TB Santa Cruz 19.99 AR Nice new look AT!

[dejacky]

I paid $40 for this card. $20 is an unbelievable price. It is certainly worth a LOT more..the sound quality, design, and ease of compatibility with other systems make this card a GEM .

 

[GoodToGo]

Can this card run in WINXP 64 bit?

 

[kyparrish]

this is a pretty good deal on this card!

 

[Aztech]

Originally posted by: blacklit
nice price ~ bought mine for $50 ages ago. i highly recommend it. it's an underrated low-profile card that has a bit of a cult following. bear in mind, it SHINES when paired with good speakers. so have/get one, otherwise you won't realize the true benefits.

as testimonial, i upgraded from sblive 5.1 and heard a significant improvement in sound clarity in BOTH games and music... especially music. i have old 2.1 altec lansing's and thanks to the santa cruz i finally learned/heard what music "sound stage" was.

for comparison, a friend uses audigy 2 with logi-z640's. on his rig, you get that "presence" in games, as if you're in the game. but it was, for lack of audiophilinguistics, slightly tron-ish with music -- i imagine resulting from the same effects/dac's that give that "presence" in games. clearly, they don't work too well with music. that said, the santa cruz can reproduce similar effects quite nicely, but on a different degree. think of it this way (if you LIKE):

sb live: games-right on! music-right on!
audigy x: games-WOW! music-nice!
santa cruz: games-wow! music-WOW!
m-audio: games-nice! music-O MAMA! or WOW brittney really CAN'T sing!
audigy zs: games-WHOA get down we're being bombed! music-WOW?

it might help to consider.. the santa cruz's selling point during its glory days was... it matched CD audio, that is, it was capable of putting out (accurately) that high quality audio we loved in our CD's. if your CD's aren't "high quality" on your "stereo" that's another story. despite all the super hyper duper (rather dOper) audio out there, CD quality still sounds pretty darn good yes? yes!

so in lieu of the theory of relativity, it's simply a decision isn't it? the highly acclaimed audigy xx's, m-audio's, etc for about $80... OR the santa cruz for 20 of your minimum-wage-earned dollars. before you decide, put yourself in the hot deal[ers] position, reflect, and ask... what would a smart not-overly-cheap bastard do? :roll:

so... ya... hope that helps.

Dude, that definetly helps, thanks.

 

[Thump553]

Originally posted by: vcarpio
Nice - thanks! I'm going to get one tomorrow.



Question: Is this better (technologically superior? better sound-quality?) than the SB Live 5.1? If it is, then the TB goes into my daughter's PC and I'll take her SB Live 5.1 and put it on the "guest PC" I'm building. (Can you believe it? PCs are so cheap nowadays that I'm building a guest PC so my guests can play Quake online.)

Let me put it this way-when I upgraded from SB Live to a Turtle Beach, it was the aural equivalent of going from AM radio to CD quality.

If I needed a soundcard I'd be all over this.

 

[NucEm]

I use this card in the dual processor systems with no issues at all. I'm replacing an Abit BE6-II mb whose capacitors failed with a spare Abit VP6 dual P3 mb (another card that the capacitors tend to fail on) and needed another sound card. The local CompUSA (Boulder, CO) normal price for the TB Santa Cruz was $59.99 (same as CC sale price). CompUSA does rebate matching and actually provided a $20 and $25 rebate for the TB card. So this card ends up costing me only $15 + tax + rebate hassle. Thanks for the initial post!

Checking the Turtle Beach web site shows that the list price for the card is $59.99
Linky

 

[usernamemax20charact]

Originally posted by: blacklit
nice price ~ bought mine for $50 ages ago. i highly recommend it. it's an underrated low-profile card that has a bit of a cult following. bear in mind, it SHINES when paired with good speakers. so have/get one, otherwise you won't realize the true benefits.

as testimonial, i upgraded from sblive 5.1 and heard a significant improvement in sound clarity in BOTH games and music... especially music. i have old 2.1 altec lansing's and thanks to the santa cruz i finally learned/heard what music "sound stage" was.

for comparison, a friend uses audigy 2 with logi-z640's. on his rig, you get that "presence" in games, as if you're in the game. but it was, for lack of audiophilinguistics, slightly tron-ish with music -- i imagine resulting from the same effects/dac's that give that "presence" in games. clearly, they don't work too well with music. that said, the santa cruz can reproduce similar effects quite nicely, but on a different degree. think of it this way (if you LIKE):

sb live: games-right on! music-right on!
audigy x: games-WOW! music-nice!
santa cruz: games-wow! music-WOW!
m-audio: games-nice! music-O MAMA! or WOW brittney really CAN'T sing!
audigy zs: games-WHOA get down we're being bombed! music-WOW?

it might help to consider.. the santa cruz's selling point during its glory days was... it matched CD audio, that is, it was capable of putting out (accurately) that high quality audio we loved in our CD's. if your CD's aren't "high quality" on your "stereo" that's another story. despite all the super hyper duper (rather dOper) audio out there, CD quality still sounds pretty darn good yes? yes!

