[fatmaneatschild]

I am currently using a900 on my laptop and they are really good. In fact they are so good and so much detail that they make my integrated sound card(ac97) really stand out. After some reading, it seems like the echo indigo is a good choice but I would like to understand a few things first.

1> I know that the a900 is known for not needing an amp so if I added the indigo, would that even be much of an upgrade?
2> Is the indigo considered a soundcard or an amp?
3> Does the indigo support eax 1 or 2 for games?

thank you for your time

 

[lindrone]

1> I know that the a900 is known for not needing an amp so if I added the indigo, would that even be much of an upgrade?

Indigo should be a pretty good upgrade in terms of sound source from your built-in sound card. The sound quality itself should be much better, even though the amping part of the Indigo might not be needed as much. Either way it's a worthy upgrade.

2> Is the indigo considered a soundcard or an amp?

It is "both". Indigo is a soundcard built with an integrated headphone amplifier.

3> Does the indigo support eax 1 or 2 for games?

Doesn't look like it, seems like Indigo is concentrated on music reproduction only... it has support for DirectSound, but doesn't seem to have support for even Directsound3D, I doubt it has any support for EAX.

 

[Abula]

If you are interested in games, Audigy2 NX should be a good option also.

 

[eMpAtHy]

i had the audigy 1 and was really muddy. i dont think u should be gaming with a laptop unless you dont have any other computer to use. If you want an external soundcard for both, i dont think the indigo or the audigy 2 would work. indigo seems like its only for music, but it would sound a lot better than the audigy 2 if it is doing what its supposed to be doing. Audigy 2 wouldnt reproduce music so well, but it would have eax support, but i hate eax. it sounds sooo fake, 3D wise its a little better, but i cant stand the fakeness of the sound in games.

 

[fatmaneatschild]

Actually the audigy 2 nx were the first ones I looked at since the audigy line seems to be great for gaming. Stranglly, reviews from sites say that they drop frame rates in games quite a bit due to the processor workload. They said they would recommend the audigy for anything EXCEPT games. Hmm......

4> Does anyone know how much better eax compared to non-eax are if I plaly fps games? Ive heard that for this type of game, anything thats not eax is laughable.

5> So the indigo doesnt improve gaming quality too much but what will it do for movie quality?

 

[skitlets]

i personally HATE eax. 3d positioning gets a little off for me, and explosions sound so incredibly rediculously processed and computerized. as emp said, very fake. i play counter-strike, and id much rather (and do) play with eax OFF. if u have a quick processor, u can do software eax or any other kind of effects.

 

[fatmaneatschild]

So does anyone know much dvds would be with the echo indigo?

 

[lindrone]

Audigy NX causes frame rate drops in games.. because it's an external unit that utilizes the USB bus to communicate sound data. USB bus itself is not a very streamlined communication I/O. It depends on your CPU processing time to transfer data... which in terms will end up taking away some processing time from your games. That's why it drops frame rates in games. However, as far as external soundcards are concerned, it is the only one with full game support anyway. Any other external soundcard will likely drop just as many frames, if not more with game applications.

DVD digital surround sound recreation through headphones are not dependent on your soundcard really. Surround soundcards are basically used to process sound to actual 5.1 speakers, in terms of downmixing that into a stereo channel for headphone reproduction, is actually more software dependent rather than hardware dependent (well, hardware do some work, but software does a better job, because it was specially written for that purpose).

For xample, Cyberlink's PowerDVD has a lot of new features in terms of downmixing digital surround into headphone surround sound effects. When using PowerDVD, it really doesn't matter what sort of 3d capability support your soundcard has, just a stereo soundcard will do.

 

[ch1nkster]

Bah! Do not get the Audigy NX external card because it SUCKS. I have the lower end version of that (the USb SoundBlaster MP3+) and it's super muddy + clicky. I suggest you stick with the Indigo for laptop use. If you don't want to get the Echo Indigo, I would suggest thatyou get a M-Audio Transit for an external soundcard, though there will still probably be click noises in your music every now and then due to the noise inside your computer.