Soundcards

[john_mcclane 0]

The two previous soundcards I had were absolutely terrible with OFP. The first was a Creative SoundBlaster Live which had the infamous crackling that could drive you crazy. I also had occasional unintentional reboots when using that card. Then I had a Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III which suffered from VERY hideous scrambled voices. Radio messages sounded like someone talking with helium.

I just bought a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. I can't believe how great this card sounds with OFP (and everything else I've thrown at it). No crackling, no sound artifacts whatsoever with hardware acceleration enabled!

I just wanted to let people know how great the Santa Cruz sounds with Flashpoint. I certainly know how frustrating it can be to have to put up with cracking, static, etc.

[shadow 6]

Can you be more specific in what model from Turtle Beach you bought? and an approximate price?

I have tried Herc Game Theater XP , and yes, it was terrible (probably same chipset as Fortissimo). I went back to my Audigy, but that means I can't upgrade from WinME to XP and I want to try OFP with more than 512RAM

[john_mcclane 0]

I believe there has only been one model Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. You can check it out here.

To find the best price, go to PriceWatch and search for "Turtle Beach Santa Cruz". Looks like the current lowest price is $55.

[Greg 0]

I recently fixed my Sound Blaster Live problem... I disabled it and used my integrated sound chip, something I hadn't even tried before. I found that the integrated chip was completely stable, and was slightly faster than the SB Live. The sound quality was not quite as good and there were no bass/treble controls.

The integrated chip was a C-Media CMI8738/C3DX. I notice this chip is used in the Hercules Muse cards and a bunch of other budget cards. I would only recommend it as a budget, stable alternative to SB Live.

With all the hastles I've had with my SB Live and my Creative WebCam Go, I will never buy another Creative Labs product again. System stability is THE most important thing, everything else comes after.

[john_mcclane 0]

I had also used my onboard (AC97) audio for a while. I didn't have any abnormalities when using it, although the volume was quite limited and I couldn't enable hardware acceleration in OFP. It sounded so much better than my SB Live that it wasn't even funny.

I used to use a Diamond Multimedia Monster Sound MX300 (Aureal 8830) when I ran WinMe. That card sounded like it was made for Flashpoint! Just excellent 3D sound. Unfortunately, there are no decent XP drivers for those cards, so I had to stop using it once I upgraded to WinXP.

[MoodyB 0]

I currently own a Fortissimo3,but hopefully for not much longer if Dabs will let me return it.Apart from the OPF problems its current drivers have,this card does have some hidden problems that you wont be aware of until you read the Hercules forum or try certain things regarding the 3d hw acceleration and the digital out,so I wouldnt recommend it to anyone in all honesty.So I bought a SonicXplosion to replace it(Videologic).Hopefully it will be at least as good as their older Sonic Fury(which is a TB Santa Cruz rebadged,or the other way around)and I'll be happy.

[MoodyB 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Greg @ Nov. 22 2002,16:49)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I recently fixed my Sound Blaster Live problem... I disabled it and used my integrated sound chip, something I hadn't even tried before.  I found that the integrated chip was completely stable, and was slightly faster than the SB Live.  The sound quality was not quite as good and there were no bass/treble controls.<span id='postcolor'>

Greg,if you go to the C-Media webpage(http://www.cmedia.com.tw) they have something called AudioRack for the 8738 that includes a graphic eq.It's in 3 parts that all have to be in the same dir before extractingI came accross it last night while surfing the web.Having to make do with the MuseXL(which uses the same chip as your onboard sound)until my new card arrives.Not sure if enabling the eq will cause a processor hit though......

[john_mcclane 0]

I'm surprised at some of the good reviews the Fortissimo III has received. Perhaps they should have been a bit more thorough with their testing. They must have just run Quake 3 and thought it sounded good, so it must be a wonderful soundcard..

I had problems with just about every game I played with the Fortissimo III. If you read through the Hercules forums, you'll notice that they almost always try to blame game developers for the problems, when infact it is their EXTREMELY lousy drivers. Interesting how replacing their piece of junk with another brand soundcard fixes all those problems.

No more Hercules or Creative soundcards for me.