LEDBlinky Audio Animations - looking for beta testers!

[arzoo]

Anyone interested in beta testing LEDBlinky's new Audio Animation features?

I'd been thinking about adding some sort of audio/music feature for a while and it turns out frequency/beat detection is not a trivial endeavor. But after a few months of late night coding, LEDBlinky v3.8 is ready for test!

Three basic modes are available:

1) Pulse Animation - Using a selected frequency, any LWAX animation can be advanced through the frames based on a trigger amplitude or increasing amplitude.
2) Color/Intensity Spectrum - In this mode the brightness of each LED increases based on the frequency amplitude. Each LED can be assigned to a different frequency. For RGB LEDs, a common color range can be defined - color changes as amplitude increases.
3) Blink LEDs - LEDs are toggled on or off based on an amplitude trigger threshold. Each LED can be assigned to a different frequency and trigger threshold. For RGB LEDs, the color is set by the first frame of a specified LWAX animation - this allows you to define custom color layouts.

There are a bunch of other tweak options (Decay value, Sample Rate, Dead Zone, etc.) so you can customize the effects. As it turned out, the audio configuration UI (with spectrum analyzer) required almost as much effort as the actual code to blink the LEDs!

I've put together a quick using my LED test board.

At this time I'm looking for beta testers who are currently using LEDBlinky (v3.7.3 or 3.7.4) and can play music in the background while running their FE. Let me know and I'll email you the update.

Thanks,
arzoo

[headkaze]

Wow that's totally awesome Arzoo!! I have been researching this type of thing for a while myself and it can be quite involved doing beat detection - infact the tutorial on gamedev.net is not only confusing but aparently has some serious errors in it, which doesn't help! I like the idea of assigning frequencies to LED's that works really well. The audio animation feature I have in my own plugin is more atune to what LuminAudio does but this blows that out of the water! I can imagine that creating an interface for this would be hard work as well!

[Bender]

Damn that is cool! Great work yet again!

This makes me want to put a jukebox in my cab!

I'll test it out if you want, looks like fun!

[Popcorrin]

Arzoo, that is pretty amazing.  Great work!

[EnderWiggen22]

I'd be down, but I can't seem to get my sh*t together. When I add plugins to mala it crashes/freezes...

Basically, I've created a few lwax animations and I only want them to run once the screensaver starts (or a timed period of inoperation). Then I either want all the lights on during both fe and mame use or all off.

Sorry to post this here, but I figured this would get the best responses. I know you, and those who view this, are likely to have faced a similar issue before.

I guess I am asking for a piece of software that will run a lwax file after a period of inoperation. Anybody seen this before? Controlling the lights always on/always off behavior would be a plus.

Thanks guys

[arzoo]

I'd be down, but I can't seem to get my sh*t together. When I add plugins to mala it crashes/freezes...

Basically, I've created a few lwax animations and I only want them to run once the screensaver starts (or a timed period of inoperation). Then I either want all the lights on during both fe and mame use or all off.

Sorry to post this here, but I figured this would get the best responses. I know you, and those who view this, are likely to have faced a similar issue before.

I guess I am asking for a piece of software that will run a lwax file after a period of inoperation. Anybody seen this before? Controlling the lights always on/always off behavior would be a plus.

Thanks guys

I've posted a response here so that this thread can stay on topic.

[ivwshane]

How hard is it to setup? Do I need to be proficient with the animation editor?

[arzoo]

How hard is it to setup? Do I need to be proficient with the animation editor?

There's really no setup - just messing with the audio modes and adjustments. You can use the existing animations so the editor is not required.

[arzoo]

Anyone want to try this out... anyone... Bueller?

[ivwshane]

I'll give it a shot. Do you still have my email?

[Kman-Sweden]

Damn, that looked realy cool. So it will just be a plugin for LEDBlinky? That's crazy. 
I wonder if it would work with my Wincab jukebox in Maximusarcade? Will be cool to try out.

[arzoo]

Damn, that looked realy cool. So it will just be a plugin for LEDBlinky? That's crazy. 
I wonder if it would work with my Wincab jukebox in Maximusarcade? Will be cool to try out.

Thanks.
Actually, it's not a plugin - just an additional feature added to the LEDBlinky software. It should work with Wincab jukebox and MA.

[Popcorrin]

I'm getting my machine put back together.  I might be able to find some time to try it out.  I'll pm you my email.

[Kman-Sweden]

So do you want the beta comments here on this thread?

[arzoo]

Just send them to my email - thanks.

[Bender]

so sorry Arzoo,

haven't had a chance to play with this yet
It might be a little while before I have some spare time

[arzoo]

so sorry Arzoo,

haven't had a chance to play with this yet
It might be a little while before I have some spare time

No problem - a few others are testing - so far no major issues 

[ivwshane]

so sorry Arzoo,

haven't had a chance to play with this yet
It might be a little while before I have some spare time

No problem - a few others are testing - so far no major issues 

Did you get my last email?

[RandyT]

Very nice work!  This looks like a fun toy for anyone with lights on their panel, and I'm sure a great additional capability to an already excellent application.  Please send me a copy to play with when you get a chance

I have been researching this type of thing for a while myself and it can be quite involved doing beat detection - infact the tutorial on gamedev.net is not only confusing but aparently has some serious errors in it, which doesn't help! I like the idea of assigning frequencies to LED's that works really well. The audio animation feature I have in my own plugin is more atune to what LuminAudio does but this blows that out of the water!

