As mentioned in my introduction, Voyetra-Turtle Beach is essentially made up of two companies: Voyetra and Turtle Beach. Each benefited from the merger because Voyetra gained the hardware technologies from Turtle Beach and Turtle Beach gained the software technologies from Voyetra. So, it's not surprising to see that Voyetra-Turtle Beach has included an interesting bundle of software products with their Santa Cruz product.

One of the pieces of software included with the Santa Cruz is Voyetra's Digital Orchestrator. This is actually a very nice piece of software if you're into music composition as it allows you to compose your own music through the software using MIDI and other audio files such as WAV files. I listened to the included demo and I'm impressed with what this program can do.

Another one is called AudioStation. This program is basically an MP3 music hub, as it allows the user to Rip, encode, play and organize MP3 and other media files. It sounds like a great program, but, unfortunately, I could not run it because it kept on crashing under my Windows ME installation. I'm not sure what could be causing it, but I'm betting that it could be Windows ME, even though everyone knows that Windows ME is basically Windows 98 with a facelift.

There are many other pieces of software included with the Santa Cruz. One other notable is Voyetra's eJay Special Edition. This program allows a user to create their own dance, techno and hip hop mixes. Also on the CD are a few demo versions such as MusicWrite, which allows users to write their own sheet music. Of course, who could forget Sensaura's 3D Player, which demos the features of the 3D API's built into the Santa Cruz by allowing a user to move a sound source around them. I spent hours just playing around with this one.

If you're following with the types of software packages included with the Santa Cruz, you'll notice that all of the software titles are targeted towards music composers, or the like. This is great and all if you're into music composition and I see the point of this since Voyetra makes great music composition software, but don't you think that they should have included one or two game titles just to please the gaming community? I mean, one game, even if it may not be the newest game around, will sure make this product at least a little more pleasing to the average gamer and help to target it to a broader range of users.

On to: Conclusion