I'd contact fellow pinsider @Mr_Tantrum. He seems to know PinSound pretty well and recently really helped a fellow member out. Maybe he would be willing to help you too?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinsound-mix-install-problems

Now now. We dont know his situation. We know he is frustrated, but we dont know why. It would benefit us to:

1. Review his frustration through the posts he has put here in this thread.

2. Reach out or provide a solution.

FWIW, @Hazzard, your BSD mix is the reason I am expecting a PinSound board to be delivered to my home today after abandoning it for 3 years after the plethora of problems I had with it when installing one I nm to an TAF. Truth be told, there were MANY issues with that TAF. PinSound pushed it over the edge....

I've already been working with him, and we got things up and running after a couple of hours.

I've posted this multiple times, and I don't know that the two bros (which I have met and talked to in person - great guys who also have full-time real jobs) do a good enough job explaining it. To begin with, the PinSound is an awesome creative product that transforms gameplay experience given the correct expectation. If all you want to replace your stock soundcard with a PinSound using the stock sounds and expect anything different that what you heard before, then you will be disappointed. Also, if you expect a simple plug and play experience, you will be disappointed.

There are multiple factors that must be considered and addressed to get the most out of your PinSound, including the following:
1) How is your pin wired for sound? Mono, simulated stereo, true stereo, etc.? I had to rewire mine from mono to stereo to get enhance the experience.
2) What speakers are you using? The same old crappy 25+ year old ones with low frequency response and bass that are probably cracked or have you spent money (doesn't even take much) on new/better backbox speakers and cabinet woofer?
3) Does your pin have a user created custom orchestration or are you just installing the default one that was created in 8 bit mono (or worse) and uses MIDI music? If you buy a new stereo and the best set of speakers you can but run low quality audio through it, the result is still low quality audio.

I could go on and on, but the main point is that the PinSound is a collaboration between the inventors, the enthusiasts, and the end-user. They provide the hardware platform to do great things, and the community develops customized orchestrations using high quality audio, custom call-outs, music/quotes from which the pins are themed, voice actors to redo sounds, etc. This work takes hours/weeks/months and lots of skill to do it well. Finally, the onus is on the end user. They need to understand what they are getting into, what the PinSound is and what it is not, and they must make whatever modifications/updates to their pin to take full advantage of it.

There is technical aptitude required even for setting up the orchestrations correctly on the USB drive (must follow exact format). I don't work for or represent PinSound in any form or fashion. I'm just a hobbyist who took the bull by the horns when deciding to add one to my Getaway. Since then, I've learned a ton (mostly self taught), and do my best to help others arrive to the same experience. I can't support everyone all of the time, but when I have the opportunity I'm happy to do so.

I was assuming his "bullcrap" comment was a play on wdpvideo's UT Bevo avatar - but maybe not.

Well said. Could not agree anymore. I can 100% speak on every point you made.

Often, ColorDMD and PinSound get lumped in as the ultimate "must have" mods, and at their price, I think people expect plug and play performance.

ColorDMD has done it. All the work is done behind the scenes. It is a nearly true PnP experience, and there is only ONE release so its "love it or leave it".

PinSound is a completely different beast. You can't be a "write a check and expect all the problems to go away" owner. Like you said, a technical prowess with attention to detail and healthy amount of patience is required to take the PinSound dive. In this though, there are more variables then ColorDMD, many of which you hit on. With ColorDMD, you load the file and the s/w does all the work for you.

With PinSound, the files have to be preloaded just right for it to take, and if I recall correctly, there are multiple ways to do it. Then, which audio package do you use? And how are they different? Remastered vs mixes, callouts vs sound being upgraded - which ones of each are getting updated?

With ColorDMD, WYSIWYG, you either like it or you don't. To this day with 70+ releases, I dont know of a single game with alternate ColorDMD releases.

With PinSound, people wish to tailor sounds to their liking. CFTBL is a great example. I don't 100% like the songs in both releases. So, to rectify to my liking, I am going to have to "get smart" with PinSound editors and get to know that stuff front and back (read: VERY time indusive).

