Soundstorm vs. Turtle Beach Santa Cruz...

[gvblake22]

What do you guys think, can onboard sound really beat a good PCI sound card?

[stratcatprowlin]

If you use the digital outputs you bypass the onboard or soundcard and the reciever
will do the digital to analog conversion.
If you use the analog outputs,the onboard sound will not be as good as a decent souncard.A decent soundcard to me has its own phisical D/Aconverters on it and doesnt use AC97 codecs like onboard sound does.

[breez]

Well Turtle Beach Santa Cruz uses AC97 codecs anyway. Also an Audigy2 ZS Platinum is AC97. But AC97 doesn't mean some standard crap codec model manufactured by a certain manufacturer. It's a standard that these cards conform and has nothing to do with the DAC quality of the cards. Now what's bad about AC97 standard is that it only needs 48KHz playback capability. That often means that the hardware hasn't been made to accept 44.1KHz sound at all because of cost cuttings and it has to be resampled to 48KHz by the hardware or the software. E.g. Creative Live & Audigy series are known for their not-so-good resampling algorithms. So AC97 usually means no true 44.1KHz playback capability.

[breez]

More ontopic:

The TBSC is known to be one of the better AC97 cards. For music playback it wins Soundstorm (speaking of analog outputs), but for gaming it loses. If you have both cards now, you could try to setup the Soundstorm for gaming and the TBSC for music playback (any decent music player will let you decide which card to use and games will usually use the default playback device). If the TBSC has digital input, you can route the sound out of Soundstorm digitally the TBSC and get the benefit of the better analog stage and better gaming at the same time. If that's not possible, then do the same using analog cables.

[gvblake22]

Wow, thanks for the info Breez, you REALLY know your $heite! haha.

Anyway, I am really interested in how to do the "rerouting" of the cables between the soundstorm and TBSC. It appears that the Turtle Beach only has a digital output, via the "VersaJack". Will it still work or would I have to just use the analog? Give a n00b a little instruktiuns :beer:
Thanks so much!
Oh yeah, I should probably add that I DO infact have the Turtle beach but no soundstorm, YET. I am working on getting an ABIT NF7-S that comes equipped with onboard soundstorm:) And I'm currently using the Logitech Z640 5.1 surround suond speakers if that helps.

[stratcatprowlin]

AC97 on the Audigy's? Why does it say differently on creatives site?

http://soundblaster.com/products/Audigy2ZS_platinum_pro/compare.asp

[breez]

Whoops, I forgot the possibility of people having 5.1 speakers. This makes matters more complicated because sound cards usually don't have enough inputs for 6 channels. Your card actually has 6 (or even 8 inputs with versajack), but it would be nasty hack because two of them are inside the computer (cd audio and aux in) and I doubt the software allows configuring where e.g. the aux in goes. It goes normally to front channels, but so do all of the inputs and that's not what we want.

I'd say use the card which feels best for you. The differences are in sound quality and CPU usage in games. TBSC supports the same 3d audio standards as Soundstorm, but uses more CPU. Sound quality difference may or may not be noticeable and the same goes for the CPU usage.

[breez]

AC97 on the Audigy's? Why does it say differently on creatives site?

http://soundblaster.com/products/Audigy2ZS_platinum_pro/compare.asp

I can very well understand why they don't advertise it everywhere. When people think of "AC97" it's almost always associated with crap quality audio while it may not be true at all.

AC97 compliancy is mentioned here: http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=&product=9115&nav=technicalSpecifications

[stratcatprowlin]

I'm very confused now.:(

[gvblake22]

So about that digital/analog cable routing thing.......................

[breez]

So about that digital/analog cable routing thing.......................

I'd say, not worth the hassle (if it's even possible with 5.1) and digital is not available this time.

[stratcatprowlin]

breez,So is my original post correct or not?
That audio cards using their own phisical digital to analog converters should sound better than ones that use AC97 codecs to do the job.

[breez]

breez,So is my original post correct or not?
That audio cards using their own phisical digital to analog converters should sound better than ones that use AC97 codecs to do the job.

It's correct in the sense that a decent PCI card has better DAC's than most (if not all) onboard sound so you got the important part right. Both do have physical DAC's of course and both can be AC97 compliant which doesn't automatically mean bad quality. I'm sure an Audigy2 ZS will sound pretty nice while being "AC97 compliant".

[stratcatprowlin]

Ahh,I see.Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[gvblake22]

K, thanks:)