| Value |  4.5 | | Performance |  4 | | Ease of Use | 4.5 | | Overall Satisfaction | 4 |
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5 of 5 great surround sound. Sunday, March 22, 2009
keith P. from Phoenix, AZ
Install was a snap, just follow instructions exactly. The Spidif connection provides great surround with my Sony Home Theater system. It took a few tries to get the settings right, but when I finally did, Wow. Received the product in 1 1/2 days. Great service Buy.com. Was this review helpful?  
5 of 5 great sound card for the price Friday, March 20, 2009
A Customer from Tulsa, OK
put it in, installed the drivers with my Vista 32 bit OS. Had absolutely no problems and sounds great! Was this review helpful?
1 of 5 Avoid the OEM version Tuesday, July 08, 2008
A Customer from Nevada
I purchased this card for the purpose of passing through Dolby Digital from my Home Theater PC to my external Sony amplifier. I could never get anything but 2 channel stereo to work. I spent weeks trying different decoders and software to no avail. This card is an OEM product. Although not stated, there is no warranty and it is not supported by Turtle Beach. You are on your own using it. I eventually learned the card by design DOES NOT pass through Dolby Digital as advertised but instead down converts it to 2 channel PCM.
I replaced the card with a different brand and it worked immediately without any effort other than selecting S/PDIF output. Was this review helpful?
3 of 5 Software issue Sunday, March 16, 2008
A Customer from Tuscola, IL
I would give this sound card a higher rating but unfortunately the included software is useless.
The software would not recognize the "linein" input.
The editing software apears to be only available with the upgrade - which is an extra cost option.
It's unfortunate that the Turtle Beach advertising fails to mention these details. Was this review helpful?
5 of 5 Great sound card for the money Thursday, November 29, 2007
Some Guy in SLC from Salt Lake City, Utah
I was faced with 2 options for my home: buy a stereo (and run my computer through it for my internet radio stations) or upgrade the computer's sound card. After seeing the reviews here and on other sites I went with this sound card-$25 instead of about $100 for a decent rack stereo system.
The difference in sound over the integrated Intel soundcard is absolutely amazing! With the addition of the SRS Audio Sandbox program ($20 on their site) I now get a very respectable-quality surround sound (or stereo, or quad depending on settings) from my computer-all for less than $50; and when I build my new computer next year I will just move the card over.
Easy to install-just enter your BIOS settings on your computer (f10 at boot on mine) and disable the onboard sound; shut down and snap the card into a PCI slot; reconnect everything and boot. Run the CD and in no time you'll be there. The Riviera also comes with a couple of other programs for sound mixing that I haven't used yet so I can't tell you about those.
If you're not a high-demand audiophile you will be very happy with this card-and your wallet will be too. Do try the SRS Audio Sandbox program on their site-free 2 week trial-to help customize your setting further. Was this review helpful?
5 of 5 probably the best $30 sound card out there. Thursday, November 15, 2007
A Customer from SLC Utah
I'm not an audiophile geek; I just wanted something to make my computer sound better when playing my online radio stations, CD's and mp3 collection. After researching I settled on this model because of the company's reputation and price...and am not disappointed!
It totally blows away the old integrated Intel sound card I had, giving my 2 sets of stereo speakers (one set has a subwoofer)a darned good sound. I added the SRS Audio Sandbox program ($20 online, I highly recommend it...free 2 week trial) and I now have a very credible surround sound for $50; it sounds as good as a good bookshelf system for about 1/4 the price.
If you have a free PCI slot, installation is a snap-literally. Uninstall the old sound card, power down, open the case and snap the card in, reconnect all the wires back and run the CD. The card includes a media player, and enough adjustable tweaks to get a ggod sound from almost anything...add the SRS Sandbox and you'll be amazed at what an older computer (mine is a 6 year old Dell 4400) can sound like for a pretty cheap price!
I'm sure there's better (and definitely much more expensive) cards available, but for the casual to moderate user this is a great bang-for-the-buck. Was this review helpful?
5 of 5 It's about time! Tuesday, September 25, 2007
A Customer from 06877
I have put off buying a Turtle Beach product for years and this card confirms how wrong I was not to get one sooner.
This card brings out the best in my music for the buck! Was this review helpful?
5 of 5 Turtle Faster than my on board sound card Friday, June 22, 2007
Alec McKay from Jensen Beach, Florida
I bought a Sony Vaio desktop and the sound was terrible. It turned out that the sound card was an intergral part of the mother board. I removed my phone modem card - did not use it anyway - and plugged in the Turtle Beach Riviera sound card. It sounds great with my Klipsch 2.1 speakers. For about 30 bucks it is a bargain. Was this review helpful?
5 of 5 Great sound card for the money! Saturday, June 16, 2007
Tony from Marco Island, FL
Wow! What a deal. Great sound and a great value! Being a disc jockey who does a lot of intensive sound editing on the computer, I was kind of afraid that this card wouldn't be up to par with something like a Creative brand card but I was really wrong. The sound output is great and having the S/PDIF TOSLINK output is a great bonus! The drivers and application software are minimal so you don't have a whole bunch of 'extra' software on your hard disc. All in all, I'm very impressed with Turtle Beach and will buy their brand again. Was this review helpful?
5 of 5 Works in Linux Friday, June 08, 2007
A Customer from Grand Rapids, MI
Installed this sound card in a Fedora Core 6 box. It is being used to deliver raw audio through the SPDIF to my receiver through the fiber connection.
It was hard to find a sound card that had the fiber port on the back of the card instead of a daughter card. This was a big selling point for me, as I only have 3 bays in my case. After putting in a TV Tuner, a Video card, and now a sound card, I didn't have room for anything else. So a big selling point was the fiber port on the card.
And it works good! To get it to work in Fedora Core 6, all I had to do was unmute the channel and create a config file for it. Was this review helpful?
1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.
5 of 5 Great Sound Card Thursday, July 06, 2006
A Customer from Travis AFB, CA
I am not a sound guru but this card sounds better than on-board and most mid range cards out there to me. It was easy to install and I haven't had any problems out of it. It has good features for the price and I am very happy with it. Was this review helpful?
6 of 6 customers found this review helpful.
2 of 5 Good sound, but driver problems Saturday, February 25, 2006
Nate from Austin, TX
The card was easy to install and connect to PC speaker system, drivers & software installed w/no problem, 5.1 audio sounds great. HOWEVER, the drivers are almost 2 years old and when installed it caused my Windows boot time to go from about 10 seconds to over a minute. The initial Windows loading screen would appear, then the screen would go black, optical mouse would turn off and the PC would just sit there with no activity for a minute or more, then bootup would continue normally. Uninstalled the driver and bootup went back to normal. This was true for the Turtle Beach driver (both CD and web site) and the driver Windows finds from its database. No card is worth a 1+ minute bootup time, so it's being returned. Was this review helpful?
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