Hi there,
I am just posting here to give my initial impressions of the Sonic Fury soundcard (Santa Cruz). I just received my card half an hour ago, and have just installed it and am listening to some music now. :D
Firstly, the card itself actually has Santa Cruz on it, so this is an identical card all right. The drivers for XP are 20Mb and took me 5 minutes to download. Quite a bit smaller than Liveware!
The installation was a breeze, except for my PC freezing after uninstalling the SB Live! :mad:
My initial impressions are that this sound card definetly sounds different to the SB Live. It seems to have a warmer, more refined sound, whereas the Soundblaster sounded cold, and at times, harsh, there doesnt seem to be much harshness with this card. I like a brighter sound than it ordinarily offers, so I boosted the high frequencies to a level I like, and then it sounded just right.
The bass is definetly tighter, maybe not quite as weighty as the Soundblaster, but the SB was muddy in comparison - I get the impression the Sonic Fury has higher quality bass.
Elsewhere, I get the impression of more detail with this card, it just seems to sound more natural, and I'm hearing bits of certain tunes that I never knew existed, and these are mp3s! :D
All in all, I feel at the moment like I'm adjusting from the sound of these two sound cards, because they do sound totally different, but overall so far, I am very happy with it.
Anyway, thanx to Gluegun and Roj for recommending it to me ;) - there certainly is a difference, which I feel like I'm appreciating more by the minute!
I would say to anyone else who wants improved sound quality over the SB Live to go for one of these - if you have good speakers you wont regret it.
PS I've just noticed that Winamp now uses 0% CPU on this below machine, which means mp3 acceleration must be working well!
Paul
