™ INDIGO ™ INDIGO io ™ INDIGO dj Owner’s manual Version 2.0.
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 while listening through headphones. 1. Read Instructions - Be sure to read all of the safety and operating instructions before operating this product. 2. Retain Instructions - The safety instructions and owner's manual should be retained for future reference. 3.
Limited Warranty Echo Digital Audio Corporation warrants this product, when purchased at an Authorized Echo Dealer in the United States of America or directly from Echo, to be free of defects in materials and manufacturing workmanship for a period of one year from the date of original purchase. During the warranty period Echo shall, at its option, either repair or replace any product that proves to be defective upon inspection by Echo. Final determination of warranty coverage lies solely with Echo.
Table of contents Limited Warranty ....................................................................................................3 Table of contents ......................................................................................................4 Introduction ..............................................................................................................6 Box contents..............................................................................................................
Always on top ..................................................................................................19 About................................................................................................................20 Hot Keys ...............................................................................................................21 Listening to Indigo .................................................................................................22 Registration......................
Introduction Thank you for choosing Echo Digital Audio. We think you’ll find your Echo Indigo product to be an extremely flexible, high-performance audio tool for your Laptop. Box contents When you opened the box, you should have found the following: • An Indigo, Indigo io, or Indigo dj CardBus adapter • A CD-ROM containing: • Windows Me/2000/XP driver • Mac OS X driver • .
Installation Complete installation consists of installing the Windows driver into your system, installing the CardBus card and, if necessary, installing professional audio software. Driver installation Before you can use your Indigo product in your laptop computer, you will need to install the driver. To install the driver, just insert the Echo Indigo CD-ROM into your laptop. The Main Install Window should automatically appear; if it does not, go to My Computer and double-click on your CD-Rom drive.
Hardware installation Once the driver is installed, insert your Indigo product into your laptop. Simply insert the card into any available CardBus slot. It’s OK to insert the card while your computer is turned on. Windows should detect that you have installed new hardware. Follow the onscreen directions; your Indigo product should be automatically recognized. For Windows XP, you should select the option “Install the software automatically.
Windows default audio playback device Your Indigo product will automatically be set up as the default Windows audio playback device. To confirm or change this, you need to access the “Sounds and Audio Devices” control panel. The following examples are for the original Echo Indigo product, but apply to Indigo io and Indigo dj as well. Simply select “Start/Control Panel” and open the “Sounds and Audio Devices” control panel. Then, select the “Audio” tab.
Professional audio software To audio software, the Indigo hardware 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 audio recording/editing software, with the devices assignable on a per-track basis. See your software owner’s manual for details on how to make these device assignments.
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 to play back from multiple applications simultaneously. A good example would be playing back digital audio while at the same time using a software synthesizer for MIDI.
Console3 A “virtual control surface” application called Console3 is included with the Indigo driver. The Console allows you to control the audio playback functions of your Echo Indigo product, and it brings these controls to a single easy-to-use location. If you’re curious, the name “Console3” means that this is Echo’s thirdgeneration design for a software console. Running the Console Once you have run the installer, you will find the console under your Start menu under the group “Echo Digital Audio.
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 and sent to that output bus. With Indigo io you will also be able to control input monitoring.
Bus select (Indigo dj only) The bus select panel is the area in the middle right of the Console. Each bus has its own button marked with an A (for analog) and a channel number pair. The button in the “down” position is the currently active bus. Clicking on an output bus button simply selects the settings that are displayed. In this case Analog out 3/4 (A 3-4) is the active bus. This means all parameters such as volume, pan, and mute apply to the audio coming out Analog outputs 3 and 4 of Indigo dj.
Analog Inputs (Indigo io only) The controls for the analog inputs are on the left side of the Console and have the label “Analog in” at the bottom. There is one strip, or input monitor, corresponding to each of Indigo io’s two physical analog inputs.
At the top is the peak meter for this channel, labeled in decibels. Under the peak meter is the monitor pan slider; this pans 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 slider to the center position. Note that this does not affect your recording. Below the pan slider is the monitor mute. This controls whether or not you want this input channel to be mixed directly out to the currently selected output bus.
Console Sessions Console settings can be saved as a console session to be reloaded later. All volume levels, pan settings, mutes and gang settings are saved. To save a console session, click the “Save” button in the console. To load a previously saved session, click the “Load” button in the console. The current session can be “fast saved” by pressing the F key; this will overwrite the most recently opened session file with the current settings.
Console Settings Clicking the Settings button at the top of the Console shows a dialog box for altering console settings. The Settings dialog gives you four different tabs to choose from: “Driver,” “Console,” “GSIF,” and “About.” Driver tab Here you can do two things: lock the sample rate and tell the driver whether or not to synchronize wave devices.
Synchronize wave devices This is mainly for developers who are using tools like Visual Basic or Delphi and want the inputs and outputs to be totally independent. Unless you have a good reason to turn it off, you should leave this switch on. Also, if you are running multiple applications on one card and you can’t get it to work, try un-checking this box. Console tab The console pane lets you control settings that effect console sessions and the view of the console.
GSIF This window allows you to set the latency of GigaStudio in terms of samples. Select the value here that provides the best tradeoff between performance and reliability. These settings have no effect on any applications other than GigaStudio. About This displays the console version and driver version numbers. We feel that this is the single most exciting feature of the console.
Hot Keys There are a number of hot keys that can be used to control the console when it is the active window.
Listening to Indigo Your Indigo product was designed for use with high-end headphones. With the original Indigo you can hook up one set of headphones for private listening, or two sets simultaneously; you and a companion can enjoy watching a DVD movie together. If you are only using one set of headphones, just plug the headphones into either headphone jack on Indigo. If you are using two sets of headphones, you will obviously need to use both. The volume knob sets the volume for both sets of headphones.
Registration Registering your Indigo product 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 web site - just go to: http://www.echoaudio.com/register.html. Contacting Echo Customer Service If you experience any trouble with your Echo hardware please go to the support area of our website at www.echoaudio.
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 product with different applications at the same time. This way, you can use several different audio applications with just one Echo card. Otherwise, you would have to use a different audio device for each audio application. For example, suppose you own both Cubase (multitrack audio) and Reality (software synthesizer).
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 whole system to 22, ruining your take. If you really want system sounds, use your laptop’s internal sound card and play them through that.
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-todigital converter, or ADC, which converts the signal from an analog audio source (such as a guitar or a microphone) connected to its input into numbers.
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 means that the incoming signal can be represented by any of over 16 million possible values. The output DACs are also 24-bit; again, over 16 million values are possible.
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 24-bit word size, the system has to accommodate 4,608,000 bits per second. In the past, storing this vast amount of data was problematic.
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 standardized input and output impedances of 600 ohms, so a 0dBm signal was produced with a voltage of .775 volts.
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. In answering the second question, consider the fact that music is often compressed or amplified after it is recorded, and that some headroom is necessary when recording to avoid clipping.
