Category: Audio

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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LC75341 tone control using arduino

LC75341 is a digitally controlled analog tone control for audio applications. You can control parameters such as Bass, Treble, Volume and gain through its digital serial data transfer. The data is a 40 bits wide, 8 bits for the address and the 32 bits is the controls data. It is very unusual and you cannot use the microcontrollers built in UART, I2C, etc. I can’t find anywhere on the internet any examples of programs to control this particular IC so I made one for myself. I want to share the code for anyone who want to build this kind of project. The code is simple and I will only share the part of the code that sends data control to the chip. It is up to you to modify it according to your needs.

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TPA3110 class D amplifier

tpa3110 stereo

Class D amplifier has been very popular recently. They are smaller, lighter and very efficient which is very well suited for battery operation. They also require smaller heatsinks than their class A and AB counter parts. This enables you to fit it in a smaller chassis. It also gives more power because the output is normally configured like bridge tied. The only disadvantage of Class D amplifier is that it has higher THD(Total Harmonic Distortion) than its class A and AB counter parts. This is not a problem if you will not operate it on the maximum power.

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E-Gizmo FM transmitter

I was looking to have a wireless stage audio monitor and I was researching how can I be able to do that with less cost. Then suddenly I realize that most of the cellphones today have FM radio built-in so why just take advantage of it? The idea is simple, connect a FM transmitter to the audio mixer and use your phone’s FM radio to listen to the sound from the mixer. tadaaaa! you have an instant simple wireless monitor!

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Ibanez Sonic Distortion

Ibanez Sonic Distortion is one of the most famous distortion effects. It is also one of my favorite effects. The sound it produces is warm and thick sounding, great for rock and alternative music. Unlike other distortions out there, the tone control of this distortion is more of a bass rather than treble.

There are plenty of schematic diagrams  on the internet so if you have knowledge in electronics, you can easily build one. I build one myself way back when I was in college. I made my own version of the PCB design to make the 3PDT switch attached to the PCB because there are no PCB design out there that arranged like that.

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DIY Guitar distortion Effects

Distortion effects is the most commonly used effects for guitars. Every guitar player knows how to use them. Distortion are usually built-in on most guitar amplifiers today on the market. But some amplifiers has overdrive instead of distortion. Overdrive is just a soft distortion and it started way back on vacuum tube days. Overdrive is an effect you hear when cranking up the volume of a tube amplifier. Distortion is produced by hard clipping the signal by using signal diodes.

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DIY DI BOX

A DI box or Direct Injection box is a very useful piece of equipment used to connect keyboard, guitars and other audio signal source directly to the mixer. DI box function is to convert the unbalanced output of the guitar, keyboards and other musical instrument to balanced output. Connecting an unbalanced output to balanced input of the mixer often led to humming noise which is really unpleasant for ears especially when no one is playing the instrument.

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