Auto volume leveling accessory for amp. Help please!

[Electric Rain]

Does anyone have schematics or any way to help me in building an accessory that I could add on to an amp that will bring down the volume of say... explosions or gunfire or trains... whatever that's too loud? You see, I like to play Socom II: US Navy Seals at night when "other members of the house" might be trying to sleep. :twisted: (If any of you have a PlayStation 2, and have never tried that game, do so. You will fall in love with it. And no, I have nothing to to with Zipper Interactive or Sony. :lol: ) Hehheh... I don't know if anyone knows anything about this game, but the volume can vary a lot. So, I need something that will let me keep the volume at whatever level I set my amp at, and lower it if something too loud comes about. I would also like to add a pot to adjust the sensitivity. Can anyone help me? Thanks.

Rain

 

[williB]

hmmmm this is just an idea ...
what if you could sample the signal comming from the game with an A/D converter .
Store it in a buffer.
play it back through a D/A .
it seems possible that once you had the data you could do anything you wanted to with it.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Does anyone have schematics or any way to help me in building an accessory that I could add on to an amp that will bring down the volume of say... explosions or gunfire or trains... whatever that's too loud? You see, I like to play Socom II: US Navy Seals at night when "other members of the house" might be trying to sleep. :twisted: (If any of you have a PlayStation 2, and have never tried that game, do so. You will fall in love with it. And no, I have nothing to to with Zipper Interactive or Sony. :lol: ) Hehheh... I don't know if anyone knows anything about this game, but the volume can vary a lot. So, I need something that will let me keep the volume at whatever level I set my amp at, and lower it if something too loud comes about. I would also like to add a pot to adjust the sensitivity. Can anyone help me? Thanks.

Rain

Try having a look at http://www.discovercircuits.com/A/autogain.htm for a number of examples.

 

[chemelec]

Do a Search for "Analogue Compressors"

 

[audioguru]

You will have to make a compromise for the "attack" and "release" times of a compressor.
You should have as quick an attack time as possible, so that the volume is lowered quickly after the beginning of a loud sound. But it will never be fast enough so the first few milliseconds of loud sound will get through. This can be "clipped" by a hard limiter such as back-to-back diodes across the feedback resistor of an opamp. The compromise is to choose the hard clipped level, so that normal loud sound is not distorted too much.
The release time should be fairly quick, so that sounds following a loud and compressed sound also are not attenuated. The compromise is that a quick release allows the compressor to "modulate" loud and low-frequency sound, causing severe distortion.

 

[Electric Rain]

Hmmm..... maybe I'll just use headphones. :lol: