Turtle Beach Fiji
| User Interface: |  |
| Editing Features: |  |
| Sound Quality: | |
| Price / Performance: | |
The
last but not the least
Hey, is there any good S/PDIF I/O card out there ? I'm sick of wandering about music stores and technical spec's to find an affordable but serious Digital soundcard. The Guillemot Home Studio Pro 64 is a fake S/PDIF soundcard. The SEK'D Prodif 24 is pro indeed but is far too dedicated for a multi-purpose Home Studio Digital I/O card.
I got back at my music store for another ride and the next soundcard I choosed was no surprise: the Turtle Beach Fiji with the Digital I/O function could do the job even if it had a higher price tag. On the other hand I got very high quality Analog stereo In/Out and a wavetable connector: two feature that lacked the previous cards I've tested as they were all exclusively dedicated as digital I/O. Turtle Beach products reputation was high and specifications were impressive. The Fiji's flowchart was clearly indicated that monitor while record was possible thus eliminating the problem I encountered with the Prodif 24. Was it the good one ? Will the saga end ? Well, that's what we'll see.
At first I was clearly satisfied by the packaging and manual which seemed to cover every problems you could have on Install. Unfortunatly, I have got tremendous problems on Install:
Plug and Play install didn't work freezing my computer till I got it rebooted with the dreaded RESET button.
I called back my music store yelling that card was the crappiest I've ever seen, that Turtle Beach products are S*** and so on... Suprisingly, they were quite kind with me and agreed to swap again for another one since they never had any problems with that range of soundcards. Not convinced, I called back the french import company and got a good tech on line that warned me of a few things:
A free upgrade to Prom version v1.4 eliminates this problem. I've checked: I'm in 1.14 and my mother board is quite old (1995). That explained my install problems.
I got my card swapped by a new Batch Revision C with a v1.4 Prom (curiously the chip implementation and design is quite different with an unknown additionnal jumper, etc....) and that one installed directly in Plug and Play with my Audiotrix in the Box. No more lock up problems or heat build up's. Sound quality is great and the analog lines are really quiet and dynamic even when heavily overloaded. Digital monitoring while playback allows full multitrack recording sessions.
This card is really top range and you really got good stuff for your money. Considering you can add in a XG Wavetable daughterboard, you can have a high quality acquisition board with a synth module you can choose by yourself among all those on the market to fit your type of music. In that way you aren't bogged down with a high quality audio card with a crappy synth (i.e. Pinnacle...) or a great wavetable with a terrible sounding soundcard...
| Module | Features | Comments |
| ISA Half lenght Main card | External Connectors: Mic Input minijack (Dynamic or Electret selcted by jumper) Line Input minijack Auxiliary Input minijack Line Output minijack MIDI/Joystick connector Internal Connectors: |
Minijack aren't gold plated... and don't need to be !!! Phantom power on Mic is +5V Auxiliary input is NOT digitally processed within the card it goes straight to the Output analog mixer. Strangely it is quite Noisy and is no real use except to loop back your SB to have only one mixer to cope with in Windows... |
| Audio Section | Converters: 20bit AD/DA Delta-Sigma 128x Oversampling Response:
10hz-22Khz (+/-1db) Sampling rates: from 5,5125 to 48Khz at Enhanced Full Duplex (Playback/record at different rates) |
This card is quiet as a tomb compared to any other thing I've seen
on the market. Converters are very clean and expressive even with wide amplitudes or very hot levels. Digital processing is performed by a 20Mips Motorola 56002 DSP chip (basis of Hurricane Architecture) |
| Digital I/O Option | Connectors: Electrical Coaxial RCA In / Out (on separate slot bracet) Supported format: |
Digital I/O works as an add-on and requires a free bracet (not ISA
slot). Works completly in plug'n'play (no jumper to move) and supports semi-pro S/PDIF format only. Sync's externally in less than a second. |
| Driver | System: Win 3.xx /Win95/Win NT Plug and Play for Win95 Manual Install for 3.xx/NT Requires: 1 IRQ, 1 I/O adress, 1 Memory Adress range. Mixer Panel controls: |
On install the driver detects the card features and add's optional
S/PDIF or synth automatically in the tray. The Windows default mixer is automiatically replaced with the TB mixer in the taskbar. All level sliders have mute controls and Meters are quite precise: 30 led's on each stereo channel ranging from -60 to 0db. Some sliders have additionnal advanced controls such as Input Gain, S/PDIF sync options, etc... |
| Software Package (CD Package) | Digital Orchestrator sequencer Audio Station 2 multimedia file player (Wave, MIDI & CD-Audio ) Audio View sound Editor |
Software package is well balanced for the ones who don't own a
professional sequencer (Cakewalk) or Wave Editor (Sound Forge). Audiostation gives direct access to all Fiji's audio playback functions. |
Turtle Beach Pinnacle ISA Soundcard |
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| The well known Turtle Beach Pinnacle soundcard shares with the
Fiji the same design and component architecture. In fact the Pinnacle is EXACTLY the same
sound card with an added on-board synthetizer with sampling capabilities. The Pinnacle is a full lenght ISA card and the extended lenght ( compared to the Fiji ) is devoted to the MA-1 Synth Chipset ( same as the AVM Apex soundcard ), the Kurzweil sound samples ( in ROM ) and the 2 SIMM Ram expansion slots adding up to 48Mb onboard sampling. The audio chipset as well as the soundcard connectors and expansion features ( digital I/O, wavetable connector ) are strictly the same. Even the Software driver is common to the two cards !!! All in all, for an added 1000 FF (160 USD/EUR) you get a Fiji quality card with an added a sampler/synth. Some will say that the MA-1 synth is clumsy, not real good sounding and quite difficult to edit but the Pinnacle can be an interesting option to have a low-cost sampler. I personnally don't need to have another synth to cope with and I don't really see the point of having a 16 part multi-timbral synth going out throught a lone stereo minijack output... This is better for a high quality "all in one" package for beginners. I'd better use the Fiji in a studio environment for high quality dedicated digital acquisition. |
