Echo Audio Indigo DJx Owner's Manual

Summary of Indigo DJx

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    Indigo ™ iox indigo ™ djx.

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    Owner’s manual version 1.0 for windows xp and vista 2.

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    Important safety instructions warning: listening to audio at high volumes over headphones can cause hearing damage. Please be careful to limit the volume level of your indigo expresscard while listening through headphones. 1. Read instructions — be sure to read all of the safety and operating instru...

  • Page 4: Limited Warranty

    Registering your product online at http://www.Echoaudio.Com/support/register.Php allows us to register key information so that we may handle problems faster and inform you of advance information on upgrades and other news. Thank you in advance for registering. We hope you enjoy your echo product. Li...

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    ©2008 by echo digital audio corporation 6450 via real carpinteria, ca 93013 echo ® is a registered trademark of echo digital audio corporation. Echo indigo tm is a trademark of echo digital audio corporation. Windows ® , windows xp ® and windows vista ® are registered trademarks of microsoft, inc. S...

  • Page 6: Table of Contents

    Table of contents limited warranty ....................................................................................................4 table of contents .....................................................................................................6 introduction ................................

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    Asio and windows vista .....................................................................................24 synchronize wave devices ..................................................................................25 gsif .............................................................................

  • Page 8: Introduction

    Introduction thank you for choosing echo digital audio. We think you’ll find your echo indigo expresscard to be an extremely flexible, high-performance audio tool for your notebook. Box contents when you opened the box, you should have found the following: • an indigo iox or indigo djx expresscard •...

  • Page 9: Installation

    Installation complete installation consists of installing the windows driver onto your system, installing the expresscard and, if necessary, installing professional audio software. Driver installation for windows xp and vista before you can use your indigo expresscard in your notebook computer, you ...

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    Driver versions and windows support driver 7.5 and higher supports the following versions of windows: • windows xp • windows xp professional x64 edition • windows server 2003 • windows server 2003 x64 edition • windows vista • windows vista 64-bit edition driver 8.3 (for wavert) and higher supports ...

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    In windows vista, the hardware is recognized and installed silently. Once the hardware is installed, a small “safely remove hardware” icon will appear in the system “tray” (usually on the lower right-hand side of the screen). This icon looks slightly different in windows xp. In addition, the blue po...

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    Windows default audio playback device your indigo expresscard will automatically be set up as the default audio playback device in windows xp. To confirm or change this, you need to access the “sounds and audio devices” control panel. The following examples are for the echo indigo iox, but apply to ...

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    In windows vista, this dialogue box has changed. It is now simply labeled “sound” and can be accessed from the control panel. The default sound device has a green check mark next to it. To change this, right-click on the desired default output and choose “set as default device.” virtual outputs 1-2 ...

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    Professional audio software to audio software, the indigo expresscard appears as a group of stereo wave devices. You can view the list of these devices either from within your audio software or from the windows control panel. You’ll find these same input and output options available when using your ...

  • Page 15: Virtual Outputs

    Virtual outputs most audio cards with a pair of analog outputs will appear to software as having just that, a single pair of outputs. When one application appropriates the card for its use, all other software is “locked-out” from using the card at the same time. Quite often, musicians find it useful...

  • Page 16: Console4

    Console4 a “virtual control surface” application called console4 is included with the indigo expresscard driver. The console allows you to control the audio playback functions of your echo indigo expresscard, and it brings these controls to a single easy-to-use location. If you’re curious, the name ...

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    Console window the basic metaphor for the console interface is a digital mixing board, and it works in terms of output busses . An output bus is a stereo pair of outputs on your hardware. For example, analog outputs 1 and 2 are an output bus. The console window allows you to control what is mixed an...

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    Bus select (indigo djx only) to select an output bus, click on either the “outputs 1-2” tab or the “outputs 3-4” tab at the top of the console. (see figure above.) clicking on an output bus tab simply selects the settings that are displayed. In the figure above “outputs 3-4” is the active bus. This ...

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    Analog inputs (indigo iox only) and virtual outputs the controls for the analog inputs are on the left side of the console and are labeled “analog: in a1 – in a2”. There is one strip, or input monitor , corresponding to each of indigo iox’s two physical analog inputs. The controls for the virtual ou...

