Hello all, I am trying to use an electret microphone to feed a signal to the MSGEQ7 chip. I want to eventually have five strips of LEDs respond to five different frequencies of live music on five different pins. I have followed several online tutorials and nothing is just right. I'm thinking that the analog signal from the microphone going into the chip is not strong enough. Or possibly too strong.
Anyone have any insight on how to get these two to work together??
katybradford:
Hello all, I am trying to use an electret microphone to feed a signal to the MSGEQ7 chip. I want to eventually have five strips of LEDs respond to five different frequencies of live music on five different pins. I have followed several online tutorials and nothing is just right. I'm thinking that the analog signal from the microphone going into the chip is not strong enough. Or possibly too strong.Anyone have any insight on how to get these two to work together??
Well the MSG chip is normally set up to expect about 100mv of peak audio voltage which does require some preamplification from a raw electret mic. Can you post your circuitry of what you have wired so far?
Lefty
I've been using this - http://proto-pic.co.uk/breakout-board-for-electret-microphon - to feed into my arduino. It's a bit noisy not great for low volume, but just about picks up speech at normal volumes and saves having to mess around with opamps yourself. If you were interested in trying an all software approach, I've had success using this FFT library - ArduinoFHT - Open Music Labs Wiki.
if you use the electret breakout board, drive it from 3.3v and use the AREF pin on the arduino.
Also massively helpful is this - http://accrochages.drone.ws/en/node/90 - so you can see in realtime what it coming into the analog in. I was dicking around println'ing the outputs and drawing them in excel before I found it. Made it all so much easier!
good luck 
Wow that's a cool tool! Once I get it set up that will be very useful since I dont have an oscilloscope and all.
I used the diagram from this video to wire to mic. I just put the analog output into the input pin on the MSGEQ7. It's supposed to be a preamp but I'm thinking of grabbing a LM386 and trying that instead.
and here's what I did with the chipp: http://www.instructables.com/id/Extreme-Nightlight-Color-Organ/step4/Wiring-Up-the-MSGEQ7-Chip/
thank you!