Turtle Beach Cards?

 

Silver Member
Username: Tafkam

Texas

Post Number: 186
Registered: Apr-04
How are the turtle beaches compared to soundblaster? I want to record a few cassettes to cd, right now just have the built in audio on my MB. For now just have stereo speakers, and am not interested in watching DVD movies or anything on the PC. I may want to do some video stuff also and am considering the Turtle Beach VIdeo plus or whatever it is called

I am getting a new PC in the next six months so I do want to get a decent card, since it will go into the new PC. I see that Turtle Beach makes only three cards now, and the Riviara looks like a decent deal for 30 bucks shipped, also soundblaster has one for around 30. For what I want to do does this sound ok or should I invest in a better model for the future?

It has been forever since I bought a sound card and I know Soundblaster used to be the standard, and the best, but from what I read now adays maybe not? And there are so many SB it is just confusing. If the Turtle Beach are decent I am leaning towards them since I heard at least their older ones are really good. Any advice anyone?

Thanks
 

New member
Username: Andreas

Post Number: 1
Registered: Sep-05
hi, I stumbled upon your question browsing forums for information regarding X-Fi i.e. the newest card from Soundblaster. This is clearly my choice of preference but let me help you see things in some perspective so that you can make your own well-informed decision which may be different as we seek different usability

Both TB and SB offer cards in various price ranges that correspond to their quality and set of features. In general TB offers cards in the same range at better price than SB. Feature mix is different and quality varies, but speaking from experience and having read a lot of specs SB beats TB in regard to noise levels. Well, if you are talking $30-50 card this can get you riviera from TB or SB Live 24 bit from SB. Both are rougly similar but one thing that is superior with SB is the 24 bit operation.

There is much talking about TB as they have lately introduced Montego model that ENcodes into dolby. This could be a nice feature if you have a really good receiver - we are talking >$1000 as only at such prices your receiver will have better DACs than a good soundcard.

But if you are not an audiophile spending half salary on new toys go for SB Live 24 bit. This has a clean-up option designed specially for transferring recordings from analog to digital domain and it works fine removing hiss and artifacts from the cassette based content. I tested that when my son got one of these

Personally I would recommend you EMU. These cards require some basic knowledge about the signal flow etcetera, but manual is pretty good. Best quality card costing around $75 is EMU 0404 and nothing beats that one. Again: this is proffesional card so if you do not need to go that far, stick with Soundblaster. X-Fi sounds apparently amazing and gets excellent reviews but costs above $100. If you are not willing to spend that much go for SB 24 bit.

I hope this helps a bit

Regards

Andreas
 

Silver Member
Username: Tafkam

Texas

Post Number: 188
Registered: Apr-04
Yes it does, thanks I apperciate it. I will check out this EMU also. By the way, ever heard of a Hecules Theater XP? I think it is an older system but I read some good things about it, am looking online to see if anyone still carries it.

Thanks again
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