Founded as Octave Electronics in 1975, Voyetra first established itself as a leading manufacturer of professional music synthesizers with the introduction of the legendary Voyetra 8 synthesizer (1981), which pioneered many of the features common in today's MIDI instruments. Voyetra went on to develop the world's first professional PC MIDI sequencer program – Sequencer Plus – taking a leadership role in the evolution of PC music software and hardware technology.

In December 1996, the company acquired Turtle Beach Systems. TBS, founded as a recording studio in 1985, solidified its reputation as a music hardware leader by being the first company to introduce a 16-bit sound card, the first to introduce wavetable synthesis on a sound card, and the first to introduce sound card-based wavetable instrument recording (sampling).

From a 3D audio perspective Voyetra Turtle Beach really established themselves with the excellent Montego A3D Xtreme sound card based on Aureal’s Vortex 1 chip set. This card was considered by many reviewers (including myself) to be the premier Vortex 1 soundboard. This was primarily because of the change from a 16 bit DAC to an 18 bit DAC but their better than average utility and software bundle did not hurt the cause.

Believe it or not, Voyetra Turtle Beach were actually the first to ship a Vortex 2 based product. The OEM 2 speaker Montego II was shipping in Dell machines in September of 1998, ahead of Diamond’s launch of the Monster Sound MX300 then just days before the MX300 hit the streets, Voyetra Turtle Beach decided to offer the same board that they were shipping to Dell from their own phone and web based storefront as the Montego II Whitebox edition. Since September of 1998 Voyetra Turtle Beach has shipped several hundred thousand Montego II OEM/Whitebox boards. Impressive numbers and while I can’t imagine that they sold too many Whitebox editions given the lack of a gaming bundle, the (at that time) limit to 2 speaker support and the small price difference to the MX300, the point is they actually were first to the OEM market, neck and neck with Diamond and well ahead of Xitel, Videologic and Terratec for shipping a Vortex 2 based product to the retail market.

Diamond, being first out of the block and having a very strong retail presence seems to have a clear advantage in the North American market. Xitel, with their low price on the basic 4 speaker board and cool gamer’s pack which includes force feedback headphones for the same price as the MX300, along with their decision to use Aureal’s quad reference design which get them the TOS link optical output gives them a good foot up in the fight for attention (and dollars) from gamers. In the UK and Germany, I believe that both Videologic and Terratec have a very strong presence which probably negates any disadvantages they may have encountered by shipping well after Diamond.

So the question on our minds is what is it that Voyetra Turtle Beach can bring to the highly competitive 3D sound card market with the late entry of the Quadzilla? Lets have a look.

Technical Overview:

What Are the Common Vortex 2 Features?

As I noted above, the Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla is powered by Aureal’s Vortex 2 sound chip. Turtle Beach is the second Vortex 2 partner to alter the reference design (Diamond being the other).

The card itself offers the following features which are flow from the reference design and the Vortex 2 chip.

• DirectSound (i.e., they can all be DirectSound if necessary) streams;
• 76 3D streams* (they can be A3D, DS3D, or A3D 2.0, in the case of A3D 2.0, they are currently split between direct path and reflective sounds (16+60);
• 64 Wavetable voices

The different types of streams can be mixed and matched in various ways, but they always have to add up to a maximum of 96. Note that there are other types of streams (e.g. wavOut) but these are the common ones.

*76 3D streams for DS3D and A3D 1.x are accessible in a future driver upgrade from Voyetra Turtle Beach. The Vortex 2 2030 prerelease reference drivers have enabled 76 3D steams for 2 speaker and headphone modes and my testing shows that the reference driver will work fine with the Quadzilla for those two modes, but if you jump the gun and use these drivers you won't be able to use the bracket board as the reference drivers do not recognize it.  This means no four speaker audio and no S/PDIF. 

• 97dB signal-to-noise ratio over a 20Hz~22kHz range;
• custom crosstalk cancellation circuitry to optimize left and right sound channels for more effective A3D playback in stereo speakers;
• Sound Blaster Pro DOS support;
• hardware and 256 software wavetable voices using advanced techniques, such as fourth-order interpolation and sweepable filters with resonance;
• effects for delay, room, chamber, hall, cabinet, flange, distortion, and wah-wah on the wavetable;
• support for DLS 1.0;
• a hardware wavetable connector;
• a gameport which as well as supporting standard analog/digital joysticks and MPU-401 MIDI I/O, also incorporates DirectX acceleration circuitry that accelerates DirectX gameplay and improves system speed by 10% or more
• four speaker support out of the box;
• hardware support for DS, DS3D, A3D 1.x, A3D 2.0 and planned support for EAX through a future driver upgrade.

So How is it Different?

The first and most obvious variation from the reference design is the decision to go with a main card with 2 speaker support and follow later with a bracket board to add additional functionality, including four speaker support.

So just why did Voyetra Turtle Beach develop a bracket board with the S/PDIF out and rear speaker output, as opposed to placing everything on a single card? There were three key reasons:

1. Real estate. They had heard from a number of users that the back of cards are already jammed with jacks (stereo out, mic in, line in, MPU-401 MIDI/game port), and that adding two others, especially when using bulky high-end cables (such as a metal-jacketed RCA plug), would only cause frustration.

2. It allowed them to use the same base card (Montego II OEM or Whitebox edition) that was developed for Dell systems, reducing the need to develop an entirely different retail card (and thus keeping the board cost down for the end-user in the process).

3. It allows for modularity. If a Quadzilla owner wants to move up to the higher-end bracket board that Turtle Beach is releasing (RCA and optical I/Os for $99.00), they can do so easily. At the same time, this design allows the hundreds of thousands of people who have bought or will buy the OEM board in a Dell system to add the S/PDIF and rear speaker capability.

Personally I also see one con to a bracket board approach which again comes back to space.  Slots are at a premium in my machine and I hate to give one up for the sake of external outputs.

The next difference from other Vortex 2 boards is the use of dual stereo codecs rather than a single quad codec that is on all other 4 speaker Vortex 2 boards. This was necessitated by the bracket board design as the main board is a modified version of Aureal’s two speaker (hence stereo codec) reference design.  In the Quadzilla mixer you will see a front and a rear volume control, rather than the master volume and front/rear fader that you would find on the Vortex 2 reference drivers. This dual stereo codec design creates unique configuration challenges and when combined with the coax S/PDIF out means that the current Vortex 2 reference drivers do not recognize the Quadzilla's bracket board, so once again,  no rear outputs or S/PDIF out if you just can't wait for Voyetra Turtle Beach to update their custom drivers with the latest Aureal reference drivers.

Moving on, another change from the Vortex 2 quad reference design was the addition of auto-muting circuitry. This features prevents input lines from transferring radio interference and is a nice touch.