Hi all. First off, I want to thank everyone who contributes to this
and the other audio groups. I'm 1/2 way through building a new home
system and would have just gone to Best Buy had I not had your
collective wisdom. My questions are getting pretty specific now, so I
have to emerge from the shadows and ask a direct question. My system
is going to be playing back mp3, flac, and wav files from my PC's hard
drives and CDs from my PC's DVD player. I have 3 year old Santa Cruz
soundcard that I'm outputting into a Hafler XL-280 amp (just bought on
eBay) that will drive a pair of Magneplanar MMG speakers (that I just
received the other day). My question now is, would I likely notice
an improvement using the Card Deluxe instead of the Santa Cruz? The
Santa Cruz has sounded fine on my current system (car amps and 30
year-old Dynaco speakers), but I see the Card Deluxe has significantly
better specs, and I'm wondering if I'd hear the difference given the
quality of my new components.

Thanks for any suggestions on this or on anything even remotely related
....

Dennis

My question now is, would I likely notice
an improvement using the Card Deluxe instead of the Santa Cruz? The
Santa Cruz has sounded fine on my current system (car amps and 30
year-old Dynaco speakers), but I see the Card Deluxe has significantly
better specs, and I'm wondering if I'd hear the difference given the
quality of my new components.

Here is a web site with test results for quite a few sound cards but
not the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/

I'd start with the card you have and see if I felt any dissatisfaction.

There can be some real differences in how well the driver software is
implemented. I've worked on soundcard drivers and for some companies,
good sound was not a priority.

Sound for games has been a higher priority than high quality sound for
listening to music. (Creative in particular is focussed on sound for
games.)

When you buy a more expensive sound card that is for recording and
playing stereo, you may get drivers with clean handling of audio and
without sample rate conversion imposed when it isn't needed.

Bill
..

Thanks for the pvatech site reference. I figured out an objective way
to decide this using the sound card samples they have. I'll burn both
the SantaCruz and Card Deluxe recordings to a CD and then play them
back using an external CD player hooked directly to my amp. That'll
take the computer out of the loop altogether. I'll see if one sounds
better than the other. I should probably have someone else do the
switching and make it a blind test. If I don't vote for the Card
Deluxe recording more than 1/2 the time, then there would be nothing to
gain by getting the Card Deluxe.

Dennis

In article ,
wrote:

Thanks for the pvatech site reference. I figured out an objective way
to decide this using the sound card samples they have. I'll burn both
the SantaCruz and Card Deluxe recordings to a CD and then play them
back using an external CD player hooked directly to my amp. That'll
take the computer out of the loop altogether. I'll see if one sounds
better than the other. I should probably have someone else do the
switching and make it a blind test. If I don't vote for the Card
Deluxe recording more than 1/2 the time, then there would be nothing to
gain by getting the Card Deluxe.

Be careful. It'll be real easy to have level differences between the
two recordings. The usual standard is that levels should be matched to
within 0.1 dB to avoid false positives. (Small level differences are
often perceived as changes in quality rather than changes in volume.)

--
Tim

wrote:
Hi all. First off, I want to thank everyone who contributes to this
and the other audio groups. I'm 1/2 way through building a new home
system and would have just gone to Best Buy had I not had your
collective wisdom. My questions are getting pretty specific now, so I
have to emerge from the shadows and ask a direct question. My system
is going to be playing back mp3, flac, and wav files from my PC's hard
drives and CDs from my PC's DVD player. I have 3 year old Santa Cruz
soundcard that I'm outputting into a Hafler XL-280 amp (just bought on
eBay) that will drive a pair of Magneplanar MMG speakers (that I just
received the other day). My question now is, would I likely notice
an improvement using the Card Deluxe instead of the Santa Cruz? The
Santa Cruz has sounded fine on my current system (car amps and 30
year-old Dynaco speakers), but I see the Card Deluxe has significantly
better specs, and I'm wondering if I'd hear the difference given the
quality of my new components.

Thanks for any suggestions on this or on anything even remotely related
...

