Category: Audio

DIY Loud Bluetooth Speaker for your car

Building a bluetooth speaker nowadays won’t require so much technical knowledge. You just need to know how and where to connect wires. You can now buy a bluetooth receiver with a built in amplifier online and make your own audio system for your car for cheaper price.

WHY DIY(Do it Yourself)?

Some cheap car amplifiers on the market is not honest on their advertised power, these are very common to cheap and not so known brands. By doing it yourself, aside from getting cheaper, you can also be sure that your amplifier has the right power you need.

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Simple DI box

Last time I have featured an active Di box circuit. Here is a more simple circuit that only uses 1 JFET instead of an OPAMP.

 

 

dibox

This circuit is so simple that you can actually build it without PCB. You can also just use a universal board on this one. I actually copied this circuit from an acoustic guitar. haha! sure it works and I also have simulated it.

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3W x 2 class D amplifier

In case you wan to build an small amplifier for your small speaker, here’s a 3W per channel amplifier for you. Take note that this can only operate up to 5.5V. You can’t use USB to power this circuit as USB can only provide up to 2.5W power. If you will use 8 ohms speaker, it can only provide up to 1.4W of power.

Minimum value of Ri is 18k. Minimum speaker impedance is 4 ohms.

Bass Booster Circuit design

If you love listening to a music with super loud bass, then here’s a circuit that can help you boost the bass. There are many ways to boost the bass and I will be sharing some of the most simple ways. And of course the simulation result, if it works on the simulation then it will also work on the actual.

 

The circuit
The circuit is very simple and only needs few components.

bass boost

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Tone Control Circuits for guitar effects

There are many tone control designs out there. Let’s take a look at those and analyze each circuit. If you are planning on designing a tone control circuit for your guitar effects, it is not actually that not hard to do. You only need to understand the basics. Please note that these are only passive type tone control meaning you will loose some signal strength when you use this circuit. To compensate for the attenuation caused by this circuit, you will need to add an amplifier circuit with a gain of at least 2.

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Audio Mixing Tips

I have been mixing church sound system for quite a while now and I have encountered so many problems and solved most of them. On this article I will share tips to make your sound system sound best.

Most church sound system most challenge is the very tight budget. Very tight budget leads to very cheap sound system and leads to poor quality. Taking into account that most church sound techs are not knowledgeable enough for the job which leads to less optimal sound quality the system can deliver.

On this tips, I will assume that you already know how to operate a mixer and the whole sound system and you already have a sound system in place. I will create a separate post on Mixer 101 and choosing a right sound equipment.

Starting a Mix

sound

So what to do after you have set up and turned on your system? Set the volume of the amplifier to 50% or less. This is to have maximum signal to noise ratio on the line. Setting the volume of the amplifier close to 100% will led to lower signal level and that level may close to the noise level. Take note also that when you set the volume of the amplifier to very low, the tendency is for you to crank up the volume of the mixer and may lead to signal distortions. Set the main volume of the mixer to unity gain(0dB) or just below the maximum. Adjust this when necessary on sound check.

Avoiding Feeback

Bad-Hand-Placement

One way to avoid feedback is to properly hold the mic(above picture). Holding it on the diaphragm(head) will introduce feedback at some conditions. It is like increasing the sensitivity of the mic so it introduces feedback. More information on this Article link here.

 

–More to come…

3W x 2 Class D amplifier

Here’s a simple amplifier that I used for my speaker project. The IC operates at 5V. Note that although it runs on 5V, it can’t be powered via USB because USB can only deliver 2.5W. Ri minimum value is 18k which will give you 24dB voltage gain. The voltage gain is computed by equation : 20 log(2*(142k/Ri))

3wx2amp

Active Crossover Design

Crossover circuit is used to split audio frequencies into 2 or 3 part. There are 2 kinds of crossovers, active and passive. Passive crossovers is use to connect woofer, midrange and tweeter speakers to one source. It basically splits the frequency into 3, bass frequencies to woofer, mid frequencies to midrange speaker and high frequencies to tweeter. Active crossovers is used to split signal going to the amplifier. The benefit of using active crossover is that you have more controls, you can tweak levels and frequencies. The main disadvantage is the cost, aside from the crossover itself is expensive, it will also require multiple amplifier.
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Arduino based Guitar Effects

There are lots of arduino projects that you can find online. But this one caught my eye and I am excited to make my own copy. Since I also love guitars and programming, this is perfect for my next project. It uses Arduino Due as the main processor. This project is published by www.electrosmash.com/ and you can buy the kit for £39.95(not including the arduino due).

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