First of all, the installation is as easy as it gets. We tested the Santa Cruz on 3 different systems with Windows XP, Me, and 2000, and the drivers work flawlessly with all the O/S and different machines. We tested several new game titles on the market today including The Sims Online (beta), Medal of Honor Allied Assault, America's Army, Dark Age of Camelot, BattleField 1942, etc. The EAX provides pleasing results after moments of tuning on the level of output on our surround sound speakers. The Digital Signal Processor (DSP) offloads audio tasks from PC central processor, which frees up more system resource for better overall performance.

The Santa Cruz has a very low noise level, meaning that you'll get minimal sound distortion when you turn up the volume of your speakers. With MP3 decoding and AC3 support, you can easily turn your PC into a great sound system.

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is bundled with a variety of software to help you achieve a variety of tasks. The Santa Cruz Control Panel is surprisingly easy to use and powerful. You can easily switch into different speakers mode, easily adjust you speaker volume level and balance, apply different types of audio effects to different sound channels, and the best of al, save it all along as a profile. What that means in reality, is that you could easily adjust your 5.1 speakers to give you the best performance while you're listening to your favorite music, and in a click you could get the best out of it in your games. That's just an example of how easy the Santa Cruz can make such complicated task easy.

If you're a music fan, the long list of features supported by Digital Orchestrator Pro LE, Recording Station, MIDI Orchestrator, and MusicWrite LE bundled with the board will definitely suit your needs and keep you entertained and satisfied.

Verdict

At this price range, the Santa Cruz is definitely a steal. It's packed with a long list of features along with great software and drivers to support it. The ease of installation and compatibility is definitely a huge plus. Without a doubt, it can give the SB Live series a good run for its money. If you're having driver problems with the SB series, the Santa Cruz is definitely a good alternative.