Is it possible to decode commands hidden in an audio stream?

Projects General Guidance
1

This is my first Arduino project and I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

I want to make an RGB strip look and sound like an old fluorescent light being turned on.
I have a sound file where an old fluorescent tube is turned on, has a low-hum, sputtering for a bit then finally comes on full after a few seconds. My goal is to sync this to the RGB strip using audio cues.
I had hoped to be able to come up with something that would trigger on high frequencies(outside of normal hearing) so I could splice the wire from the headphone jack on my PC and hook it to the Arduino and a speaker.
I started to look at EQ projects and there are some nice ones but they all seem to require quite a bit of extra hardware(which isn't my strong suit).
Does anybody know of an easier way to accomplish this?
Thanks.

2

Perhaps an RC filter to filter out the rest of the frequencies and assuming the voltage is filtered to be >0 && <5v connect that to an interupt and make up your own coding scheme, the code you could always add on a pc
But since i imagine theres an on switch, why not just use some delays as i imagine the sound file wont be changing?