Tag: audio

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An Automated Announcement System

AAAS Robot

AAAS Robot

An Automated Announcement System (or “AAAS”) is an idea for a system that can make scheduled announcements during an event when you are too busy to do it yourself.

This is an idea I was working on back around 2017 or so when I was one of the producers for Maker Faire Milwaukee. Each year the venue would have a PA system, and our venue manager would show us how to use it. It was typically a mic with an on/off switch attached to the front panel of a PA system ready to go. Pick up mic, turn it on, talk, turn it off. Simple, right?

The issue is that we always ran with a skeleton crew of just a few people, and we were always dealing with putting out fires or dealing with something important and would always forget to make announcements!

The other issue is that when you go live on a mic with 5,000 people listening you might not deliver your words smoothly… especially if you don’t have a script to read from… and who has time to write a script when things are one fire all around you?

So that’s where the idea of An Automated Announcement System came from.

The original idea was that I would create a schedule of announcements and then prerecord them all to audio files, then once we had a folder full of audio files we’d load them onto a Raspberry Pi with cron jobs to run a script to play the audio at the appropriate times.

The Raspberry Pi would have the audio output connected to the audio input of the PA system so it could just run in the background without any user intervention, and do the announcements for you.

Maybe the audio files would all have timestamps as names and one script would just run continually checking for a match of the current time and then play the file. That might be easier than scheduling a whole bunch of cron jobs. Heck there’s probably some super-simple unixy-system way to do it that. (If not maybe I should write one!?)

Anyway, that was my idea for An Automated Announcement System which never happened because I never had time to work on it and then in 2020 there was a global pandemic and Maker Faire was put on hold. Sigh.

Feel free to run with this idea if you like it!

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Recording Video and (Line-in) Audio to the iPhone

I record audio & video of all my musical jams on my iPhone. I plug all my synth devices into a Bastl Dude mixer, then out to a splitter, one side goes to headphones so I can monitor, the other goes to a USB audio dongle with 1/8″ input, then into a USB to Lightning adapter plugged into the phone. It’s a little weird but it works great for me. I’ll try to describe the setup in detail below.

I’ll start by saying this. I’ve worked in media production a long time. I’ve worked on commercial video shoots, I’ve worked as a sound engineer, I subscribe to Tape Op, and I know there are a million ways to record things. This is the method I use because it’s easy for me, and a simple workflow for recording music means I can focus on actually making music and capturing it easily. Also, and this is important, I want to record audio and video together into one single file.

Not including the mixer and phone, here are the other components.

Here’s what it looks like all connected together. (Click the image for a larger version.)

Are there other ways to do this? Yes. Are some of them better? Probably. This works for me with the equipment I had on hand. I didn’t buy anything special for this because these are all components I had for other purposes or projects. Chances are if you’re already making music you have most of these things. If you’ve got an iPhone but still need the USB Audio Adapter and Lightning to USB Adapter you can get them both for under $20 USD.

For the actual recording I just use the iPhone’s built-in Camera app in video mode. It does the right thing with regards to grabbing the audio. This solution also allows for monitoring, since the audio signal splits before it goes into the phone. (Monitoring audio from the phone is… tricky.) Is it perfect? No, but it works. Audio levels are where they should be, and I don’t need to sync a separate audio file to a video file when editing the video.

I did try a bunch of other methods when I started. Including a Lightning to 3.5mm Headphone Jack Adapter, a Zoom recorder (great for audio, but no video), recording directly to a computer (video was not great) and… probably others I forgot about. Yes, I know about the Headset Buddy, and I tried a lot of different apps on the iPhone. Again, this works for me. If this is helpful to you. You’re welcome!

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Pocket Operator Sync Splitter

If you’ve seen one of my Pocket Operator videos (like this one) you may have wondered how I have things hooked up. Since people seem to ask every now and then, I thought it would be helpful to just write up a post. So here it is.

