Echo Indigo DJx and IOx (PCI Express) - Page 2

Bummer. Guess I'll hold off until they fix it.

does it have spdif? like the minitoslink?

Anyone know how the Indigo IOx or DJx sound compared to the Audiofire (2)?
My laptop sucks for firewire (or it could be they all do?) and i do not get to enjoy my audiofire w/o clicks (underruns) or pops (OS delay caused gaps in playback).

USB DAC may be an option as my PCM2702 based portable amp/dac does not suffer the same.

Hi all,

Does anyone have this card ? How does it sound with high impedance cans (like HD650) ? Any background noise at all when feeding an external amp ?

Thanks !

No-one ? Surely someone must have this card ???

bump

Another bump, has anyone got this card?

i'm in a real dilema with my laptop and sq alternatives and this card just seems to be the best choice as it doesnt hang off the laptop (i take the laptop name literally and dont use it on a desk).

However thats justs its usefulness physically as a product, from what i've been reading, its not great where it counts, sound. More opinions are needed in this regard.

Hi,

No-one replied for my posts so I decided against the card. I got a Headphonia usb dac cable (US$60) and built an AMB Mini3 amplifier. I'm very pleased with the sound quality and definitely recommend both of these as a great way to get good sound out of a laptop. I also use the Ploytech usb asio driver for Win XP.

Cheers

I used to have the old IndigoDJ and it was one of my favourite cards ever. I was sad when my new laptop didn't have the right card slot anymore.

it seems a real shame as there was/is much hype for the older cards and nothing positive for the new cards.

I thought about the headphonia cable but i started thinking at that price how much better could it possibly be. I know this is a new version of the cable, but i remember the older cable and asking questions about it and it was only marginally better than on board sound.

I have an amp (penguine royal with the 3 switches) which i could use with the cable and then my hd595, but just didnt want there to be any major bottlenecks.

this cable might be too good to be true with people only raving about it as its considerably cheaper compared to bigger sized portable dac's.

oh yes, forgot to mention, thoppa, how comes you installed ploytech usb driver? is it superior over the universal one in terms of sound?

Hi

The Headphonia USB DAC cable uses a WM8740 DAC chip, which was Wolfson's top of the line DAC chip until recently. The receiver is Ti PCM2706 and the output is AD8656. I did a bom on the parts and they come to over half the asking price, which includes shipping. The price is unusually low.

It doesn't support kernel streaming (or at least I can't get it to work....) so I started using asio4all with my laptop but the Ployech gives better detail and definition. I'm using a Mini3 as the amp and recabled HD650.

It gets quite warm in use. It doesn't carry any audible noise into the Mini3 from the laptop.

Sound wise, it wasn't a pleasant surprise at first but after only a few hours it was improving. After a few days it became clear it is very good value for money and generally a good sound but with 3 eaknesses.

There is a bass rolloff with a Mini3. The output couples via 1uF ceramic caps and 10K shunt resistors. The Mini3 has a 10K input volume so that gives a 5K impedance with 1uF caps. So the bass roll off is a -3db @ 30Hz high pass filter (if I've done my sums right). It only really affects things like the Mini3 - for most other things with input impedance of 47k-100K there's no real roll-off. It's also only evident on tracks that have that deep bass hit. Dare I say it but Avril Lavigne Sk8er Boi has a good 'test of deep bass urge'.

There is some v slight loss of high end detail. I couldn't explain this because it certainly isn't the chips. It had to be something to do with the output caps or low pass filter around the AD8656 I guessed.

There is some v slight edginess to what is otherwise a very good sounding dac.

I like to modify, so I cut open a small part of the shrink wrap to reveal the output caps and resistors. I replaced the 10K with 120K (just what I had lying around), and the 1uF with 33uF 16V Blackgate N.

The Mini3 roll off has gone, there is just the right amount of detail and some, but not all, of the edginess has been smoothed away. It is certainly very hard to hear any deficiencies now, so I am just enjoying the music. It's much better than the laptop sound card, even though that isn't terrible either.

I'd definitely recommend this little dac considering the price.

cheers

I've got the indigo djx for a while and i never used my native instruments audio 8 dj since. ^^

Listening to music in flac format with foobar and beyerdynamic dt 770 pro 250 ohm edition. 

Notebook is a Lenovo g530 core 2 duo with windows 7. works like a charm and sounds beautiful (well to me... tell me if you got something better for that price)

 

have a nice day 

 

Resurrection!

 

How does this card work? As I understand it its an Amp that can be used with headphones but does the card have its own DAC? Or does the performance of the card depend on the DAC in the laptop? Or does this card require an external amp and use the card as a DAC only?

 

If the card is an amp how powerful is the amp for driving headphones? Can I for instance drive 600 ohm DT880s or should I stick with 32 ohm DT880s?

I've been using the Echo Indigo DJx expresscard 34  for about a year.   Use the line-out through a little dot MK V amp and Sennheiser 580's.

Will drive the Senns to sufficient volume with its own built-in headphone amp but better detail and bass with the MK V. Had

some buzzing/noise through the external headphone amp that I had to fix with an isolating transformer--about $90--not sure if this is an

issue with the Echo Indigo or the MK V.

 

Sound much like the older PCMCIA version--very clear and with a nice soundstage--make sure you use the line-out rather than

the headphone-out if you use an external amp.

 

Use this setup mostly for VST intruments--excellent latency at 96khz--about the same as PCI cards and better than USB/Firewire.

 

As to whether it has a DAC--yes it does and it is a significant upgrade over the internal sound cards of most PCs/MACS.

Also has a DSP with its own onboard XTAL oscillator to reclock the audio.

 

For a compact and high-quality audio out, I'd highly recommend it *if* you have a laptop with a 34mm expresscard. I'm

using it on a Dell Studio 14 (core i3) running Windows 7.  Haven't experienced any stability issues.

Edited by bebop603 - 9/5/11 at 3:14pm