Turtle beach Santa Cruz sound card - disappointing music playback quality \ VOGONS

Turtle beach Santa Cruz sound card - disappointing music playback quality

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First post, by retro games 100

Posted on 2010-10-02, 12:53

retro games 100 Offline

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Extra edit: Solved. Please see my posts below.

System: Asus P2B, 133 FSB but PCI bus is running at 33 MHz, 1.4 GHz 133 FSB Tualatin, AGP GF3. Santa Cruz is in PCI slot 3, IRQ 10. No other cards are in the mobo.

Installation was OK. Sound effects testing is OK. However, dxdiag.exe music testing produces poor quality sound. These music sound tests are -

* Santa cruz DLS Synth: The music notes are "jumbled up" and missing. Sounds weird.
* MIDI Mapper: Sounds better, but some notes are clearly distorted.
* Microsoft GS Wavetable SW: "Cheap" sounding rumbling sounds, some distortion and delays.
* Santa Cruz DLS Synth: Same result as the first test, above.
* Microsoft Synthesizer: A bit noisy, but this test sounds the best.

I wonder -

1) Is the card defective?
2) Should I uninstall the WDM driver, and install the VxD driver instead? I'm using Win98SE.
3) Should I uninstall the WDM driver, and put the card in a different PCI slot, then reinstall the WDM or VxD driver?
4) Should I run the mobo at 100 FSB, and use a 100 FSB CPU?

Thanks a lot for any ideas people.

Edit: I ran the Santa Cruz sound check program. No problems reported. Also, I might experiment with different BIOS set up option settings. Perhaps my current "aggresively fast" settings need to be reset back to more "default" settings. I read on the Santa Cruz FAQ webpage that an AGP video card may cause sound problems. I could uninstall and remove the GF3 AGP card, and replace it with a "simple" PCI graphics card, but the problem is that I like the GF3 card!

Last edited by retro games 100 on 2010-10-02, 18:37. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 5, by valnar

Posted on 2010-10-02, 13:56

valnar Offline

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The Santa Cruz stayed longer in my 2000/XP systems than any other sound card. 'Mainly because it did sound good and had a wavetable header.

Reply 2 of 5, by Amigaz

Posted on 2010-10-02, 14:00

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Sounds like something's wrong with the card

My TB SC I have in my Dell P4 Rambus rig has excellent sound quality...first U sed the WDM driver but about 2 months ago I switched to the VXD driver..both have excellent sound

My retro computer stuff: https://lychee.jjserver.net/#16136303902327

Reply 3 of 5, by retro games 100

Posted on 2010-10-02, 14:49

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I think I've fixed it. I would post the details right now, but I've got to go and do something. I'll be back in 30 minutes with the details. Thanks.

Reply 4 of 5, by retro games 100

Posted on 2010-10-02, 15:32

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I did the following actions in this order -

1) Uninstalled the WDM driver
2) Removed the sound card from PCI slot number 3
3) Inserted the sound card in to PCI slot number 2
4) Installed the VxD driver

It was at this point that I realised something - I had the headphones plugged in to the bottom black port - see the red number "1" in the image. I'm not sure what the numbers "3/4" mean next to this port. Perhaps it means the number of speaker channels? May be that was the problem? Now see red number "2" in the image - this was set to "Headphones (rear)".

After step 4) above was completed and the VxD driver was installed, I set up the headphones correctly! Then, I ran dxdiag.exe. The music testing options have less choices using the VxD driver, but they all sounded OK. Also, I tried playing a .mid MIDI file. I chose "dance.mid", a MIDI tune provided with the Creative AWE32 installation. Occasionally, it sounded distorted in a few loud places during the song, but that could be my cheap headphones.

Conclusion - Pilot error. 😦

Reply 5 of 5, by retro games 100

Posted on 2010-10-02, 18:39

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I solved the problem with the .mid MIDI tune called dance.mid not playing 100% correctly. I have eliminated the distortion problems. I went to the Santa Cruz control panel, and increased the two values you can see next to the red arrows from 32, to 64.