I agree 100% with Underspin. Compression is king as far as volume levels on the pin.
All of the files I do are compressed and very few have the gain raised any. It will usually start clipping on the highs when you mess with the gain.

I assume by compression you mean dynamic compression:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
not bitstream compression as in mp3/ogg/acc.

I think CDMaster32's Vlevel capability would help with some of that if I could get the answer I was looking for.

you lost me. My original files are Mp3 and ripped at around 210-220 kbps. should I re-rip them into a higher kbps? If so what is recommended and what file type? mp3. wav?

Re compression, I think what you are looking for is in Audacity. Got to 'effect' and then in that drop down menu there is 'compressor'

Here are some options for song choices that I have come up with.....

Rock N Roll Train 4:18 request No. 195 replace with High Voltage 4:20 off the album TNT
Rock N Roll Train 4:18 request No. 195 replace with Rock N Roll Ain't Noise Pollution 4:15 album Back In Black
Hells Bells 5:13 request No. 191 replace with Shoot To Thrill 5:18 off the album Back In Black
Back In Black 4:09 request No. 179 replace with Jailbreak 4:07 off the album Rough & Tough
Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be 4:12 request No. 187 replace with Shake A Leg 4:05 off the album Back In Black

It would be great if one of the Tron owners makes a video showing us neophytes how to replace a song...............

Mate if I can do it anyone can. Print out the instructions on the first or second page and read through it a few times. It honestly isn't that hard and it doesn't take very long either. I changed four songs on my ACDC today and lovin' it.

Nice tutorial - thanks!

If you don't mind my asking, what's the name of the track that you pulled material from to replace Gem?

That was the Gin Jimmy remix of End of Line. The sample I took was around the :32 second mark

Tim you're a good egg...many thanks. That was a cool and useful tutorial.

haha Blair, was just going to ask the same question. I finally got around to tinkering with Pinball Browser and replaced One with Harvester of Sorrow and Fade to Black with Wherever I May Roam on my Metallica Pro. Everything worked great, but I noticed that the song loops at song select were a bit funny. It's not a drama though. Glad it wasn't just me.

1) I didn't choose "compressor" when converting my songs in Audacity. What am I missing out on by not choosing that?
2) I ticked the second option to allow full song names in the memory. I have noticed that people are leaving the two boxes unticked in some replies. What are the negatives of ticking the second box if anything?

Thank you Oga83 for this amazing application!!! Ever since I bought my AC/DC Pro, I've wanted to be able to tinker with the code and change songs. Tested the water with Metallica tonight with great results.

Cheers!
Adam.

1) The compressor evens out the highs and lows in the volume so what you are missing out on is a more consistent volume level throughout the song.

2) Somewhere in this thread it talks about clearing all of the song info and that the songs may not work with all the info left attached to them.

From what I can gather, if the small break in the song when it is on a loop e.g. waiting to launch a ball bothers you, you would have to edit the song itself in audacity so that it matched up exactly with what that particular request length was. it would be good to be able to change the length of the request but I am not sure if this is possible. I think it is just better to live with it and be thankful for Oga83's program and the opportunity to even be able to change songs.

oga83....I have another question related to what is being discussed. I know if you change the location that has the entire song in it.....it also changes all of the smaller song fragment locations automatically. I guess these smaller sound clips are grabbed from the longer clip automatically.

Say you have done that (replaced the long, entire song clip)...could you then go back and find which fragment is the looped "shooter groove" location and replace it separately? Basically making is so that one fragment that the game is using while the ball is in the shooter lane to loop more smoothly? So it wouldn't be changing the length of the fragment that loops, but you would be overriding it to play a different section of the song instead of what it grabs from the complete song by default.

I'll take your word for it, I honestly have no idea when it comes to code and the like. What you have already done is awesome.

I believe you would have to change the pointers that point to the song, not the song fragment itself. This, like he said, is not possible at this time.

Agreed... the digital knocker sound about splits my eardrums in 2 every time I hear it. It's so harsh that my 8 year-old daughter has to cover her ears at the end of each game in anticipation of it... she cringes.

If anyone has used Pinball Browser with POTC, please PM me if you have the macro or anything else you'd be willing to share that would be helpful. Thanks!

Troy

Has anyone used this on POTC? I have done many changes to ACDC, MET, Xmen, Avengers and even some on POTC - however using version 2.18 I cant find any of the sound bytes for Capt. Jacks call outs or the main music.

Anyone else have this issue?

Perhaps I missed it, but did anyone post a master list that shows the the length of the all the songs that come on the games? This would make it easier for people to find suitable replacements.

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/acdc-display-and-modify-dot-matrix-images/page/10

Its on this page. Just scroll down a bit, about halfway down, Arcade made the post.

Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for.

I wanted to save everyone as much time as possible.
Glad you could put it to good use.

+1 on digital knocker edit.

I know there was an issue with the early version of Pinball Browser where the program wasn't showing all of the animations or sounds for a few early games. I believe POTC and FG were a couple of the ones with this issue. It seemed like the program wasn't spanning the entire ROM or something. oga83 fixed it before...maybe that issue has crept back in with all of the different releases and changes.

Is it normal to get a error when you load the BIN file to the machine? Mine got all the way to the end of the upload, gave me an error message, but when I played the game my song swap was in there. Swapped Unforgiven for Sanitarium.

Yes, that's normal. Your scores should stay intact with the error.

OK, thanks for confirming. Great program!

Awesome! This is really getting some advanced capabilities. Wow!

Man if there was a pinsider of the year award....I'd nominate you.

Not only this above, but when you change a song won't it throw off what you see on the DMD? What I mean for example, is if you replace Rosie with Dirty Deeds and you play the song during the game, your going to see the Rosie animations. Same with Rock n Roll Train and perhaps the whistle. Let's say you swap with Who Made Who, then I'll see train animations and train whistles every time I hit the left ramp while Who Made Who is playing. I want to change 4 songs, but for these reasons it's kinda making me hesitant. Thoughts?

+1 knocker

I dampen the physical knocker on all my machines and would like to do the same with a Stern.

The only problem with the knocker is that the audio sample is ~300 ms long, so replacing it with another audio sample is kinda touch unless you have one that is around the same length.

Is there a way to insert an audio sample that is longer than the original sample length without it truncating the new file?

Thanks,
--Scott

Isn't there already a physical knocker kit for Sterns? How is that kit triggering the coil?

The Stern games are made with a harness on the left side of the cabinet that can send a knocker signal. There is a setting in the regular game settings to pulse the coil that is connected to that harness (if a kit is added). It always struck me as strange that the official software supports a physical knocker in the settings...yet there is no official knocker kits sold for the games.

That might be interesting...I'm not sure what coil you would select or how universal the coil labeling is from game to game. I would think the auto shooter would be a good one to use, but I'm guessing it would still come off more as a game malfunction than a knocker hit.

This DIY knocker kit

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~pinball_stuff/knocker.htm

hooks into Q24 which is a ticket dispenser.

The note at the bottom says "The knocker will only knock when a credit is awarded. If the machine is set up to award an extra ball instead of a replay and/or special, there will be no knock."

I like to set my games up at home for Extra Ball.

What I want to do is replace the knocker sound using Pinball Browser with a completely blank sound. Then have Oliver create an option to fire Q24 whenever the knocker sound is played. I think this will make the DIY Stern knocker kit act like a WMS/Bally knocker and knock when extra balls are awarded along with matches etc.

Chris

So when can the pinball-browser give us access to the code?