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Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
by Kurt "Froglips" Giesselman
COMBATSIM.COM European Bureau Chief

My previous expensive hobby, before my love affair with computers, was home audio. This migrated to home theater over time. And like most bad (and expensive) habits, I have maintained my interest and spending pattern (research, test, upgrade, research, test, upgrade, ad infinitum) in both these endeavors. We have a cutting edge home theater with full Dolby Digital EX and DTS THX surround capability in our basement and I have an audiophile stereo system in my office (all tube!). Until this review my computer habit and my audio habit have never met.

Previous generations of consumer (not professional) sound cards did just what they were supposed to…they produced sound. One look at the tiny, lightweight, plastic speakers that accompany every prepackaged home computer system gave little pause to expect anything resembling high fidelity from a home computer. Considering the amount of time the average person spends in front of a computer (at work and at home) this was a discouraging reality for the home audiophile.

Today Turtle Beach has changed home computer audio. Digital Signal Processing, DSP, a part of home theater and home audio for many years, finally comes to the common man. Turtle Beach has created a home computer audio card. NOTE: I name Santa Cruz an audio card, not a sound card. This card actually plays music that sounds like the original recording (when played back through a decent playback system with decent speakers). It does not just make scratchy music-like sounds.

 

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