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Smoothing color organ (sound to light) LED lamp flickering

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DJR

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I recently built a 5 channel color organ from a kit. It receives sound modulation from a microphone, spits it into five frequency bands and modulates 120 Volt output to 5 proportionally illuminated lamps. I am using dimmable LED lamps but the amplitude variation is undesirably rapid. Most often the sound input produces an esthetically unpleasantly rapid flickering or strobe like effect. Consequently I am looking for a simple way to smooth the output variations. Perhaps putting a capacitor or choke between the output and the lamps. The maximum output voltage is 120 volts and the total wattage for each channel is less than 100 watts. An adjustable amount of "smoothing" would be desirable. Does anyone have a suggestion as to how I might accomplish this?
 
Welcome to ETO DJR,

It would be a great help to post a schematic of the five-color organ.

As you are from the US component access will not be a problem. Which State are you at? By the way, if you put that next to 'Location' on your user page, it will display in the box at the left of your posts.

spec

(if you can't upload images yet because you have a new account, contact admin)
 
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It may depend on what type of music you are playing.
Anything with drums is going to flicker. The attack is right now and the decay is short, except for bass drums & symbols.

Greensleeves

The Ventures - Wipe Out
 
A color organ that expects incandescent lamps can rely on the filament's thermal lag to soften the effects.
That said: schematic, please
 
DJR if you have 5 gyrators with precision envelope detectors, this is where you want to add attack delay and decay sustain RC filters.

I call it pseudo peak and soft hold. Other approaches use log diode gain approach after peak detect.

Got any logic diagrams?
 
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I played both videos and watched my Sound Level Indicator project (a VU meter using an LM3915 lighting 10 pairs of LEDs at 3dB per pair and a peak detector). The LEDs showed everything that was being played in the videos. No flickering and no strobe effects.
But my project does not have bands of frequencies like a color organ, it is wideband.
 
He problem forgot to modulate current instead of voltage
 
Old cars used incandescent tail lights and modern cars use LEDs. The old incandescent lights slowly turned on and off but the modern LEDs flicker (with PWM) and strobe like crazy.
So I agree with Wade Hassler in his reply #4 that the color organ kit was designed to use incandescent light bulbs, not LEDs.
 
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