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    At the top of the analog inputs are two pan knobs that pan the input channel between the two channels of the output bus. Holding down the ctrl key and clicking on a pan slider will set the knob to the center position. Note that this does not affect your recording. Below the pan knob is the monitor m...

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    Console sessions the indigo expresscard console supports saving and loading the state of the indigo expresscard to a file, called a “session”. Sessions are stored in your documents folder in a sub-folder named after the device. For example, indigo iox sessions are stored in a folder named “indigo io...

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    Console settings tab clicking the settings tab at the top of the console gives you a dialog box for changing console settings. On the “settings” tab, you will see four control groups: “sample rate,” core audio sample rate,” “sync wave devices” and “gsif buffer size.” 22.

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    Locking the sample rate in windows xp locking the sample rate can be very important, since windows will frequently try to set the hardware to the highest supported sample rate. Then, windows sample rate converts between that rate and the rate at which you are playing or recording. For instance, you ...

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    Core audio core audio is the name for windows vista’s new audio system. You can set the sample rate and format used by core audio in vista’s sound control panel. If you open the sound control panel, you should see one or more playback and recording devices for your echo hardware. For echo hardware, ...

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    The asio driver will automatically use the new scheduler. Should you wish to not use the new scheduler, you can disable it by opening the asio control panel for the driver. There you will see two new settings: • use vista multimedia priority boost: if this box is checked, the asio driver will use th...

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    Hot keys there are a number of hot keys that can be used to control the console when it is the active window: ctrl-s saves or quick-saves the current session ctrl-o loads a session ctrl-click a fader to set to 0 db ctrl-click a pan slider to set to center ctrl-click on a mute button to select all or...

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    Listening to your indigo expresscard your indigo expresscard was designed for use with high-end headphones. The indigo djx has two output jacks and provides four independent channels for playback. The volume knob sets the volume for the jack labeled “phones (1-2)”. It is located farthest from the vo...

  • Page 28: Registration

    Registration registering your indigo expresscard with echo allows us to register key information so that we may handle problems faster and inform you of advance information on upgrades and other news. Thanks in advance for registering. We hope you enjoy your echo product. You can register via our we...

  • Page 29: Q: So What'S The Catch?

    Appendix a: multi-client audio faq q: what is “multi-client audio”? Multi-client audio is a feature that lets you use different virtual outputs on your indigo expresscard with different applications at the same time. This way you can use several different audio applications with just one echo card. ...

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    You should also turn off your system sounds. Most system sounds tend to be at 11 khz or 22 khz. Imagine that you're recording the best guitar solo of your life and someone clicks on something on the screen. The 22 khz system sound will play out of an unused output and drop the sample rate of the who...

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    Appendix b: an introduction to digital recording converting sound into numbers in a digital recording system, sound is represented as a series of numbers, with each number representing the voltage, or amplitude, of a sound wave at a particular moment in time. The numbers are generated by an analog-t...

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    Combinations of zeroes and ones, so 65,535 different voltages can be digitally represented. (see figure a above). Figure b. The more bits there are available, the more accurate the representation of the signal and the greater the dynamic range. Your echo card’s analog inputs use 24-bit adcs, which m...

  • Page 33: Decibels

    Happens). In addition to aliasing, sampling too slowly will result in reduced high frequency reproduction. Your echo card allows you to sample sound at up to 96,000 times per second. Once the waveform has been transformed into digital bits, it must be stored. When sampling in stereo at 96khz using a...

  • Page 34: Dynamic Range

    Converting dbv levels into dbu levels is as simple as subtracting 2db (2.21 to be exact). Signals are also occasionally represented with units of dbm. This is an older unit that measures power instead of voltage levels with 0dbm representing 1 milliwatt. Earlier tube-based audio equipment used stand...

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    By having electrons moving around due to heat. Even if the converters could be perfectly designed to read these levels, the low noise requirements of the surrounding circuitry such as power supplies and amplifiers would be so stringent that they would either be impossible or too expensive to build. ...