Customer Reviews

Turtle Beach Montego DDL 7.1 Sound Card

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have used Turtle Beach's Santa Cruz card for several years and just upgraded to this one. It has very low s/n and Turtle Beach considers it an audiophile-grade card, a feature few companies are willing to promote. I found the sound quality even better than the Santa Cruz which was unexpected, the install process was flawless.

One nearly fatal flaw is that there is only a single front speaker line-out jack on the card. This means you have to climb under your desk and replug every time you want to switch from speakers to a set of headphones. The Santa Cruz card had a versa jack, what were they thinking on the Montego?

**12/2010 update. Turtle Beach stated they would not be releasing a Win 7 64-bit driver for this when Win 7 was released so I ended up giving it away. Then they went ahead and released 64-bit drivers anyway...'thanks' Turtle Beach.

I tried 2 previous sound cards from Creative. Both were poor at best. Creatives software and hardware is over priced garbage.
TurtleBeach on the other hand was awesome right out of the box.
I hooked it to a Logitech 5500 5.1 system by wire and optical connection and found the quality to be excellent for music, which was my major concern. The fiber optics connection boosted performance a great deal. The montego was less costly but provided superior quality.

Absolutely the best sound card for the money. With its many features especially DDL (Dolby Digital Live) it can't be beat.

I'm looking for a DDL card and all of the "no win 7 64" drivers were making this one a deal breaker. However, as of May 2010, drivers are available from Turtle Beach. I might have to snag this one up after payday :)

I just wish it had a wavetable header... but all things must pass, I suppose...

I used the card for Dolby Digital Output via Fiber Link cable. It works very well and the sound is amazing.

Truly amazing sound quality using the optical out to my amp. The range is just ear candy. Well worth the price and then some. Buy it!

So far this is a good product. I like the way speaker placement/sound can be virtually moved around to account for different room configurations.

The only issue I don't like is that when using the analog line-in, say from satellite to pc, the sound is pass-through only (direct to speakers) - so it can't be adjusted with the soundcard's internal equalizer or other effects. If I had known that before hand I probably would have chosen another product, as I don't want to be concerned with an external decorder. I guess I misunderstood the hype about "Dolby Digital Live"

The (buggy) Soundblaster I had previously included Dolby decoding built-in, and now I can see where that makes a difference with the (analog) line-in signal - it was adjustable using the internal Soundblaster equalizer. But then again the Soundblaster was a nightmare to install and get running so it balances out I guess.

I went with Turtle Beach, because I used one of their sound cards on an old computer before and it still works great after six years of use. The sound quality is excellent on this card and the installation is simple. The software is limited, unlike what you would get with a Sound Blaster, but if your on a budget this is the one to get. I'm unsure if it has HD sound capability, but the sound is rich enough to the point that who cares.

This is a very nice computer sound card. I have had no problems with it and have used it in two different pc's. It, along with a 5.1 or higher sound system is what you need to listen to great music and hear video sound tracks that sound great.

Upgrading from Santa Cruz, I expected Turtle Beach can deliver the same good qualify with value price. At first, everything seems to be okay. Using DDL through the optical output, the sound is unbeatable. Absolutely good experience with it. Music sounds very good. In games, do not experience something good enough to surprise you but nothing bad either.

The first problem with it is driver issue. The driver comes with CD has a bug such that you need to open its control panel after every reboot to get the sound out. Some said C-media's driver fixes it but I tried and it actually makes it worse. Turtle Beach's update driver Mar 2006 does fix this problem.

But none of the driver fix its second problem. Which is very important to me. The problem is that it's microphone is way too unsenstitive. Turn the microphone volume control all the way to maximum and you still need to speak very loud right in front of the microphone to have it output a tiny sound. I happen to have a webcam with microphone so I know how bad the built-in mircophone in Montego DDL is. It just doesn't work. Too bad without using microphone intergrated in sound card will cause echo. So I still need to get a sound card with working mircophone. If you do no plan to use microphone, buy this card which is a good value. Otherwise, don't try your luck. Its microphone just doesn't work.

I end up returning this card. Stick with Santa Cruz which still work fine.