Great little piece of software for your jukes!

[Nacimroc]

I built my jukebox using a car amp but had no way to equalise the sound (wanted to turn the bass down and treble up). I googled for days until I found a bit of software called "Breakaway Audio Enhancer".  

Its basically a graphic equaliser that changes ALL the sound from your PC to whatever you set it to. It was the only software I could find to do it and its ideal for jukeboxes. It can run on startup in the background and saves messing with amps etc. It isn't free (on their site   )

Just thought it might come in handy for some of you!

(BTW I'm not affilated with them in any way and never heard of them before hence the dig about how its expensive for such simple software)

[drventure]

I'm gonna have to try this on my juke. I just installed the demo on my PC to play with it, it definitely seems to make a difference, but my PC system sounded pretty good to begin with.

A juke on the other hand, speakers close together, not necessarily ideal placement or containment. Could be quite nice...

One thing I noticed, after installing, the volume controls of each app no longer works, the only way to adjust volume is via the breakaway control panel. Did you have that same result?

[Nacimroc]

I did have 1 buggy little moment, but didn't take much notice as I was just testing it at the time. That would be an issue if you were to use jukebox software to control the volume. I suppose I could always use the volume knob I wired and set juke software sound to max.

[drventure]

Hmm, Yeah, I could wire things that way, but as it is, i've got the three knobs wired up as mouse wheel standins.

Don't think I want to change that now, and from what I'm seeing on the breakaway site, they don't really offer much in the way of adjusting the volume save through their own app.... Grrrr.

I'll have to keep playing with it.

[drventure]

Just came across this post on the Breakaway forums

http://www.claessonedwards.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=916&hilit=volume+control

Looks like it's trvially easy to control volume through breakaway, you just have to do a little coding.

I'd bet AHK would do this pretty straightforward.

[Nacimroc]

Hmmm! Coding is the word that I usually go "ah well was a good idea but time to move on". I never knew about the autohotkey thingy! Def going to look into it! 

[drventure]

One more link

This is the page in AHKs docs that describe the DllCall function, which is what you'd have to use. It looks a little hackish, but it should work for interacting with that BreakAway volume api

http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/DllCall.htm

If breakaway improves my juke's sound, I'll definitely be looking into this, because I want the volume controlled via a "mouse wheel knob"

[Nacimroc]

Right, I have another idea.  How about a foot pedal from a guitar with an equaliser on it. Just connect it in line with your audio jack and its done. No messing with coding etc. Something like this one below. I'm sure it would be very easy to remove the bulky pedal switch and just leave the jacks and equaliser.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Boss-GE-7-Equalizer-Guitar-Effect-Pedal-/260923219353?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item3cc03c5d99

http://www.thomann.de/ie/harley_benton_beq1.htm

[drventure]

Yeah, that could work even simpler.

I've been talking with the guys at Breakaway to see if theres any additional apis with them (for instance being able to get notified in some way of the signal processing happening sure would be cool for controlling LED's etc).

And they do a little more than just Equalizing, as far as I can tell from the website...

I'll be able to make a better judgement once I get my juke actually working!

[eds1275]

Right, I have another idea.  How about a foot pedal from a guitar with an equaliser on it. Just connect it in line with your audio jack and its done. No messing with coding etc. Something like this one below. I'm sure it would be very easy to remove the bulky pedal switch and just leave the jacks and equaliser.

While that is possible, I haven't ever in my time as a guitarist seen one for guitar that is stereo. Also, for general equalization, a graphic eq is not really the best. A graphic EQ is more like a tool for correction, whereas a parametric eq is more for shaping your sound. Graphic eqs have very narrow frequency ranges for notching out what you don't want [feedback, 60 cycle hum, etc.].

On all of my computers just opening up the control panel gives me access to a ten band eq - most of my computers are running realtek or realtek hd software. I haven't started building a juke yet, but doesn't juke sfotware come with eq? It's a huge deal for all audio systems!

A quick search found a few. Breakaway Audio Enhancer was fairly limited but easy to use and was useful in thickening up the sound with some basic EQ and limiting tricks.
http://download.cnet.com/Breakaway-Audio-Enhancer/3000-2169_4-10824539.html

I think your best bet is to get an outboard eq, or checking your soundcard's website to see if there is a software suite like my realtek one.

[Nacimroc]

While that is possible, I haven't ever in my time as a guitarist seen one for guitar that is stereo. Also, for general equalization, a graphic eq is not really the best. A graphic EQ is more like a tool for correction, whereas a parametric eq is more for shaping your sound. Graphic eqs have very narrow frequency ranges for notching out what you don't want [feedback, 60 cycle hum, etc.].

On all of my computers just opening up the control panel gives me access to a ten band eq - most of my computers are running realtek or realtek hd software. I haven't started building a juke yet, but doesn't juke sfotware come with eq? It's a huge deal for all audio systems!

A quick search found a few. Breakaway Audio Enhancer was fairly limited but easy to use and was useful in thickening up the sound with some basic EQ and limiting tricks.
http://download.cnet.com/Breakaway-Audio-Enhancer/3000-2169_4-10824539.html

I think your best bet is to get an outboard eq, or checking your soundcard's website to see if there is a software suite like my realtek one.

I am yet to find juke software with an equaliser. I didn't know that about guitar equalisers. I could always wire mine as mono as each speaker is on top but would prefer stereo.

The problem I found was graphic equalising software controled some of the output. That breakaway software was the only thing I could find to control absolutely everything as I only have on board sound and no proper software for my sound.  I'm surprised this issue never came up in past builds before. I need something small to fit in the juke. There is very little room left after all the bits are installed so the guitar pedal idea was perfect. Hmmm, shame.

[drventure]

JRiver Media center contains an equalizer, but I'm not sure it's results are as nice as Breakaway's.

Still, the proof is in the pudding, so we'll see how they fair once my juke is all together.

[Dermbrian]

SKJukebox contains an equalizer, too.

Brian

[CREDO]

I discovered Breakaway about a year ago when struggling to normalize my HTPC with tv on shuffle.

Its pretty much the only peice of software out there that properly compresses like a hardware compressor. I swear by it.
It rocks HTPC's, mame, jukes and anything that needs to have a constant volume.

I still get a kick out of it when the tv changes to another episode of something that was encoded too loud and if your paying attention you can hear Breakaway quickly turn it down.

[drventure]

I installed it about a week ago, but I've had lots of problems with it just stopping (ie no sound at all even though it's loaded and the volume is set).

My guess is, it's because I've been playing with it on my workstation, which, since I'm a programmer, I pretty much club to death on a daily basis running virtual machines, VPNs, test code, installs/uninstalls etc.

So, I'm going to have to wait till I get my juke running to properly evaluate it.

I will say this though. When it worked, it did seem to make the sound much better.

Hmm, Put it my Mame cab? Interesting. The volume does fluctuate quite a bit from game to game....

I need to try that!