First of all, thanks in advance! I've been following this forum for a while now, and tis always really helpful.
For a project I would like to have stereo audio (with at least two speakers, tho an array of 4-6 would be great), cause the idea is to create some kind of immersive audio experience. I've been doing some research, but my lack of experience regarding electronics is making things difficult... I've seen some some shields for arduino, and some adafruit boards that can provide stereo sound, but I am not sure about how strong the audio can be with this options... could you guys maybe give me some advice?
All the projects I've made so far with arduino were way smaller than this one, and I am afraid that this might be a bit too ambitious for this little board... what do you think? should I maybe think about using smth more powerful like raspberry pi?
I would like to have stereo audio (with at least two speakers, tho an array of 4-6 would be great), cause the idea is to create some kind of immersive audio experience. I've been doing some research, but my lack of experience regarding electronics is making things difficult... I've seen some some shields for arduino, and some adafruit boards that can provide stereo sound, but I am not sure about how strong the audio can be with this options... could you guys maybe give me some advice?
...what do you think? should I maybe think about using smth more powerful like raspberry pi?
For "quality sound" you do need a shield. The regular Arduino doesn't have a DAC (digital to analog converter), plus it has limited memory and you wouldn't be able to process sound and control the LEDs at the same time.
The audio shield just needs some minimal control signals from the processor so it can take care of the audio while the Arduino uses most of its processing power to run the LEDs.
Virtually all of the audio shields are stereo so you'd need something else for multi-channel or surround sound. You can have more speakers but only 2-channels. You can probably drive a 5.1 or 7.1 channel USB soundcard from the Raspberry Pi, but I don't know if it can control the LEDs at the same time. You might want to use a Raspberry Pi for the audio and an Arduino for the LED....
The standard audio shields play audio files (WAV or MP3, etc.) and if you want to synthesize sound you'll need a computer or maybe the Raspberry Pi.
For "strong" (loud) audio you simply need a bigger amplifier and bigger speakers. Most audio shields need an amplifier anyway, although some can drive headphones or put-out a couple of watts for speakers.
...I've made lighting effects that react to sound* (and lots of other people have done that too) and if that's a possibility for your project you can use a computer, phone, CD player, etc. for the sound. That way, you don't have to re-program the lights every time you change the music, but you can't control exactly what the lights are doing. It's a different concept so it depends on what you want... I actually use lots of randomness so the lights react to the sound in unpredictable ways.
I feed the Arduino a line-level audio signal so I'm not using a microphone to pick-up "sound' in the room.
Thanks DVDdoug for the info about audio shields! I might order one and just give it a try with two channel-audio, using an amplifier and two speakers for now... the idea of running a soundcard from a raspberry pi sounds tempting, but with zero experience with this board, im afraid things might get too complicated.
The idea of generating the light animations based on the audio is really interesting, didn't think about that! I just see a problem; for every "location" I want to recreate, I would have different audio tracks and different light animations based on different color palettes... i don't really know how i could match then the sound and the animations for every scenario... Do you have your projects published somewhere online, I would really like to check them out.
If you have any recommendation about audio shields or amplifiers i would really appreciate it!