Thanks for the info. Think I'll pick one up in the morning. For $20, it's a great deal.

 

[drkclw]

Is the rebate still good?
CC's website says it must be purchased 4/18 - 4/20

 

[Ensign]

Originally posted by: usernamemax20charact
Thanks for the info. Think I'll pick one up in the morning. For $20, it's a great deal.

Unfortunately, looks like you had to purchase by 4/20/2004 for the rebate to be valid.

Originally posted by: drkclw
Is the rebate still good?
CC's website says it must be purchased 4/18 - 4/20

Oops, you beat me to it!

 

[dpopiz]

everyone buy one of these whether you like music or not. once you listen to it on a santa cruz, you will like music. just make sure you have good speaks, high bitrate mp3s or flac and it also helps to use a good 24-bit decoder

 

[usernamemax20charact]

Originally posted by: Ensign

Originally posted by: usernamemax20charact
Thanks for the info. Think I'll pick one up in the morning. For $20, it's a great deal.

Unfortunately, looks like you had to purchase by 4/20/2004 for the rebate to be valid.

Aw crap! Missed another hot deal. Thanks.

 

[Murse]

The rebate form says it is good until 4/24

 

[Ensign]

Originally posted by: Murse
The rebate form says it is good until 4/24

Sweet! Thanks! I'll hit Circuit City tomorrow after work.

 

[corinthos]

well, the rebate was still up (with the expired date) when i used in-store pick-up.
by the time i got to the store, the rebate was pulled from the site and it showed $79.99-$20IR=$59.99...
i cancelled.

 

[Ensign]

Originally posted by: corinthos
well, the rebate was still up (with the expired date) when i used in-store pick-up.

by the time i got to the store, the rebate was pulled from the site and it showed $79.99-$20IR=$59.99...

i cancelled.

So, what did the store say?

 

[corinthos]

the guy at the counter said he couldn't find a rebate and it's not showing on the website... and that's it... no offer of price adjustment... so i cancelled... i should have went to the shelf and checked for a tag that shows the rebate and brought it up to the counter...

 

[IW]

Unfortunately I came home with it and THEN discovered the rebate had been pulled and using a link I found elsewhere it had already expired.

Anybody have a link to the rebate that was good through 4/24???

I guess I'll have to return it.

 

[corinthos]

IW: check FW... there's a thread there that's supposed to have a link to the coupon that expires 4/24. don't know if they'll honor it though... i'd try to get an adjustment at the store instead...

 

[IW]

Originally posted by: corinthos
IW: check FW... there's a thread there that's supposed to have a link to the coupon that expires 4/24. don't know if they'll honor it though... i'd try to get an adjustment at the store instead...

Thanks, I had already looked for it on FW. I'll see what the counter people have to say. I used a gift card with it for part of the purchase price. I may have to deal with that. HEY, maybe they'll refund the entire price to my credit card and turn the gift card into real money!

 

[carpenter]

Would it help if I scanned my copy of the rebate and emailed it to you?

 

[cubeless]

i just talked to circuitcityrebates... they have opened a file and are supposed to get back to me...

go to circuitcityrebates.com and put in yb471 and you get the 24th date...

we'll see...

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: carpenter
Would it help if I scanned my copy of the rebate and emailed it to you?

I'd appreciate it..addy is in my profile..thank you in advance

 

[Bugsnt]

I called both Circuitcityrebates as well as Circuit City Corporate offices. Circuitcityrebates basically holds the line that they cannot do anything about rebates and that offer YB471 currently has offer dates of 4/18 - 4/20. Even after I pointed out that using on-line rebate submission that the offer YB471 shows offer dates of 4/18 - 4/24, they were unable to help and asked that I called Corporate. Corporate after speaking to two people told me that CC reserves the right to deny any rebates due to printing/web pages errors. Thus they said that any rebates submitted with purchase dates after 4/20 would be denied.

Wonder if the FTC or BBB or State AG would like to look into this bait and switch.

my .02 cents...

 

[carpenter]

I sent you a private message Scrap.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: carpenter
I sent you a private message Scrap.

thanks