If you have two Pocket Operator you probably know that you can sync them up, and audio will pass from the first unit through the second unit. The 1/8″ TRS (stereo) cable will carry the sync signal on one channel and the audio on the other. With two Pocket Operators you can adjust the volume for each and usually get a decent enough balance for the final output. It works. Mostly.

But what if you have three or more Pocket Operators? Well, you can still chain them and sync them, and the audio will carry through all of them, but it gets more difficult to adjust the volume on each one, and getting three or more chained together with equal sound levels at the end is… rough. So here’s my solution.

I got a sync device from the p0k3t0 shop on Tindie. Specifically I use the Sync Splitter for Pocket Operators – 7 Way. (There’s a 5 Way and 9 Way as well.) This device allows you to run the first PO into it, then split the sync into 6 output signals (for 7 more Pocket Operators) and then it also passes through the audio from the first PO.

So the Sync Splitter is the output for the first PO, and every other PO outputs audio as normal, and now you’ve got X number of audio signals where X is the number of Pocket Operators you have. In my case it’s four. (For now. I’ve still got my eye on the Arcade.)

Here’s a diagram:

Note that all cables are standard 1/8″ TRS Stereo Cables. No mono, no splitters, etc. The exact cables I use are these short red right angle cables.

Okay, so I’ve got four Pocket Operators each with their own output and I need to do something with them… so I plug them all into a Bastl Dude Mixer. I love that little Dude! It’s small, runs on four AA batteries (I use rechargeables) and it has five inputs, so if you’re doing a jam with 5 or less Pocket Operators each can have its own channel. Each channel has its own volume control and a mute button so you can do punch in/out easily for each PO.

Any multi-channel mixer should work fine, but the Dude has 1/8″ instead of 1/4″, runs on batteries, and it’s tiny. It’s sort of a perfect fit for the little PO crew, and it works well for my needs.

This post is long enough so I won’t get into the actual recording technique. I’ll save that for another post. Cheers!

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Sound Experiment for 2021-09-20

Here’s a fun sonic experiment. The RD-6 has outputs for each sound (well, some are shared) so I ran a splitter from the bass drum output and the clean signal goes to one input on the Dude Mixer and the other goes to the Monotron Delay and then out from there into the Dude Mixer. The third input into the Dude is the standard output from the RD-6 which is all the rest of the drums. (Minus the bass drum because when you output a specific sound it subtracts it from the main output.)

So that’s one channel for plain bass drum, one channel for bass drum through the delay (and the Monotron itself) and one channel for all the other drums/sounds.

Then it’s just a matter of twisting those knobs and coming up with crazy sounds! And that we did… at least we think so. Check it out!

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Synth Jams – Early September 2021

I’ve been dropping all these videos of synth jams over on YouTube but haven’t put any of them here, so I figured I would fix that.

This one is just Pocket Operators. They are tiny, limited devices that can still do a heck of a lot. They’re awesome and fun. I’m using a sync splitter so I can run them all into a mixer separately and adjust the levels. You can chain them all together, but it can be difficult to get the sound levels of each one set properly.

This one is a “Sonic Exploration” (or “Sound Exploration”, I mean, I don’t even know.) I can see doing more of these “knob twiddling” videos where it’s sort of organic and goes… well, wherever it goes. The Crave is a semi-modular analog synth, so it’s perfect for that sort of thing. The Arturia BeatStep is a fun sequencer and pad device that does MIDI and CV. (And I might have some more hardware perfect for Sonic (or Sound) Explorations coming up soon.

This one pairs the Pocket Operators with the Behringer RD-6 Drum Machine. I’m using the PO-12 Rhythm which is a “drum machine” it it’s own right as well, but it’s playing bass tones. There’s also a PO-14 Sub which is a bass sequencer, so… double bass I guess? The PO-24 Office rounds it out as… lead? Yeah, sounds good.

If you want more of this crazy sound subscribe over on the YouTube because I plan to keep going.