Lots of stuff here, and I'm a novice at it, but I recognize the commitment one is getting involved in when investing in PinSound. It's more than $400; it is a significant time investment depending on how deep you are wanting to dive into the pool (long live replacing the cargument!!!).

Haven't got a pinsound yet but there are tons of great mixes around.

Wish there were more.

Nice that someone has put Monster Mash on Monster Bash - such a perfect song.

This and Mr Tantrum are spot on. ColorDMD and PinSound ARE must-have mods, but they do vary in the level of work one must do. ColorDMD does all the hard work of colorizing your game for you - and I believe they work around copyright by using code to automate the changes. PinSound is hampered by Planetary’s copyright - and while I believe a deal was supposed to be worked out, we are still sharing many of the mix files almost in “secret.” It’s worth it, but you do need to understand the amount of work involved (it really isn’t THAT bad) and have reasonable expectations based on the sounds / mix you’re using themselves

NOT TRUE. The Pinsound board has built-in EQ to separately adjust LOW, MID and HIGH freqs.

The Pinsound board is just better sound hardware across the board.

Absolutely correct - but since he has the Flipper Fidelity upgrade, he has the crossover L-Pad, which gives you a similar amount of control. It’s not exactly the same, and the pinsound is certainly a greater degree of control, but it’s a very minimal difference

Thank you for the info. I would not know, I do not own any Flipper Fidelity hardware.

I put off buying one for quite a while because of all the posts I saw with frustrated people having issues with both hardware and software. I also had no time or inclination of doing the many hours worth of work to create my own mix.

I finally decided to pull the trigger for one on my LOTR because of the multiple mixes available as well as the + board promising to solve the varying sound level issues and my personal experience has been great. The installation went smoothly. The firmware update went fine. The installation of the mix went as the instructions said it would. Most importantly, it sounds absolutely amazing. Hearing the movie soundtrack songs, and high quality callout replacements make me smile every time. To think back to the muddy garbled sounds of the original is laughable now that I have other options.

One thing I would like if I had a wish, is the ability to store multiple mixes on the board and switch to them without accessing the backbox. My lineup is very tight spacing wise and it's a pain to access it.

What is the orchestration change process with LOTR? With the Williams games, you just used the service switches inside the coin door. Take the volume down to 0, press volume down once more and you're off to the next mix on the drive (I have like 8 different mixes on my Getaway right now).

I am not the only who feels this way. I know plenty of people who have pulled them out of their games.
For many reasons they just haven’t posted. I reached out and a great pinsider who knows his pinsound cards well
tried to help and even formatted the file and I loaded it with no luck. I thought I had it fixed but then when I started looking closer I was just getting sound from the original audio visual board From CV. I’m not happy with their product for many reasons. Their customer support sucks as they won’t answer emails. Then if they do you by chance which is slim, they act like you’re an idiot. I get that not everyone gets it. But when I can strip a game completely down and restore it all the way from the wood and decals, to the play field. I have a pretty good grasp of how it works. Why do I need to login to multiple sites just to get a file? And why are you posting files instead of just putting up a wave .wav file the board needs to begin with. I’m not interested in taking it into this program and that program in this program in that program just to convert a file that should already be on the website. I spend hours just making sure the file is correct. Which is what I did with the other day. By the way which was so great helping me. More than I can say for tech-support. Just let me login get the file I need and get out. Don’t make it sound like a plug and play, when that’s really not the case. I can hear all the dings in dong and the loud unnecessary noises it makes just a boot up, USB is in place. So it sees the files but no audio plays. It can recognize when you pulled a USB out. USB is missing. So the audio is there but it won’t play the file. And I think the pinsider who help me out new more than most on here. Maybe the second board is better than the first series but the second series sucks.

Hey WP, all of your points are valid and go with the points I am trying to make. I know of multiple Pinsound buyers that ended up giving up on the board based on their experiences but countless others who have had great success. I think it all goes back to my original point of understanding fully the expectations of what it can deliver and what is required on the part of the end user to get it to work in a multitude of machines.

