TILT!Audio

[necro_nemesis]

I could probably just order the boards from pcbway if I just wanted the pcb then order the parts. The board is through hole and so it optimized for DIY and not SMD ordering stuffed. I mean yeah it's feasible to do that but I'm not finding the logistics of ordering from Steve being out of hand nor his price. I mean if we wanted to yeah boards could be built quite readily it would appear but I don't see that being a requirement or desire atm.

 

[Locutus]

It would be very interesting to hear on a white star system. My LOTR is an amazing machine, but needs serious upgrade in the audio dept.

 

[MrMikeman]

It would be very interesting to hear on a white star system. My LOTR is an amazing machine, but needs serious upgrade in the audio dept.

If you prefer a plug and play solution Pinsound does work well. I have one in my LOTR.

 

[necro_nemesis]

Systems currently supported:
-WPC and WPC95
- DataEast
-Whitestar

I have to get more info on the latest 3.7 board I am receiving as it has a double set of data bus connectors on the left side one of which is denoted as WPC95. I believe this alleviates the requirement for a custom cable to passthrough video to the AV board but the connector appears to need to be added to the kit. TBC.

 

[necro_nemesis]

True. I'm not familiar with Pinsounds capabilities other than it being a similar sound board upgrade. Can you directly import Altsound packs like TiltAudio does? To me the hardware is one aspect but the amount of work to create a custom sound pack is onerous. I'm no 21 piece orchestra with a bunch of miked up pots and pans to make effects.

 

[MrMikeman]

True. I'm not familiar with Pinsounds capabilities other than it being a similar sound board upgrade. Can you directly import Altsound packs like TiltAudio does? To me the hardware is one aspect but the amount of work to create a custom sound pack is onerous. I'm no 21 piece orchestra with a bunch of miked up pots and pans to make effects.

Pinsound has a folder with 4 categories of sounds. Music, Jingle, Voice, and sound effect.

Each of those folders has a folder for every sound call from that category (they seem to be named by memory address for the sound).

In those sound call folders you can put as many sounds as you like for the ONE sound call. So if you put one (standard) you get that sound. However if you prefer variety (especially good for music) you put as many as you want and when the CPU makes that call for sound, Pinsound picks one at random within that sound call folder. That's how I did my STTNG. Capt Picard can say the standard callout or he can say the same one with added explitives. So on my game you never know if Capt Picard will swear or not

Alternatively, you can save them in a specifc way so that the game will play those sounds in sequence. So for example you could have a different main theme for ball 1,2 ,3 etc.

It's pretty straight forward. Seems like Tilt Audio is similar.

 

[steve6502]

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.

try raspberry as password

 

[necro_nemesis]

Same folder layout as TILT!Audio. The sound format can be wav or ogg which is what's used in Altsound packs. TILT!Audio and Pin2dmd benefits from open source contributions. Both those projects seem to get their strength from what is being built for VP then building hardware solutions to apply that community work to real pinball machines. I do a fair amount of open source work and have an appreciation for the power and long term support that comes with mature open source projects like VP.

 

[steve6502]

a hosts file on my router and give all the machines a local dns lookup

you don't need that, instead you can use the webUI to set a unique name for each of them, that then gets announced via dhcp.

 

[steve6502]

Did you ever look at Armbian as an alternative OS using an OrangePi

Yes, I did look at this one and a couple of others. But it is not so easy as you may think. Most of the alternatives support the "usual stuff", but if you need IRQ support on specific GPIO pins, the I2S sound interface for binary sound output, I2C for controlling the display and other extensions, hardware SPI to flash the STM ... then the suitable alternatives are running out.

 

[steve6502]

It's pretty straight forward. Seems like Tilt Audio is similar.

TILT!Audio supports two soundpack formats: 1. the folder based that is more or less the same as the french product. 2. the so called "altsound" format, with is a flat list of sound files and a CSV file describing the meta data (is it voice, special gain ... ).
The 2. format is pushed and supported by the VPIN community and therefore the preferred format. there are a lot of them available here: altsound.vpin24.com
The 1. format support is limited as most of the encrypted sound packs are not directly supported. The french guy tried to file a case against may but they never really pulled it through.
In general if you need something, just reach out to me ;-)

 

[MrMikeman]

Same folder layout as TILT!Audio. The sound format can be wav or ogg which is what's used in Altsound packs. TILT!Audio and Pin2dmd benefits from open source contributions. Both those projects seem to get their strength from what is being built for VP then building hardware solutions to apply that community work to real pinball machines. I do a fair amount of open source work and have an appreciation for the power and long term support that comes with mature open source projects like VP.



View attachment 21480

Looking at the software I can tell you that Pinsound has the same settings etc. It supports the same sound formats. It also has shaker control with pre-defined patterns or custom if you prefer. Triggered by sound calls like Tilt. And it has 2 additional relays for other accessories, also controlled by sound calls.

One is turnkey, closed, expensive, and has direct support from the manufacturer. the other is DIY, open source, inexpensive, and support comes from the community. It's really a personal choice.

Now if either one could create a batch processor for normalizing the sound calls that would definitely sway me in that direction. They exist for MP3 but I haven't found one for OGG and WAV - at least one that can do multiple folders and sub folders..

I may have to delve into the altsound thing to see for myself. At this time I only have 2 games that are supported and they already have Pinsounds in them (I just keep them and move them to new machines when they come in).

 

[steve6502]

You should anyway convert your sounds in WAV before using it in the game. WAV load much faster and are less CPU consuming that OGG. Therefore I would always recommend to convert them first. And yes: there is no simple way like mp3gain to normalise a batch of WAVs

 

[necro_nemesis]

You should anyway convert your sounds in WAV before using it in the game. WAV load much faster and are less CPU consuming that OGG. Therefore I would always recommend to convert them first. And yes: there is no simple way like mp3gain to normalise a batch of WAVs

All good info. I'm learning.

 

[necro_nemesis]

http://altsound.vpin24.com What's with all these VP guys using Mega? Nothing against our friend Kim Dotcom but haven't they ever heard of torrent? lol.

 

[necro_nemesis]

Here's a quick way to convert .ogg to .wav in an ALtsound package. This could easily be put into a script.

############################################################
### Convert Altsound .ogg to .wav for faster performance ###
############################ by random pinhead #############

# .ogg will work but needs to be decompressed on the fly .wav does not
# Install ffmpeg 'sudo apt install ffmpeg' if you haven't it already.
# cd in to the folder that has all the altsound .ogg files and altsound.csv for your machine
# bash the following

for i in *.ogg; do
  ffmpeg -acodec libvorbis -i "$i" -acodec pcm_s16le "${i%ogg}wav"
done

# Ater done remove the .ogg files no longer required in the directory

rm -r *.ogg

# open altsound.csv with your favorite editor and find replace "ogg" with "wav" save and exit.
# or simply use sed to find replace ogg with wav.

sed -i 's/ogg/wav/g' altsound.csv

 

[necro_nemesis]

Found of a bunch of these that give side by side comparisons between original sound and altsound.

 

[steve6502]

It would be very interesting to hear on a white star system. My LOTR is an amazing machine

 

[necro_nemesis]

I have added two additional stl's here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5191988 to provide mounts for a pair of Pioneer TS-F1034R high efficiency 4" 2-way speakers in a WPC game. My next application of TILT!Audio will be on my TZ and I will provide an update as things progress.

 

[necro_nemesis]

BB speakers assembled. Will install with original hardware on factory holes. There's also always the option to buy a replacement CNC cut speaker panel with pre-cut 4" or 5.25" speaker holes for $30 USD from Michigan. https://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=17