Don't sell those beat detection methodologies short for no other reason than that they are complex.  I just saw this gamedev tutorial for the first time (thanks for the lead), and I will tell you that much of what is written as principle in that document I discovered to be true myself when writing the LuminAudio beat detection routines.  Those formulae are gobbledygook to me, so you don't really need to be concerned by them.  Just read and understand what the author is stating in the text and come up with your own solutions to the problems being presented.  Activating lights based on frequencies is a great option, and very effective with certain types of music.  However, your brain can pick up very specific patterns in audio that don't present themselves visually in spectrum analysis.  The trick is to make the lights "dance" in a way that your brain thinks they reasonably should, with a broad spectrum of music and audio types.

Arzoo is 100% correct when he stated that this type of code is no trivial piece of work.  It's really interesting to see someone else finally take a serious stab at doing this.

RandyT

[HaRuMaN]

I've been playing with it... and its dead shexy...

I am running into some weird issues, though.  I think I may un-install the plugin, and do a fresh install, and see if that helps...

[headkaze]

RandyT: As I said my own plugin for GameEx has had a "dance to music" function for a long time now, so you could say I was already "someone else" taking a serious stab at it. I wasn't 100% happy with the results and I noticed LuminAudio suffered from the same problems I did. It works great for some types of music like techno (like the one you show in your video) but other music (that is highly compressed for example) doesn't come up so well. I think a combination of beat detection and spectrum display would be a nice compromise. It's actually alot easier to assign an LED to part of a spectrum than it is to write a proper beat detection algorithm. But when I get some time I will be revisiting all this beat detection stuff as it's really fun stuff to play with.

[RandyT]

RandyT: As I said my own plugin for GameEx has had a "dance to music" function for a long time now, so you could say I was already "someone else" taking a serious stab at it. I wasn't 100% happy with the results and I noticed LuminAudio suffered from the same problems I did. It works great for some types of music like techno (like the one you show in your video) but other music (that is highly compressed for example) doesn't come up so well. I think a combination of beat detection and spectrum display would be a nice compromise. It's actually alot easier to assign an LED to part of a spectrum than it is to write a proper beat detection algorithm. But when I get some time I will be revisiting all this beat detection stuff as it's really fun stuff to play with.

Highly compressed music is always going to be a problem (I hope arzoo doesn't get upset at this discussion in his thread).  As the word "compressed" would imply, the difference between highs and lows are made artificially smaller and blended with adjacent frequencies, and therefore are much more difficult to discern distinct "beats".  Trying to extrapolate this type of info from highly compressed audio will likely be an exercise in futility.

I seem to recall reading that you were having issue with varying volume levels in songs.  Something I'm wondering is whether you included an AGC of some nature. This is extremely important, and the mere presence of one won't guarantee an improvement.  The actual method in which an AGC is implemented will have as much effect on the end result as the beat detection routines.

And finally, poorly recorded audio should just not be considered.  Music recorded at levels which are too low for the AGC to properly act upon, will yield poor results unless levels are tweaked manually.  This type of issue could probably be overcome with added complexity in the AGC code to accommodate, but poorly mastered recordings are probably best just to be avoided.

To really take the fullest advantage of something like this, a profile of very tweakable settings should be made and stored for each song.  This is in no way as convenient as letting the code try to figure out what to do, or act generically, but the results are always going to be better.

But I'm interested in seeing what you came up with and doing some performance comparisons.  Is there a standalone version somewhere?

RandyT

[arzoo]

I've been playing with it... and its dead shexy...

I am running into some weird issues, though.  I think I may un-install the plugin, and do a fresh install, and see if that helps...

Can you elaborate on the weird issues?

[HaRuMaN]

I've been playing with it... and its dead shexy...

I am running into some weird issues, though.  I think I may un-install the plugin, and do a fresh install, and see if that helps...

Can you elaborate on the weird issues?

I have 4 players set up.  Each one has it's own LED-wiz.  I set up the audio animation for FE active... 

Using the Color/Intensity Spectrum option, I set 4 colors... tested it, everything worked fine.  Saved it.  Restarted MALA.

Players 3 & 4 work how I set it.  Players 1 & 2 are off the wall... look like its a cross between Color/Intensity Spectrum and the one that advances an animation...  now when I try to test, everything is funky, lol.

[arzoo]

I've been playing with it... and its dead shexy...

I am running into some weird issues, though.  I think I may un-install the plugin, and do a fresh install, and see if that helps...

Can you elaborate on the weird issues?

I have 4 players set up.  Each one has it's own LED-wiz.  I set up the audio animation for FE active... 

Using the Color/Intensity Spectrum option, I set 4 colors... tested it, everything worked fine.  Saved it.  Restarted MALA.

Players 3 & 4 work how I set it.  Players 1 & 2 are off the wall... look like its a cross between Color/Intensity Spectrum and the one that advances an animation...  now when I try to test, everything is funky, lol.

So it's not working at all when you test?
Turn on the Debug and Verbose options, run MaLa, then email me the debug.zip file in the LEDBlinky folder. Thanks.

[arzoo]

(I hope arzoo doesn't get upset at this discussion in his thread)

Not at all.

[markronz]

If you are still looking for testers let me know.  I'd be happy to test this out as well!

[arzoo]

If you are still looking for testers let me know.  I'd be happy to test this out as well!

I'm almost ready to officially release the code - but some last minute testing can't hurt. Send me your email via pm (or my email) and I'll get you the update. Thanks.