TILT!Audio
- Thread starter necro_nemesis
- Start date
Locutus
Active Member
Love this project! Knew nothing about it prior to you posting. Questions: do you expect it to perform better than pinsound? Just a more less expensive option? Or just wanted a cool project?
I don't have a Pinsound next to it to compare. I'm very impressed with the sound quality just using a pair of 4* original panel speakers and the standard cabinet speaker. You definitely can hear the sample quality difference and the spatial placement of sound. For my tastes it has plenty of power, maybe too much but that's adjustable both through software and hardware adjustment. I'm not sure the better speakers I ordered are even required at this point but I'll install them regardless.
Bottom line I don't know what I would want more if there was more to be had from Pinsound or any other pinball sound system. Tilt!Audio has far surpassed my expectations. I will be ordering more systems today.
Bottom line I don't know what I would want more if there was more to be had from Pinsound or any other pinball sound system. Tilt!Audio has far surpassed my expectations. I will be ordering more systems today.
FWIW I've tested it with Pi 3b+ and Pi 4b+ and both work. I am told it will work with Pi Zero 2 w but they are currently in short supply. It looks like the software is running DietPi as it's base distro. If / when Pi Zero 2 becomes more readily available it would probably be the logical SBC to use for this application.
When I get a chance I'll post some recorded video but it will be from my phone so I doubt it will give any sense of the spatial differences of the sound. The sound itself is whatever you want it to be. I have it in HSII and I think the engine samples are whimpy for my liking so I'll probably record samples of revving the engine and that from my own car and sub them in. The engine samples are more "Fast and Furious" twin turbo where my tastes are good ol' American V8 muscle. This isn't anything to do with the board, it's what VP had available.
I want more sound sample like what I took here not realizing this would have any application in pinball.
When I get a chance I'll post some recorded video but it will be from my phone so I doubt it will give any sense of the spatial differences of the sound. The sound itself is whatever you want it to be. I have it in HSII and I think the engine samples are whimpy for my liking so I'll probably record samples of revving the engine and that from my own car and sub them in. The engine samples are more "Fast and Furious" twin turbo where my tastes are good ol' American V8 muscle. This isn't anything to do with the board, it's what VP had available.
I want more sound sample like what I took here not realizing this would have any application in pinball.
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Do you have any links on how this board can be used? Is it compatible with Gottlieb 80B soundboards? I have 3 Pinsound boards and love them but I am waiting for Pinsound to release their new Gottlieb compatible board for my Clash retheme. Thanks for the help!
steve6502
New Member
What I see in the pictures you provided, you forgot the for horizontal pins on the small slave board "blackpill". It is mentioned explicitly here https://tiltaudio.com/assembly
I'm by the way Steve the creator of TILT!Audio, just joined your board right now.
Greetings from Germany !
I guess no chance these will eventually work on a Gottlieb 80B system? Welcome to the forum!
steve6502
New Member
You can find a lot of information at https://tiltaudio.com and no it cannot be used with Gottlieb 80b
steve6502
New Member
I usually don't do a comparison to the french product. So I will focus what TILT!Audio is and can do:
TA is a DIY solution you normally had to build it on your own, so some soldering skills are needed. There is a guy in the US that offers ready to use boards.
TA hardware design is free: https://oshwlab.com/steve45/tiltaudio-3-6
TA sound generation is flexible based on ALSA sound system: via HDMI, via I2S and 5102 DAC or even a DSP board from Analog devices 1401.
TA supports Bluetooth sound.
TA has a web ui, where you can easily configure and play around with the system from a browser.
TA supports "sound controlled extensions" like shaker, rgb leds, servos, relays etc. this usually works be attaching a slave MCU (arduino) to the board and controlling it with "sound commands". Triggers when a sound effect starts or ends.
TA supports scp or web ui to update firmware or sound packs.
So there is a couple of unique features, but some of them require quite some deep dive into the technology. It is a project not a "ready to use" or "plug'n'play" solution.