Dennis
I used to own the Santa Cruz and I think you'll find that playback
quality sounds much better when you use the 48 Khz sample rate.
Apparently there's resampling going on when playing back at anything but
48 Khz.

CD

Don't know about the Santa Cruz and Card Deluxe, but I just bought an ESI
Juli@ (same league as the Card Deluxe for significantly less) and it sounds
much better than my Turtle Beach Montego II....even through a boom box. And
the ESI's 24-bit D/A converters are supposed to be merely good (not
excellent). FYI, the Montego II has 18-bit D/A converters.

Cheers
Kofi

wrote in message
...
Hi all. First off, I want to thank everyone who contributes to this
and the other audio groups. I'm 1/2 way through building a new home
system and would have just gone to Best Buy had I not had your
collective wisdom. My questions are getting pretty specific now, so I
have to emerge from the shadows and ask a direct question. My system
is going to be playing back mp3, flac, and wav files from my PC's hard
drives and CDs from my PC's DVD player. I have 3 year old Santa Cruz
soundcard that I'm outputting into a Hafler XL-280 amp (just bought on
eBay) that will drive a pair of Magneplanar MMG speakers (that I just
received the other day). My question now is, would I likely notice
an improvement using the Card Deluxe instead of the Santa Cruz? The
Santa Cruz has sounded fine on my current system (car amps and 30
year-old Dynaco speakers), but I see the Card Deluxe has significantly
better specs, and I'm wondering if I'd hear the difference given the
quality of my new components.

Thanks for any suggestions on this or on anything even remotely related
...

Dennis

Kofi Anim-Appiah wrote:
Don't know about the Santa Cruz and Card Deluxe, but I just bought an ESI
Juli@ (same league as the Card Deluxe for significantly less) and it sounds
much better than my Turtle Beach Montego II....even through a boom box. And
the ESI's 24-bit D/A converters are supposed to be merely good (not
excellent). FYI, the Montego II has 18-bit D/A converters.

Cheers
Kofi

wrote in message
...

Hi all. First off, I want to thank everyone who contributes to this
and the other audio groups. I'm 1/2 way through building a new home
system and would have just gone to Best Buy had I not had your
collective wisdom. My questions are getting pretty specific now, so I
have to emerge from the shadows and ask a direct question. My system
is going to be playing back mp3, flac, and wav files from my PC's hard
drives and CDs from my PC's DVD player. I have 3 year old Santa Cruz
soundcard that I'm outputting into a Hafler XL-280 amp (just bought on
eBay) that will drive a pair of Magneplanar MMG speakers (that I just
received the other day). My question now is, would I likely notice
an improvement using the Card Deluxe instead of the Santa Cruz? The
Santa Cruz has sounded fine on my current system (car amps and 30
year-old Dynaco speakers), but I see the Card Deluxe has significantly
better specs, and I'm wondering if I'd hear the difference given the
quality of my new components.

Thanks for any suggestions on this or on anything even remotely related
...

Dennis


The santa cruz also has 18 bit converters . . .but you never see the 18
bit signal. Rather, the card is designed such that 18 bits of depth are
used to more accurately produce the 16 bit signal. Your Montego is
probably the same design (if not the same card marketed by a different
manufacturer) because no commercial software actually reads 18 bit data.
It's either 16, 24, or 32 bits.

CD

"Timothy A. Seufert" wrote in news:dnqnhb020s5
@news1.newsguy.com:

In article ,
wrote:

... I'll burn both
the SantaCruz and Card Deluxe recordings to a CD and then play them
back using an external CD player hooked directly to my amp. That'll
take the computer out of the loop altogether. I'll see if one sounds
better than the other.

Be careful. It'll be real easy to have level differences between the
two recordings. The usual standard is that levels should be matched to
within 0.1 dB to avoid false positives. (Small level differences are
often perceived as changes in quality rather than changes in volume.)

There are a number of programs out there, one example of which is called
Goldwave, with which you can edit wave files and one of the functions is
called "maximize". This will adjust the level of the recording so that you
have the highest possible level before overload.

--
stealthaxe