and the Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card to go with Altec Lansing 4100 4.1 Speaker System. Which would be the better choice for a good gaming system.

 

[Daovonnaex]

<< Looking at two sound cards Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Soundcard and the Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card to go with Altec Lansing 4100 4.1 Speaker System. Which would be the better choice for a good gaming system. >>

I'd go with the Santa Cruz--it has very little distortion, and it costs less.

 

[bakaris]

imo, audigy's better for gaming and santa cruz is better for mp3s, though i don' t think the audigy's worth the extra money.

 

[Pariah]

Audigy OEM is cheaper than a SC and a better sound card to boot. Only difference between it and the gamer is the software and the OEM has AC97 compliant colored jacks in the back as opposed to gold. Audigy is better for gaming and music.

 

[Damascus]

The SC oem costs about half the price of Audigy oem!

 

[Bovinicus]

They are about the same price if you get the Audigy OEM.

 

[JoeDaddy]

<< audigy's better for gaming and santa cruz is better for mp3s >>



And how did you come to this conclusion?

 

[dionx]

<<
<< <I>audigy's better for gaming and santa cruz is better for mp3s</I> >>

And how did you come to this conclusion? >>

he prolly read it at another hardware site. but i agree since i did read it at another site.

overall, go for the audigy, its the newer of the cards so it has more potential and to me its better than the TB santa cruz.

 

[Damascus]

<< They are about the same price if you get the Audigy OEM. >>



I did say Audigy OEM. Stores in my area are selling OEM Santa Cruz cards for
half of the Audigy OEM.

 

[Daovonnaex]

You know...you can get an Acoustic Edge for less than an Audigy.

 

[|TOAST|]

I thought audigy's were better for "refining" the playback of an mp3 such as eliminating clicking and such... never heard both head to head against one another so I'm just asking and stated what I heard.

 

[DraculR]

In my opinion, id get the Audigy for sure. While other may do specialised (its s, not z! hehe) tasks better, the Audigy is the best 'all-rounder' card. The new 'Advanced' EAX seems to be much better, and according to the FiringSquad, it is the best option at the moment. The stability seems to be improved over the old Live! cards when running on a via chipset and windows XP.

So yea...

 

[millsy]

I am running the Audigy player on a VIA chipset board (Epox 8K7A) and using Windows XP and it sounds great. Get the latest drivers from Creative and it is excellant.

 

[kevin42635]

Thinks for the help. Bestbuy now has the Creative Labs sound card with a $20 mail in rebate.

 

[CraigRT]

<< You know...you can get an Acoustic Edge for less than an Audigy. >>



That's suppose to be a super-nice soundcard.. I'd try one!

 

[AA0]

I would, and did get a Santa Cruz. The price is far better, retail or OEM, both are cheaper.
Plus, I no longer trust Creative, they don't delivered drivers, and just assume theirs are perfect, while it causes hell with everyones computers. The 686 problem was not an isolated occurance, it happened with half a dozen older chipsets too, it was definitely Creative's fault. It very well could happen again in the future, I'm avoiding it.

The sound quality is pretty similar, I know the Santa Cruz blows the Live! away easily, never heard the Audigy. The Audigy takes fewer CPU cycles, but the Santa Cruz has better drivers, and I love the versajack on the back of it. I'm not convinced of the Audigy quality yet, as on paper, its still similar to Live! when you get down to it.

 

[NeonFlak]

This is very opinion based and depends on the listener and what you wanna do with the sound cards. Both of the sound cards are awesome. Not to make things harder but the hercules fortissimo II for 32 bucks is pretty good as well. The Audigy maybe better for gaming since more game developers would support it's hardware. But it's all going to boil down to an opinion. My opinion would be for you to grab both of them and try them both. Talk a friend into getting one and you get the other.

 

[MasterHoss]

Well, I have used the Santa Cruz, the Live!, Live! 5.1, Game Theater XP, and the Audigy.

Of all those cards, I will DEFINATELY give the thumbs up to the Audigy for gaming and for audio playback. The Santa Cruz is a good card for sure, but the Audigy is better.

 

[Pariah]

"The SC oem costs about half the price of Audigy oem!"

Where are you finding a SC for $30? Newegg has an OEM SC for $65, and they sell the Audigy OEM for $62. The cheapest price on pricewatch is $59, and you better bet you are taking a risk picking the cheapest site listed on Pricewatch. I own a SC, and certainly have nothing negative to say about it. It works as advertised, and that's a rarity today. But given the choice between an Audigy and a SC, I would definitely take the Audigy based on features and performance, especially when the prices are pretty even.

 

[NesuD]

By most accounts the Audigy has an edge over the Santa Cruz in gaming and music playback. That being said the audigys advantage i don't think is anything that leaps out and smacks you. On the other hand the Santa Cruz has a proven reputation for compatibility and good driver support something which creative has been severely lacking in recently. The newest Santa Cruz beta XP Driver also has made noticeable improvements to already excellent sound quality and significantly reduced cpu loads in directsound3d hardware audio streams based on my personal tests with audio winbench99. This beta driver release is expected to be out in an official release very soon. Given these facts i am more inclined to look more favorably on the Santa Cruz than the Audigy until Creative can demonstrate to me a renewed commitment to end user support. I haven't used the Audigy so i cannot personally comment on it's actual performance and can only go by others reported experiences. I have used both the Live and the Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz is a definate hands down winner over the live. I don't think you can go wrong with a Santa Cruz. The audigy may be excellent as well providing it doesn't demonstrate the compatibility problems that showed up in the live and Creative significantly improves their driver support but only time will tell on that.

 

[Damascus]

<< "The SC oem costs about half the price of Audigy oem!"

Where are you finding a SC for $30? Newegg has an OEM SC for $65, and they sell the Audigy OEM for $62 >>



I've seen local stores carry the SC oem for $50, and that's in Canadian dollars..
maybe an anomaly.

 

[NotoriousJTC]

<<

I've seen local stores carry the SC oem for $50, and that's in Canadian dollars..
maybe an anomaly. >>



Which stores have you seen the SB in? I'm in Canada and plan to buy myself a Santa Cruz soon, but don't really know where to look.

 

[DraculR]

I hope Hercules releases a new version of the GTXP with some proper 5.1 support and a chipset which comes closer to the Audigy (even though it is pretty close as it is). I love that box =)

 

[AEboy128]

I say go with the TBSC, Better drivers and sound quality ROCKS! Haven't heard the sound quality on the Audigy yet though.

 

[Daovonnaex]

<<

<< You know...you can get an Acoustic Edge for less than an Audigy. >>



That's suppose to be a super-nice soundcard.. I'd try one! >>

It's a very nice card with a plethora of features, it's cheap, and it has excellent driver support. The only problem is, it's Dutch. As long as you don't have some irrational hatred of the Dutch that borders on pathological, it's a good choice.