DSP-Based Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Selected as Sound Card for Dell PCs; Board Designed for Digital Music, 3D Games and Business Audio

Business Wire, Sept 13, 2000

Business Editors and High-Tech Writers

YONKERS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 2000

The forthcoming Turtle Beach Santa Cruz(tm) audio accelerator has been designated by Dell Computer (Nasdaq:DELL) as a sound upgrade for various Dell(R) product lines. This further expands Voyetra Turtle Beach's relationship with Dell, which currently offers the Turtle Beach Montego II sound card to its customers.

Powered by Cirrus Logic's Crystal(R) 420MIPS digital signal processor (DSP), the Santa Cruz provides two, four or six discrete output channels and dynamically reconfigures its resources depending on the active task. For instance, if a game demands 3D audio but not MIDI wavetable sound, the DSP will focus its processing power on accelerating the 3D streams. If the user instead decides to create a richer sound by applying the included effect algorithms, the Santa Cruz DSP will handle the effect processing.

"We've been working with Dell since February 1998, offering our Montego A3D and Montego II cards as both standard and optional equipment in a number of Dell's PC product lines," said H.J. Lee, vice-president of OEM sales. "Whether the new Santa Cruz audio accelerator is used for MP3 digital music, gaming, business audio or PC-based home entertainment, it's a flexible yet affordable card."

A retail version of the Santa Cruz is now shipping, with a suggested price of US$99.

Turtle Beach anticipates that the Santa Cruz will be primarily used for:

Digital music playback. The Santa Cruz accelerates MP3 decoding,

thereby freeing the host CPU for processing other tasks during

playback of MP3 files.

PC game playing. In addition to providing six output channels,

Santa Cruz supports major 3D audio standards, including EAX(tm),

A3D(tm), I3DL2, DirectSound3D, and Sensaura's MacroFX(tm) and

MultiDrive(tm). The card also includes Sensaura's new

VirtualEar(tm) technology, which heightens the 3D experience by

conforming positional algorithms to an individual user's ear

characteristics.

Music recording and auditioning. The Santa Cruz offers a wealth of

features for desktop music production, including super-low noise

analog circuitry; 18-bit resolution recording from four sources

simultaneously; six-channel, 20-bit playback; a 10-band hardware

EQ; multi-channel effects processing; and an 8MB DLS-compatible

wavetable synthesizer.

Home theater-style entertainment. For PC home-theater effects, the

Santa Cruz allows the pass-through of digital streams (e.g., Dolby

Digital) to dual S/PDIF outputs for external decoding and creating

environmental ambiance within multi-speaker rooms.

Business applications. The Santa Cruz supports acoustic echo

cancellation algorithms for enhancing videoconferencing or

speakerphone applications. Voice recognition performance is also

improved by the aforementioned high-resolution converters and

exceptionally low signal-to-noise and total harmonic distortion

levels. The DSP's ability to process four independent microphone

signals supports an optional, low-cost array microphone that

creates a narrow "listening area" to eliminate extraneous noise in

an office environment.

Additional distinctive Santa Cruz features include automatic shutdown to eliminate power on/off thumps; automatic sensing of rear jack connections to notify the user of the card's input/output capabilities; and a unique hardware matrix system for automated diagnostic support.

Voyetra Turtle Beach is one of the world's leading PC audio solutions providers, working with more than 150 leading manufacturers, distributors and retailers. In addition to its OEM and retail sales, Voyetra Turtle Beach makes its entire line of products available directly to consumers via its e-commerce Web site (http://www.turtle-beach.com) and customer service center (1-800-233-9377 or 914-966-0600).

For more information, write Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc., 5 Odell Plaza, Yonkers, NY 10701; call 800-233-9377 or 914-966-0600; fax 914-966-1102; send e-mail to sales@turtle-beach.com; or visit www.turtle-beach.com.

Voyetra is a registered trademark, Turtle Beach and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz are trademarks of Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.