Soundblaster or Voyetra Turtle Beach?

consider what your comparing please
Creative does not win at everything

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=29-118-104&depa=1

i'd get that though
the difference between Turtle Beach's Catalina and Creative Labs' Audigy 2 ZS is the sampling rate

sampling is how a card captures music
the Audigy2 ZS can capture like 192,000 samples per second (and it then creates the song from those 192k samples per second) while the Catalina samples at 96,000 samples per second

it'll still sound amazing
BUT
Creative's cards just have that "slightly higher" prescision
and they have better EAX support and what not

ALSO
Mad Dog MultiMedia's soundcards (newegg does not carry them) support A3D (a feature neither Creative nor Turtle Beach has...) A3D is Aureal 3D Audio

it's really old school
like 3dfx and 3dfx Glide (3dfx and Aureal have been out of business for ever) but if your playing old games, Mad Dog's soundcards might be a consideration


overall i'd say the Catalina or the Santa Cruz (which is the 5.1 offereing from Turtle Beach (the MUCH better offering)


also another soundcard to consider is AudioTrak's Maya line of soundcards
I haven't seen them as much (not internal PCI versions at least, please don't buy an external soundcard)

AudioTrak's cards were supposed to be comparable to Turtle Beach and Creative Labs


This offering from Chaintech is also supposed to be decent
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1226632&NoMapp=1
but personally i'd spend the extra $20 and get the Catalina before buying a $30 card that is claiming high end 7.1 surround abilities


but whatever you do
do not buy Creative's low end stuff
what i'm reffering to here are the following:

Audigy ES
Audigy LS
Audigy 2 Value Edition


as they are generally crap versions of decent cards, while the Catalina is designed as a decent card

I've got the Santa Cruz in my old Dell... I should probably just take it out of that one and put it in my new computer, huh?

I don't know if I'll be able to get backup drivers off my Dell, though... I should be able to find them on the Internet somewhere I guess.

I'll try that out! Thanks

A Fry's electronics is having a grand opening and they had the Riviera for only $20. Had to get it. I know Soundblaster has good high-end stuff but I'm not a real audiophile. It sounds awesome to me. Besides, I put it in an eMachines, with an AMD processor, I figured I'd continue with the underdog company theme... (Yeah, eMachines is owned by Gateway now, but even Gateway is an underdog compared to the great "Dell".)

trw.