The concept of sticking all that ever-so-sensitive analog circuitry into a box that resides outside the electrically noisy confines of a computer seems conceptually sensible. But in practice, we find that VideoLogic's SonicFury - a standard PCI card - actually has a noise performance that beats many card-and-rack systems.

The SonicFury, or the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (which is actually screen-printed onto the card), is marketed in Australia solely as the SonicFury. In looks and layout, this card seems very much in the style of a Sound Blaster Live!, even to the point of having an output that can be configured in software to work as either a centre/subwoofer analog output or a digital S/PDIF output. But in this case, the 'VersaJack' can also be switched to act as an additional stereo analog input. While it supports 5.1 channel analog output, it does not perform Dolby Digital decoding itself but relies on a software DVD player to do this. However, it has a full collection of DSPbased surround processing effects, including support for EAX and Sensaura 3D.

The standout aspect of this card is its audio performance. In fact, its input noise level was bettered only by the Terratec card. Just as importantly, the noise was evenly spread across the whole audio spectrum without an emphasis in any particular frequency band.This means that, to the extent that it is audible at all (only in the most extreme circumstances), it would sound like a gentle, low level white noise rather than a grating high frequency hiss. Frequency response is also good, with it rolling off at the extremes by less than half a decibel. Between those extremes, the response was exceptionally flat and balanced on both recording and playback, so it adds no characteristics of its own to the sound. The only significant limitation to this card is the lack of a digital input, which will not matter at all to gamers but could restrict anyone exploring computer-based music production. However, the audio performance of the card is so good it will encourage people to try this.