Teh0therside
New Member
Right now I have a LM3916 with a basic half-wave peak detector (as seen on page 12 of the IC datasheet https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2012/01/lm3916.pdf) and some other circuitry. The output of the peak detector circuit is a .6~1V signal.
Unfortunately, some audio input doesn't seem to drive a large enough voltage difference between loud and quiet parts (i.e. some audio yields a range of only .7-.8V and therefore doesn't use the entire output display). Because the decibel difference between each output on the IC is fixed, I want to amplify the magnitude of the difference between the peak detector voltage and something like .6V.
I tried to do this by placing a diode after the peak detector and then amplifying the result relative to ground but this resulted in a high voltage (~4V) at the LM3916 input. I don't really understand why that happened and would be grateful to hear any ideas of how I can accomplish this improvement.
Thank you
Unfortunately, some audio input doesn't seem to drive a large enough voltage difference between loud and quiet parts (i.e. some audio yields a range of only .7-.8V and therefore doesn't use the entire output display). Because the decibel difference between each output on the IC is fixed, I want to amplify the magnitude of the difference between the peak detector voltage and something like .6V.
I tried to do this by placing a diode after the peak detector and then amplifying the result relative to ground but this resulted in a high voltage (~4V) at the LM3916 input. I don't really understand why that happened and would be grateful to hear any ideas of how I can accomplish this improvement.
Thank you