Turtle Beach Malibu Surround 64 Review Greensboro NC

provided by: 
Originally published at Internet.com

Some would say the ISA bus is dead. Turtle Beach's Malibu Surround 64 is an attempt to make everyone reconsider that idea. Let's take a look at one of the last ISA sound cards to hit the market. General Specs * Windows 3.x/95/98/NT 4.0 (95/98 Plug & Play), DirectSound compatible * Sound Blaster Pro compatible in DOS * Surround Sound: SRS 3D spatialization enhancement. MIDI * Uses Kurzweil hardware synthesis * 64 voices including 32 hardware voices and 32 software voices * 4MB instrument samples compressed to 2MB ROM Digital Audio * 16-bit delta sigma ADC and DAC. * Sample Rates: 16-bit record and playback from 5.51 kHz to 48 kHz sample rate, mono and stereo, Full Duplex * S/PDIF output of digital audio and wavetable signals provides 44.1kHz digital audio stereo output

Summary --------------------------------------------------------------------- Price Street $70 MSRP $99 + S/PDIF input/out Clean output Good docs

- Wavetable MIDI is subpar No Treble/Bass controls

Overall A nice sound card for the ISA market. It's not the card for gamers, but professionals should appreciate the care Turtle Beach took to create a stable full-featured, low-cost sound card. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Setup as tested: Celeron 400 Abit BH6 Matrox Mystique G200 64MB PC100 SDRAM 9.1GB Seagate Medalist Pro 12x CD-ROM 14" Acer AcerView 11D

So what came with it?

Upon opening the box, I was greeted by a manual, Driver/App CD, registration card, and of course, the card itself. The manual is excellent, going over installation in Win3.1/DOS, Win95, and NT4. It also includes a great deal of helpful information about the card. On the CD is a CD/Wav/MIDI player/Mixer application dubbed AudioStation. It really is a nice piece of audio software, but I usually prefer to use my own applications or the Win98 defaults. Orchestrator Plus, a bundled MIDI sequeencer isn't bad, but it doesn't even compare to Cakewalk Home Studio. Audioview, a digital audio app, also ranks as fair, but I'd still recommend Cool Edit. Most of the rest of the included apps will remain unused on your hard drive, although JamGrid, an interesting twist to MIDI composition (kinda like Band in a Box), is kinda fun to play with.

Installation in Win98 was quite easy. After installing the card, boot, and insert the driver CD. When the card was detected, it got the drivers off the CD, and rebooted. After booting back up, the setup for the bundled applications began. Once that was done, another reboot was required, and the installation was finished. One note, be SURE to write down the serial number located on the registration card because it is required for all installs of the software. Without it, it's only possible to install the drivers.

Sound Quality

Even though these days, most people don't care much for MIDI quality, there are those that do. The MIDI quality on this card left something to be desired. The piano and drumsets sounded quite good and some of the strings sounded fair, but most of the bass sound sounded faked, and the saxes were completely unrealistic. The software wavetable is bad enough that I disabled it for my daily use. I'd rather not take the performance hit just to hear poorly created sounds. If you have this card, consider the same setting.

The line-out output was pretty good, with very little hiss at all. Unfortunately, I don't have the equipment to test the S/PDIF in/out. However, I think this is an excellent feature to have on a sound card. The SRS-3D sound effect is quite poor, and it takes a bit of adjusting to get the right mix of sounds. My biggest gripe about the card is that there is no equalizer or even bass/treble settings, something I consider to be a must-have.

There is a PCI add-on adapter card for the Malibu that accelerates DirectSound. I did not receive a unit to test so I cannot comment on it at all. However, the Malibu does not have any way to upgrade sample RAM or add a wavetable daughterboard, so this is the only upgrade path available.

Good Stuff

Excellent manual and good support. Good, low-cost ISA card. External S/PDIF connector is an excellent touch, one appreciated by budding musicians. Bundled software is usable, but not feature-filled. Low-noise line-out.

Bad Stuff

No Bass/Treble adjustments. Wavetable sound is lacking. No upgrade path for MIDI. SRS-3D is more annoyance that must be worked around than an actual enjoyable effect.

Conclusion

All in all, quite a competitive card in its class. It has an external S/PDIF connector, which is quite a noteworthy feature. Even though it is among the dying breed of ISA sound cards, it still is a viable card for people looking to upgrade their old systems to a wavetable sound card or for up-and-coming musicians wanting to do digital audio at a low cost. However, gamers should look elsewhere because of the lack of any type of real 3D effect. Since the card is nearing the end of the sales life cycle, it may be possible to get one for a lot less than the quoted street price of $70. If you get such a closeout type price, then it should be heavily considered. ---------------------------------------------------------------------