I may provide service to assemble boards similar to what is offered in the U.S. to Canada for people who don't have the ability to do so for themselves. At the moment I am no expert on this product. I have assembled, installed, configured it and have if fully operational in the machine and connected to my LAN but there's a depth of work here that still needs some learning to fully support other applications/configurations. In short course I'm relatively certain I will have that information in hand to help others wanting to use this sound solution.
Greetings! If I understand you also work on Pin2DMD development with the editor?
steve6502
New Member
Yes the editor has more contribution from me and less from lucky (and a few others), the firmware running on the device has more contributions from lucky and less from me.
That's another great project. Man you guys are hitting it with the upgrades. I like that some of it is open source and people can contribute to development and helping each other.
For you guys that want to use this here's Steve's site with a lot of info. https://tiltaudio.com/
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steve6502
New Member
by the way you can also switch sound packs from the coin door volume buttons: just turn down volume to zero, the once again press volume down to switch to the next sound pack, then go back to the original volume
@necro_nemesis , would you mind doing a breakdown on cost? Roughly how much did all of the parts cost? Did you manage to find somewhere in Canada to print the PCB? Did you source all of your components (like oleds etc)? I am thinking about this as a project, I did the Tron MiniCade mod but that was just some firmware and an oled display ... 
Cool! Everything is running rock solid. I'm looking into how to change just a few of the engine sfx files on the Altsound pack I have. Also want to create a hosts file on my router and give all the machines a local dns lookup name that I can remember like http://hs2..local, http://tz.local etc..I was looking at the debug write up and it was saying user
ass for ssh is pi:raspberry but I couldn't log in. I have to investigate what the login is for openssh so I can use putty to ssh and sftp files. I trired DietPi's default login as well root:dietpi but that wasn't it either. When I have some time on my hands I'll investigate these settings further.@steve6502 Did you ever look at Armbian as an alternative OS using an OrangePi? Not sure about pin assignments for their respective 40 pin GPIO layout but sometimes Raspberry Pi devices can be in short supply like we are experiencing with the Pi Zero 2w atm. OrangePi could be a cost effective alternative running Armbian. Upside is there's potential to use alternative SBC. Downside is Armbian doesn't support Raspi so it would mean a second distro depending on device used. Food for thought if Raspi continues to have what appears to be supply shortages. The Allwinner and Rockchip SOC's are pretty decent in some of these boards and so is the price. I'm hoping the Zero 2w apparent supply issues go away because that seems like the idea SBC for this application when looking at cost to performance.
It's inexpensive. By the time it's shipped the board is under a $150 CAD to my door. I've order more boards and still waiting to see if customs is going to get themselves in a knot to know what to fully expect but they didn't on my last order. The other things you need are a Raspberry Pi and an SD card. Steves image file is 16mb but I may be able to shrink it to 8mb, the smallest SD card widely available if you want to save a couple pennies. The Pi prices can vary but you don't need a high spec Pi. Older 3b+ is working fine. 4b+ works fine (present mainline pi). Also Steve tested the newer Pi Zero 2w and reported it working. This board is ideal and can be had for about $19 CAD + shipping when it's supply issues get sorted out. So all in if you are to build it yourself it's about $200. The guy in the U.S. will assemble for $50 USD board. I could probably similarly assemble them for about $65 CAD if push came to shove and people wanted this service. If I quickly do the math I could probably supply board assembled for like $210 CAD and you find your own Raspberry Pi. The only other expense is Steve's license which can be ordered directly for about $15 CAD for the Lua support version.@necro_nemesis , would you mind doing a breakdown on cost? Roughly how much did all of the parts cost? Did you manage to find somewhere in Canada to print the PCB? Did you source all of your components (like oleds etc)? I am thinking about this as a project, I did the Tron MiniCade mod but that was just some firmware and an oled display ...
All this can be order from Steve directly but combining shipping does appear to lower costs when looking at my second order. If people want to group order or are looking for assembly I can probably help there. Remember Tilt!Audio like Pin2dmd's hardware is open source. There's nothing tying me nor Steve nor yourself from getting the hardware so supply is a matter of convenience/service. The software though comes with a small cost which is completely understandable since Steve "is "the project.