Echo Indigo std-io-dj -- Personal Experiences?
Sep 18, 2004 at 5:22 AM Post #16 of 45
Strange. I have never experienced an increase in CPU load with the Indigo. Why would that be?

It is a bus connected sound card just like any built-in device. It will draw its addtional power but to my knowledge does not increase the CPU load.

I found that I can put my laptop with a Pentium-M into lowest CPU speed turn the screen brightness down and get >7hours on an Thinkpad T40 with extended battery and the additional battery instead of the drive. The CPU is running at 600Mhz at that point and has plenty of room left. 24/96 source material plays just fine.

Cheers

Thomas
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 6:06 AM Post #17 of 45
I am not sure either. I'm quite sure the Echo Indigo uses more CPU than usual because I have tried playback with and out it. Without it, the CPU utilization was quite low, always 1 or 2%. With it, the CPU utilization because unstable, hovering between 10 and 30% with spikes of up to 40+%.

Doesn't matter much because I'm running on a 1.8 Dothan with 1GB of LL RAM with nice timings, but I would think that with higher CPU utilization comes shorter battery life.
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 7:06 AM Post #18 of 45
Jahn: I will try to pick one up at B&H when next they open and bring the TiBook w/K501s to Qualia meet (I was expecting to be at B&H Monday anyway). Still, since I do intend to use a headamp for better sound -- should I get the i/o for the line out capability? I'd love to spend less (129 vs 179) but I'd expect to encounter more problems using the headphone jack for a headamp, rather than i/o's line out. Yes? No?

I'm not familiar with the Sonica, but I'm always interested in worthwhile possibilities. Of course I'd love to try the Superdual & SR71 inline.

Sorry for the delay in responding -- too much work at work and home.

When I've tried the card (std or i/o?), I'll post a report on its power drain influence on my TiBook 15.2" 1.25GHz (Feb. 2004). I'll be mostly using it connected to A/C, except when flying and such, so I'm less concerned about the power drain. When flying I carry and extra battery, but if it's a serious drain......!

Concerning Echo Indigo standard (129-) vs I/O (179), I could try the cheaper one and trade up if it's inadequate. B&H has a 7-day no-fuss return policy.

BUT if anyone can answer with certainty if the I/O is needed for use with a head amp, please chime in -- it could save me some wasted time and effort.

THANKS ALL!
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 7:19 AM Post #19 of 45
Quote:

Originally Posted by bLue_oNioN
So I would have good results using an SR-71 fed from the headphone jack?


Here's the thread where Gregeas mentioned the hiss while using the Indigo to drive his SR-71. I only mentioned it because my SHA-1 had some hiss coming from the Indigo. I lowered the gain on the Indigo output to almost nothing and used the amp to adjust my volumn. The SR225s still had a minutia amount of hiss if you really listened for it, but the DT531s didn't. Ofcourse, alot of this is dependent upon the recording.

http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=78425
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 7:26 AM Post #20 of 45
Quote:

Originally Posted by Romanee
Jahn: I will try to pick one up at B&H when next they open and bring the TiBook w/K501s to Qualia meet (I was expecting to be at B&H Monday anyway). Still, since I do intend to use a headamp for better sound -- should I get the i/o for the line out capability? I'd love to spend less (129 vs 179) but I'd expect to encounter more problems using the headphone jack for a headamp, rather than i/o's line out. Yes? No?

I'm not familiar with the Sonica, but I'm always interested in worthwhile possibilities. Of course I'd love to try the Superdual & SR71 inline.

Sorry for the delay in responding -- too much work at work and home.

When I've tried the card (std or i/o?), I'll post a report on its power drain influence on my TiBook 15.2" 1.25GHz (Feb. 2004). I'll be mostly using it connected to A/C, except when flying and such, so I'm less concerned about the power drain. When flying I carry and extra battery, but if it's a serious drain......!

Concerning Echo Indigo standard (129-) vs I/O (179), I could try the cheaper one and trade up if it's inadequate. B&H has a 7-day no-fuss return policy.

BUT if anyone can answer with certainty if the I/O is needed for use with a head amp, please chime in -- it could save me some wasted time and effort.

THANKS ALL!


