Turtle Beach Santa Cruz feedback

[Flagship]

NOTE: This is a resurrection of a thread long since gone (forum move). It is being recreated for the benefit of the FAQ page.
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[size=4]Testing for sound feedback[/size]

Here's a way to test for sound feedback (sound being sent to your speakers being picked up by your microphone port).
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1) Turn your speakers off.

2) Start WinAmp or any kind of media player. Load a song that would normally be on the loud side.

3) Start Ventrilo. You don't need to connect to a server.

4) Click on Setup button.

5) Click on Monitor button.

6) Don't make any sound and don't have any fans blowing over your microphone.

7) The numbers displayed should be semi-constant, give or take a few in either direction.

8) Click on your media player to have it start playing the song you loaded.

If the monitor numbers changed after starting the media player, i.e. they grew a substantial rate, then you are getting feedback. In essence, the microphone port is picking up the sound being sent to your speakers but its being done either inside your sound card, in the drivers, or some kind of electrical crossover on or near the microphone port.

To make the problem more noticable, you might have to turn your wave output settings up all the way and crank up your microphones sensitivity slider to max and repeat the above steps...

I have personally seen this feedback with the Santa Cruz I bought today... Very disappointing...

On a side note: If I physcially unplug the micrphone from the sound card the problem goes away and all the numbers return to 0. This is what leads me to believe the problem is some kind of EMI signal crossover at the microphone jack it self, but I can't say either way.

In either event I will be asking TurtleBeach what they think of the problem and if their is a solution to it.

I suspect all SC's have this problem and that the relevance is dependant on your wave output volume, microphone input sensitivity, voice activation levels and other minor settings. You might not notice the problem but I suspect its there and it could eventually show up when you decide to change any or all of the above options.