Building the best Music Organ (light) Controller for LED

[tim eastman]

Hi, I decided to build a better mouse trap. There are many of these sound activated LED controllers out there. It appears that they turn RGB on or off depending on the MHz range only. Some will increase brightness somewhat depending on volume but most appear to just react to beat. Some have more channels and adjustments. I am looking something that is more 'ethereal'. So my question is what was the best one anyone has seen (commercial or private). What characteristics do you think controller would be ideal to play classical music? Would PWM approach give you better results. Any feedback is welcome.

 

[alec_t]

Welcome to ETO!

they turn RGB on or off depending on the MHz range only.

No colour-organ operates at that frequency. Human hearing range is only ~20kHz (unless you're an audiophool ).

am looking something that is more 'ethereal'.

You'll have to explain that to us mere mortals .

 

[audioguru]

I am an audiophool. I can hear things from DC to green light!

Do you want a colored frequency display like I show here or do you want the LEDs to light up a room?
Music has frequencies from 20Hz that is very low and you can feel it to 20kHz that is very high. The bass beat in some music is the loudest so a simple linear voltmeter shows it well.
BUT our hearing's sensitivity to loudness is not linear, it is logarithmic. Then an LM3915 logarithmic 10 LEDs driver should be used with a peak detector circuit since our sight needs an LED to be lighted for at least 30ms to be at full brightness.
You might need only one circuit for low frequencies, a second circuit for mid frequencies and a third circuit for high frequencies.

Here is the photo of a real time audio analyser:

 

[gary350]

My room mate has a color organ in college 40 years ago. It had multi colors, red, blue, yellow is what I remember.

Blue was for Base, boom, boom, boom.

Red and Yellow were higher frequency. I think red was mid range and yellow was highest frequency.

All the colors flashed on/off with the sound of the music.

It was a little bit interesting but boring too.

I invented a better one. If you paint 2 pictures one RED and the other BLUE, both pictures painted right over the top of each other. The RED light makes the blue picture so it can be seen. Turn off red, turn on the blue light only the red picture can be see. As the sound changes so do the pictures.

A used litho film to take photos, forest, beach, river, trees, sky, then used slide project to make paintings from litho film in 3 colors on the color organ. Now red, blue, yellow lights make 3 different pictures go on/off with the lights.

The way it works, red light makes red color invisible so you see only the other colors. Same for blue and yellow.

People use to stand and look at it for a long time trying to figure out why the pictures kept changing with the lights.