John Canino
New Member
To everyone out there wishing to install a Legacy Sound Card on a Vista system; most of them work just fine unless they have bad drivers. I am using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Card with a Roland SCC-1 Synth daughtercard and it works like a champ...so does the Roland Card!
Your older control software may not function well, or at all, but there is lots of software available that will replace it if all you want to do is manipulate things like frequency responce, sterio source, speakers and effects...some of it "free!"
I'll show you, here, how to get the Santa Cruz working,.Most cards will work the same way.
If the card is in the computer, remove it and boot Vista with no sound card, then shut down and install your card again. Reboot and tell Vista you have the disk. Alternately, you can go into device manager and select "sound, video and game controller" (just like XP) and chose to re-install your drivers. With legacy cards you will have to install a WDM interface driver. For Santa Cruz it is the 21306952 of 4/26/2002 Driver WDM v.4161 Certified by Microsoft. you can get to it at: ftp://ftp.turtlebeach.com/pub/tbs/santacru/sc_4161s.zip.
After installing it, make sure that the card says: "enabled." If Vista tells you the drivers are not signed or are unrecognized (same goes for the sound card), tell it to install anyway! In Control Panel/Sound, check the advance features and enable the features you want and drag the volume slider all the way to the right. The sound card should now work just fine.
For Midi, or external Midi device, the only way you can access it is to download and install a very small program that allows you to select which device play which sounds, a feature that was left out of Vista to avoid compatibilty issues with legacy devices. That program is: "Vista MIDI Fix.exe" You can get it from Microsoft Downloads. It's only a few K-Bytes.
Just like XP, this program can be used to change the default MIDI output device to most any type.
Vista's sound subsystem has changed. While this is generally a good thing, some things are noticably missing, such as - at least, in my sound card's case - hardware MIDI support.
In fact, the MIDI support is still be there, but unlike on XP where the MIDI output device could be picked from the control panel Vista doesn't provide such an option. With "Vista Midi Fix.exe" it does.
Does it work? In my case, like a dream!
Actually, I run two sound cards in my Vista System and switch between them for different purposes. The everyday card is a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatality which can handle USB Midi devices and Creation. I use the Santa Cruz and Roland for legacy content playback and true Roland GS instruments and effects. I have a lot of "GS' music I've created. Santa Cruz is actually good enough to use as a Main Card if you are not heavy into modern gaming.It's a very decent card and it has a Wave table synthesis connector on board.
The X-Fi actually has superior sound for general music play back, MP3 and movies or video, Gaming (which I don't do), is of course, stirling and their software bundle is fantastic. I even use Soundblaster software to control the sound of the Santa Cruz.
Your older control software may not function well, or at all, but there is lots of software available that will replace it if all you want to do is manipulate things like frequency responce, sterio source, speakers and effects...some of it "free!"
I'll show you, here, how to get the Santa Cruz working,.Most cards will work the same way.
If the card is in the computer, remove it and boot Vista with no sound card, then shut down and install your card again. Reboot and tell Vista you have the disk. Alternately, you can go into device manager and select "sound, video and game controller" (just like XP) and chose to re-install your drivers. With legacy cards you will have to install a WDM interface driver. For Santa Cruz it is the 21306952 of 4/26/2002 Driver WDM v.4161 Certified by Microsoft. you can get to it at: ftp://ftp.turtlebeach.com/pub/tbs/santacru/sc_4161s.zip.
After installing it, make sure that the card says: "enabled." If Vista tells you the drivers are not signed or are unrecognized (same goes for the sound card), tell it to install anyway! In Control Panel/Sound, check the advance features and enable the features you want and drag the volume slider all the way to the right. The sound card should now work just fine.
For Midi, or external Midi device, the only way you can access it is to download and install a very small program that allows you to select which device play which sounds, a feature that was left out of Vista to avoid compatibilty issues with legacy devices. That program is: "Vista MIDI Fix.exe" You can get it from Microsoft Downloads. It's only a few K-Bytes.
Just like XP, this program can be used to change the default MIDI output device to most any type.
Vista's sound subsystem has changed. While this is generally a good thing, some things are noticably missing, such as - at least, in my sound card's case - hardware MIDI support.
In fact, the MIDI support is still be there, but unlike on XP where the MIDI output device could be picked from the control panel Vista doesn't provide such an option. With "Vista Midi Fix.exe" it does.
Does it work? In my case, like a dream!
Actually, I run two sound cards in my Vista System and switch between them for different purposes. The everyday card is a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatality which can handle USB Midi devices and Creation. I use the Santa Cruz and Roland for legacy content playback and true Roland GS instruments and effects. I have a lot of "GS' music I've created. Santa Cruz is actually good enough to use as a Main Card if you are not heavy into modern gaming.It's a very decent card and it has a Wave table synthesis connector on board.
The X-Fi actually has superior sound for general music play back, MP3 and movies or video, Gaming (which I don't do), is of course, stirling and their software bundle is fantastic. I even use Soundblaster software to control the sound of the Santa Cruz.