Turtle Beach Systems is a sound card and headphone manufacturer and direct competitor with Creative Labs-branded Sound Blaster. In 1995, the company merged with Voyetra, a company that made custom software for sound cards, to form Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc which is headquartered at Yonkers, New York, USA.
Company History
Turtle Beach was originally founded in 1985 as "Turtle Beach Softworks" by cofounders Roy Smith and Robert Hoke. The company's first product was a graphical editing system that supported the breakthrough Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard. The Mirage was the first low cost sampling device that allowed musicians to play realistic choirs, pianos, horns, and other instruments in their performances. The software, called "Vision", connected the Mirage to a PC and used the PC's screen and graphics to make the programming and editing of sounds much easier. Ensoniq decided to resell Vision through their dealer network and Turtle Beach Softworks became a profitable company.
Over the following years, the company developed a few other programs that supported Ensoniq equipment but realized that they needed to develop more generalized products. They retooled their product into "SampleVision", which initially supported the Akai S900, but was designed with an extensible framework, allowing other samplers to be supported. The SampleVision series was among the first to offer a macintosh-like user experience on the PC (which at that time did not have Microsoft Windows to provide its GUI).
In 1988, Turtle Beach began to work on developing its first hardware product, a hard disk based audio editing system. Among the first of its kind, the product was named the "56K digital recording system" and was released in 1990. It was based on a Motorola 56000 DSP chip, and offered non linear playlist editing of stereo audio files. The 56K system was popular among radio stations and mastering studios because it replayed exactly the same digital stream that it recorded.
In 1990, Turtle Beach began developing its first PC sound card. This card used high quality A/D and D/A, a high quality synthesizer from eMu, and an onboard DSP chip. This product was called "MultiSound" and it went on to became Turtle Beach's claim to fame in the PC industry, winning every magazine's "Best of" awards hands down. The MultiSound product took Turtle Beach from the insular music hobbyist and pro audio markets into the "big leagues" of the PC market, competing with Advanced Gravis (now defunct), Adlib (now defunct), Creative Labs, and Media Vision (now defunct).
As the company played out its technological lead in the sound card market, acquisition offers began to come in. Turtle Beach was acquired by Integrated Circuit Systems, a maker of clock chips for the PC market. ICS wanted to broaden its market to include the new multimedia chips and peripherals, and it made sense for them to buy rather than build.
With the addition of ICS's resources, Turtle Beach went from a boutique one-product-per-year to a full line PC peripheral company, releasing 8 new products within the 18 months following the sale. The MultiSound Monterey, The Tahiti, Maui, Audio Advantage sound cards rounded out its hardware product line, with products at every price point. On the software side, the company released "Wave for Windows", its high end sound editing program, "Quad", the first multitrack recording application for the PC, and several other software titles.
Typical of corporate acquisitions, after the initial honeymoon period the original founders were soon sent on their way. Martin Goldberg was brought in to run the company and after moving its operations to San Jose, ICS sold Turtle Beach to Voyetra in 1996.
Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc. has been at the forefront of music and audio technology for more than two decades and is recognized as a pioneer of today’s PC audio industry. Over the course of its 31-year history, Voyetra has developed a wide variety of music products including electronic synthesizers, software, sound cards and network audio devices. VTB’s software and hardware products have been used by creative individuals for computer music production and by music enthusiasts for enjoying digital music.
Sound Card Brands
Audio Advantage - Popular line of USB sound cards, all of which have digital SPDIF outputs. It comes in three models: Micro, Amigo, and Roadie.
Cancun FX -
Catalina - 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound, EAX 2.0 without on board sound processing. (uses CPU) The disappointing Catalina takes 2nd to Sound Blaster Audigy 2 in sound quality.
Daytona PCI -
EAR Force gaming headset - headset that does true 5.1 Surround Sound.
Fiji -
Malibu Surround 64 -
Maui - Maui was an inexpensive wavetable synthesizer add-on card. It used the ICS WaveFront synthesizer chip and offered optional RAM slots that would allow users to add their own sounds to the wavetable playback. This product pre-dated the Creative/Microsoft "SoundFonts" concept by two years. This card was intended for Sound Blaster owners who wanted to improve their MIDI playback by adding wavetable synthesis.
Monte Carlo - Monte Carlo was the first Turtle Beach sound card that was not designed in-house. It was based on a Crystal semiconductor reference design for a "Sound Blaster Compatible" card. It was very inexpensive and did not really live up to the Turtle Beach quality or reputation.
Montego DDL - Dolby Digital Live-capable. 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound, EAX 2.0 with on board sound processing. Priced around $80 USD. See also: Montego DDL Control Panel
Montego A3DXstream - unrelated to the current Montego DDL in every way but the name. The Montego was based on the Aureal AU8820 (Vortex) chipset.
Montego II Quadzilla - the Montego II was a family of cards that replaced the original Montego card. The card was based on the Aureal AU8830 (Vortex 2) chipset but differed from the reference Aureal design. The Quadzilla was the 4-channel version and achieved this via a separate daughtercard, whereas the other AU8830 cards such as Aureal Vortex SQ2500 and Diamond Monster Sound MX300 used a single card.
Monterey - Monterey was the first cost-reduced version of the MultiSound. In essence the synthesizer (the Emu Proteus) was replaced by a less expensive RIO card that was based on the ICS WaveFront chipset. The DSP and A/D was identical to the MultiSound, as were the specs.
Multisound Classic - was a 430 USD full-length ISA sound card produced from 1992 to 1994. It contained an EMU Proteus 1/XR professional MIDI rack engine with 2 MB or 4 MB ROM sample pack and a Motorola 56001 / 68000 DSP chip pair for wave recording and playback. The card supported Windows 9x officially and can be used on Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 using Peter Hall's drivers. The sound quality and feature set offered by MultiSound Classic was truly revolutionary at the time, but Creative Labs acquired EMU in 1994 and the supply of XR chips stopped. The card had to be redesigned accordingly, creating the Tahiti.
Rio- The RIO was a daughtercard MIDI synthesizer that was compatible with the Sound Blaster daughtercard pinout. This product was intended for Sound Blaster owners who wanted to improve their MIDI playback by adding wavetable synthesis. The RIO offered optional RAM slots that would allow users to add their own sounds to the wavetable playback. This product pre-dated the Creative/Microsoft "SoundFonts" concept by two years.
Riviera - affordable Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound without on board sound processing. (uses CPU)
Santa Cruz - Santa Cruz, is based on the Cirrus Logic SonicFusion (aka Crystal 4630) DSP. It featured four analog channel outputs, a line input and microphone input are included on the back panel. Also included is a connector TB has dubbed the "VersaJack." The VersaJack has multiple functions selectable by software including digital SPDIF output, a second analog input, analog output or 5th and 6th speaker outputs. This card also supported an open source software based EAX.
Tahiti - Multisound Classic derivative without the on-card synthesis.
Tropez 32 / TBS2000 -
Tropez Classic -
Tropez Plus -