Editor's Note: Don't know if this card is available anymore, and frankly it couldn't compare to some of the newer stuff out there anyway. Also, I'm sorry to say that I've heard more than a few negative comments about TB's tech support - CHM
Sold through distributors.
Manufactured by:
Turtle Beach Systems
5 Odell Plaza
Yonkers, NY 10701-1406
This was Turtle Beach's top-of-the-line sound card. It features full duplex recording and playback, a MIDI converter, and a Kurzweil synth engine which includes user expandable sample RAM. An optional daughterboard allows S/PDIF digital input and output. It's a Plug 'n Pray ISA card, MPU-401 and WaveBlaster(tm) compatible.
January 5, 1997
The Pinnacle has 4 jacks: 1 stereo line out, 1 stereo line-in, 1 stereo
aux in (devices connected to the aux in can only be listened to, not
recorded), and 1 stereo microphone in. They are all 1/8" stereo minijacks, including the S/PDIF digital i/o. When you install the digital i/o option you lose the microphone input. It's an either/or situation on the
mic jack.
The card performs VERY well, even in Windows 95, and the A/D and D/A
converters sound surprisingly decent. I am amazed at how quiet the card is, considering that it is sitting
inside a very hostile, electrically noisy computer. Turtle Beach seems to
have done their hardware homework on this one. It probably won't replace my
Zefiro ZA card and external A/D and D/A converters, but I will say that it
is the best medium-priced, self-contained sound card I have heard so far.
Not surprising, since Turtle Beach hardware has always been very good at
their price point.
The Kurzweil "MASS[ies]" synthesizer sounds quite good as well, with excellent
drum samples for a sound card, particularly the cymbals. In my opinion,
Kurzweil could have chosen a "richer" piano sample and a snare with more
punch, but that is entirely a matter of taste, and since the Pinnacle has up
to 48 meg of sample RAM, I could replace those sounds with my own. The
Kurzweil synth allows adjusting the level of the reverb and chorus
independently on each MIDI channel, but at this point, I don't believe you
can adjust the parameters of the reverb or chorus.
Now for the downside. On my particular machine, which is loaded with a bunch of strange
hardware, the WIN95 driver install did NOT go without a couple of problems,
but I was able to get them dealt with quickly. I am well versed in the
internals of the WIN95 operating system, so it wasn't a big problem for me,
but someone without "hacking" experience might be somewhat frustrated and
the install might require a call or two to TB tech support. On the other
hand, the install might go flawlessly on YOUR machine. I dual-boot WIN95 and
WIN3.1 and the WIN3.1 install went just fine, go figure...
The Pinnacle is something of an IRQ hog. It requires TWO free interrupts
(THREE if you want to use the on-board IDE-CDROM interface), as well as a 32k
block of upper memory. For most people this shouldn't be a problem, but they
don't mention the resource requirements in their literature. The Fiji, which
is a Pinnacle without the Kurzweil synth and IDE interface, only needs one
IRQ and is therefore probably easier to install. The Fiji does have a
WaveBlaster header so you can add the MIDI wavetable card of your choice if
you want to. By the way, the Pinnacle is a full duplex card and due to TB's
"Hurricane" architecture, it IS NOT a CPU resource hog. This might be a
factor for those of you running SAW and trying to get one more real-time track.
There is a problem with the external MIDI IN but there is presently a
workaround and TB says they will have it fixed in their next driver release.
In all fairness, the drivers are version 1.0 and I assume that v1.1 will be
much better. There is also an occasional "pop" when switching audio input modes, not a
huge problem, just annoying. I have also heard that switching between the
analog and digital inputs in SAW Plus requires running a TB app instead of
being able to do it from within SAW+ directly. SAW
Classic seems not to have this inconvenience.
The Pinnacle completely ignores SCMS (Serial Copy Management System), and there is no way to set the bit on playback. I'm not sure whether it's the current version of the driver that doesn't allow this, or that the hardware simply has no provisions for
setting the SCMS bit. It doesn't recognize or set the pre-emphasis bit
either. (This is one of the reasons that the Zefiro ZA card will always have
a home in my computer. The ZA allows you to set and recognize all flavors
of SCMS as well as pre-emphasis).
In the final analysis, there is a lot to recommend the Pinnacle,
particularly considering its very reasonable price, and I'm sure that once
the installed base of Pinnacles grows and TB gets some feedback from the
trenches, the drivers will solidify. It does co-exist quite well with
my Zefiro ZA card. (Thank Goodness the ZA card doesn't require an
interrupt!) As an all-in-one MIDI, analog and S/PDIF digital soundcard, the
Pinnacle pretty much has all the bases covered. For more serious digital-only work, the ZA card is still my choice. I have been pounding the blazes out of the Pinnacle for the last three days, it sounds great and not a single hiccup yet! Your mileage may vary...
