Turtle Beach Montego

Goit

http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/mtgoddl/home.aspx

I'm thinking of upgrading my Audigy 2ZS to this card. Is that a good upgrade?

mciahel

C-Media-chip: nothing special. Many cheap soundcards come with that, and even onboard audio.
Additionally, the feature set on Vista is limited (compared to 2000/XP):
Stick with your audigy.


Michael

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Goit

Thanks.

Many people tell me that PC audio is very bad, that it's because of the power supply in the PC that's creating the static noises and impurities. Is that true? Are PC systems inherently inferior to a HIFI system, not because of the quality of the speakers or adapter, but just for being in a PC connected to the other parts of the system? Like something about electric currents inside the PC disturbing the analogue soundcard.

If so, does an external sound card help?

anikk

All above: No. Go internal CREATIVE! Then there are no problems and you have full "hifi" sound (even a Realtek ALC-888 is full high-end sound nowadays, since it is intel HD audio standard, there's absolutely no interferences from computing processes). There are other solutions of course, like those recent ASUS sound products for example. Those are great as well, but somehow CREATIVE products still seem to be the right choice I guess.

The greater problem is that internal CREATIVE sound means enabling PCI and not having a pure PCI-E system anymore. There are PCI-E CREATIVE sound-boards. We have one in the house. It works great. But it's a lower, medium board. I don't know if there are higher end PCI-E CREATIVE sound-boards available in the meantime. I would check that out. External sound-solutions "hang" on the USB bus, which is stil accepted as a modern interface. But personally I like to have the sound internally. PCI-E and CREATIVE is the way to go in my opinion.

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Goit

The problem with Creative and Asus is their quality, they are known for making very poor quality products. That's why I'm looking into other manufactures. Just because they sell a lot and are very popular doesn't mean that they are good.

Do a search of their bad quality and you see what I mean.

mciahel

... if you love bloated, crappy drivers
Additionally: Big trouble if the driver disc is lost.

What do you need your soundcard for?
Many (most) soundcards are targeted to gaming and multimedia (BIGNUM.1 sound). Sound quality of recording or playback isn't superior to many onboard audio devices (especially HD audio).
You might have a look at audio cards that are targeted to musicians. Example: http://www.thomann.de/gb/pci_audio_interfaces.html

Michael

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Goit

I use it to listen to music, I'm trying to create a pseudo hifi system with my PC. I have a 5.1 speaker set pieced together from 2X2.0 and a 2.1 (one speaker is idle).

I can hear some hiss when my speakers are idle if I put my ears right next to it, I was thinking if getting a new soundcard would help.

So are you saying that these PC sound cards aren't that much better than the onboard sounds? They do take load off the CPU though right?

Do the audio cards targeted toward musicians provide better audio? Some of them don't seem to only have RCA or other types of ports, there are no ports for the pc speaker 3.5 mm plugs.

Also, are external sound cards better than internal cards?

Goit

Is the M audio revolution 5.1 a better "musician" card as you described? Will it offer better sound qualities than the Audigy 2ZS?

anikk

I never had other Sound-Boards than CREATIVE and I never had any issues. So I can't confirm that. Even their very first PCI-E model works perfectly for us here. Of course I believe you, if you had issues, but I won't ever decide based on what "people" in general say on the internet. It's not that simple. I can confirm you however not bad, but really unexciting experiences with an ASUS motherboard. It worked fine, but zero fun. And it did stupid things, like strange behavior. Nothing bad, but strange. I don't know about their Sound-Boards. The caps on their GPU-Boards don't look very decent to me. But I could be totally wrong about that of course. Not solid polymer doesn't always mean bad.

Anyway, (1) I'm a total fanboy of the brutal and loud sound wall, that all hardware-audio based CREATIVE sound-boards outputed for years and generations up to the very latest! (2) I'm NOT an ASUS fan. Please don't get that impression. Not an ASUS and not a GIGABYTE fan to be more precise. (I just had those boards/GPU-Boards for a short time because Foxconn and EVGA were pretty rare and pricey here until recently, and because the absolutely great intel mobos still don't have all solid-cap design.)

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Goit

http://www.alvasoft.net/blog/index/2...s-repair-kit--

The thing is, ASUS is crap. It's like BOSE in the audio hardwares. Popular, fools the masses, but sucks.

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...cending&page=1

Bob

If you can find a card locally to install and load the app(s) to see how you like it then i would do that. That way you can take it back if you don't like it and uninstall the app(s). Then grab another one and try it out.

As for bloated software. I bet most of you have Nero loaded up.

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anikk

Well, I don't know if I would use the word "crap", but (in another thread) I will write about an issue, that drove me and still drives me really really mad.

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anikk

Here it is, if you are interested.

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DiiZzY

The Turtle Beach Montego is actually a good card although a little bit old but should still perform above most integrated solutions. Most times I've helped people who have experienced very bad sound its just been a badly tuned EQ (should be disabled all the time) or some special effect enabled within the application or sound card driver. Are you sure that you're using the latest drivers? Does your sound card share IRQ address with another device? Are you sure that you're running everything flat (no effects, no EQs)? Have you tried both front out and rear out? Have you tried listening using a pair of headphones that you know are OK, does it still sound bad? How does it sound, static, hiss etc? Has it always been like that or did it happen recently?

Just read a bit more careful, if you're experiencing hissing try to move the card to another slot. Also make sure that you use a grounded outlet, you might aswell try to turn the power cable (wall outlet) 180 degress if possible (yes, it may help). Have you tried the on board sound, does it sound bad too?
//Danne

Goit

I need to turn on creative CMSS for upmixing.

The hiss can't be noticed when music is playing, only when it's playing nothing.

What is EQ?

Goit

That's just a design flaw, the bigger problem is Asus' hardware breaking down all the time, and their RMA service sends you back the refurbished boards that quickly breaks down again, so finally you give up bothering and buy a new board. But only a self deluding Asus "die hard fan" would buy from them again. "Fans" of anything are the stupidest of all.

If you search stuff like "asus junk" "asus crap" etc... on google, you get tons of results. But if you search for companies like EVGA and Gigabyte, you get very few results and if you bother to read them, most of them are happily resolved when contacting tech support. And no, it's not because that Asus sells more so there is a higher defect rate, their defect rate is still much higher percentage wise, and their tech support and RMA process are practically nil.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=103199
http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?...ded&pid=160316


plus over a million more on google.

Goit

I did a check, isn't it the via envy24?