The I/O version is virtually the same as the standard version for use with an amp. The I/O simply has an extra connection for input.
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 8:10 AM Post #22 of 45
Quote:

Originally Posted by Budley007
The I/O version is virtually the same as the standard version for use with an amp. The I/O simply has an extra connection for input.


Ah, I just checked, you are correct! I had thought the I/O to include a line-out... all it provides in a line-in on top of the headphone jack.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peugeot306
How high is the quality of its headphone amp?


It's supposed to be pretty good.
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 5:10 PM Post #23 of 45
@bLue_oNioN
I think you might have a problem with the cardbus controller on your specific box. 20% CPU fluctutatins on an Athlon sounds fishy. Are you using ASIO for playback?




I re-checked and connected the Indigo to my home preamp and have have to say it is remarkably quiet. I don't know what digital hiss is but I could not discern any unusual noise level. The noise level is in line with what I get from my Rega Planet 2000 and just a bit higher than the built-in DACs in the preamp.

I assume noise at an audible level should also manifest itself in the cards measurements which are pretty flawless. As with any analog connection there might be an interaction between the amp and the analog out in the Indigo but I can not detect this in my setup.

The one nick I found is with the playback of the udial test track. On my processor this track plays with a silent background. On the Indigo there is an ever so slight siren background but I have to really cranck up (not recommended!!!) my system to hear it.

Cheers

Thomas
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 10:08 PM Post #25 of 45
I use the Indigo with an SR-71 amp and Ety 4Ss. As mentioned above, at first I heard some hiss, but this was with SR225 headphones. With Etys I don't hear the hiss.

The combination works and sounds great. My only complaint is that the battery on my laptop does drain very quickly with the Indigo. On a recent plane flight, I only got through two albums before the system died (a charge usually lasts four hours on my Inspiron 8600). I think that a true portable player like the Karma would be better for plane trips. But I love having 30 gigs of lossless APE music output via ASIO on my laptop.
 
Sep 18, 2004 at 11:28 PM Post #26 of 45
@bLue_oNioN
Sorry, Dothan is of course Intel. This does not change the essence of my comment though. I get identical CPU load whether I play with the built-in sound device or the Echo Indigo. If you get an unusual high CPU when playing back on the Indigo I would check with my manufactueres whether they have newer driver for the card bus controller.

The Indigo does not work at all in certain Tecra models due to a compatibility issue with the card bus controller.

I am using Monkey audio or WMA lossless encoded files and on my 1.6Ghz Pentium M it uses about 20% CPU to play back music when the CPU is running at 600Mhz. With the screen turned completely down this runs for a very very long time.

At 1.6Ghz the playback uses less than 10% of the CPU with ASIO or Wave output.

On a transatlantic flight with the CPU running at 1Ghz and the screen dimmed to almost the lowest brightness level I managed to watch two complete movies that I had ripped on my hard drive. This is with the ER-4S.

Cheers

Thomas
 
Sep 19, 2004 at 1:14 AM Post #27 of 45
Hey Thomas,

You're right, the Echo Indigo has problems with certain ENE cardbus controllers -- there was a filter driver that was released to smooth things over in certain situations. My laptop happens to use an ENE cardbus controller so I wonder if that has something to do with this?

I personally have not had too many problems with decreased battery life. I've noticed that it's a shorter, but still long enough for me to get at least a couple hours of movie time before it zonks out.

btw, my dad has a Thinkpad, very very refined, smooth-running machines, I might add
biggrin.gif
 
Sep 19, 2004 at 4:28 AM Post #28 of 45
do the OS X drivers work well with the Echo Indigo? i was originally planning on getting a BitHead for my PowerBook and a Xin SuperMini for my iPod, but i might get this product instead of the BitHead. is the indigo's amplification good?
 
Sep 19, 2004 at 4:43 AM Post #29 of 45
Quote:

Originally Posted by EdipisReks
do the OS X drivers work well with the Echo Indigo? i was originally planning on getting a BitHead for my PowerBook and a Xin SuperMini for my iPod, but i might get this product instead of the BitHead. is the indigo's amplification good?


I can't say too much about OSX with the Echo Indigo, but I HAVE heard satisfied reports from many Powerbook users. They also have a reasonably active service line, so if you have any problems, they can point you in the right direction.

As for quantity of amplification, most of my gear is rather easy to drive so my problem-free experience doesn't say much, but as to the quality, the components used are supposed to be very high in quality.
 
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