Sound from TV card

Recently purchased a V-Stream Xpert TV-PVR card. Works well with the
exception of the sound.

When live the sound is rich and full featured. But playing back a
recording the sound is weak with background noise. Mixer settings have
had negligible success.

I'm suspecting the limitation lies within the onboard CMI-8738 sound
chip. Am considering getting a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Good move or
am I looking in the wrong direction.

Sound card wise I'm not looking for state of the art. Just something
decent for general use.

"Jim" <me.DeleteThis@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:VS4fd.6807$bz4.634637@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
 > Recently purchased a V-Stream Xpert TV-PVR card. Works well with the
 > exception of the sound.
 >
 > When live the sound is rich and full featured. But playing back a
 > recording the sound is weak with background noise. Mixer settings have
 > had negligible success.
 >
 > I'm suspecting the limitation lies within the onboard CMI-8738 sound chip.
 > Am considering getting a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Good move or am I
 > looking in the wrong direction.
 >
 > Sound card wise I'm not looking for state of the art. Just something
 > decent for general use.

I use a Winfast TV2000 Expert PVR card for recording movies to play back
through our home theater system. The sound card is Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.
The combination is EXCELLENT. Video and sound quality are perfect, no
complaints. However, the software that came with the PVR card was rather a
bitch to set up, and I had no sound at all for a while. Then I had
over-driven sound for a while. Basically, I don't know whether it was the
PVR card or the Sound Card or the software, or a combination of two or all
three, but it took a while to get all the settings (including the PVR
software settings!) balanced correctly. In my case, I run the sound card at
near maximum volume now, and the PVR software set around mid-range. If the
sound card volume isn't turned up quite a ways, the (played back) sound is
rather weak, even after being amplified by the A/V receiver.

I suspect you have two problems. First, a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz probably
has better output than onboard sound in terms of volume level and S/N ratio.
So even if you "max" your onboard sound, it might be too weak, with too much
noise mixed in. But I think you also need to check the settings of your PVR
software. You've got three things affecting the quality of playback . . .
your sound card, your PVR software and your sound card mixer settings. Good
luck finding the right balance of the three. -Dave<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->