Bottom line is that often it is not simple, nor is a streamlined process, and it can be vary challenging in many situation (I assure you that I had my own round of complications for a couple of months and went through two boards before things were finally right with me). Personally, Pinsound has changed my game playing experience, but then again I've been all-in and personally developed and shared 9 different Getaway orchestrations with new music themes and even professional voice actor call-outs. Not everyone is as technical/nerdy/geeky/obsessive/whatever other adjective you want to use here as I am, but I'm thrilled with Pinsound and how they have developed over the last few years. Remember, these guys are hobbyist pinball dudes from France, and this is not their real full-time job. The engineered and created the hardware/software out of their love for pinball and brought what they have to the community. I might think differently about the entire situation if this was some major pinball supplier or electronics company bringing this product to market, but given the who, why, and how, I tend to have more patience and understanding. I realize your experience is different, and I empathize with that, but hopefully this has still been a learning experience and others who are considering purchasing a Pinsound can gain insight from our interactions.

No clue lol. If that is how it works it's news to me. So I assume you just keep adding the new mix's to the thumb drive? How do you know which mix you are using? Do you have to play it and notice whatever differences there should be? If I load a new one, will it always play the last one that I loaded..... or the first.... alphabetical? I have just been wiping the drive and only copying one mix to the thumb drive and inserting it again to try different ones.

If these answers/directions are pointed out somewhere please don't feel the need to retype it out, just point me in the right direction.

Great post!

And BTW you can store multiple mixes!

1) You add them in an additional folder under the main “Audio” folder.
2) You switch between them by hitting Volume Down until it’s at 0 (you just have to change the minimum volume override settings),
3) and hit it once more, and the board will play a short sound from that new mix and immediately switch to the new mix.

Now it’s perfect!

See my post above. The game will retain the last mix you left it on. You can also tell which one it’s on by the sound effect it plays when you switch between them. I suppose some mixes might have the same sound, but I have not experienced that. I have 5 mixes on my TZ and 3 or 4 on my DW and they are clear as day which one it’s set to.

For my edification, how do you override the minimum volume setting?

In WPC, it's ADJUSTMENTS -> STANDARD ADJ. -> MIN. VOL. OVERRIDE (Adjustment 1.28). Without it on you can't turn the volume below 8

Ok, back to basics....

Thinking of buying a board.

I thought it was just a question of putting board in game, downloading a mix or original from pinsound website.

Then putting it on a USB memory stick and putting into board.

Turn game on and it's done?

Is it not this simple?

Not strictly that simple - but really it’s not much harder than that. Installing the board is a breeze, downloading the mix can be a bit of a pain The first time - you have to register, etc. putting the mix into the usb drive -properly- seems to be the biggest thing people get tripped up on

Yeah but the instructions are clear?

The ZIP file goes onto the USB stick, then the pinsound hardware will extract it during the first boot. I let mine run overnight.

Yes, or you can manually extract the files and copy them to the USB drive on your computer, and be up and running in just a couple of minutes instead of hours. This is my preferred methodology.

I found it pretty straight forward to install and get the files in usb and plugged in. I just bought my first pinsound for DE Batman. I also added flipper fidelity speakers cause the sound was too “tinny”. I wonder about the quality of the music files themselves I’m still working on getting the eq and sound dialed in. Cool board though but I would recommend assuming the price of upgraded speakers for it to really shine.

I have 5! Yes 5 boards installed in these games Funhouse, BSD, Word Cup Soccer, Getaway and TOTAN. I rewired all the games with new speakers I purchased from parts express and have not any major issues with any of these games as of yet. I wouldn’t say it is PNP but with their website and the information I found on this site I would say it was a 6 out of 10 as far as mods go. Pinsound has given all these games new life except for maybe TOTAN as there is no custom sounds for this game and I don't know if I will end up keeping it installed in this game as I may be selling the game. I have messed with the sounds for World Cup Soccer and I’m close to something I like for me. Is it perfect no but in my opinion if you cant change the physical game play of a game the sound is the next best thing to give these games that extra edge I am looking for. I hope to polish my WCS compilation some day and upload for everyone to use. I give big props to the guys that build these custom compilations for Pinsound because I know how much work is involved.

Obviously you've been pointed on how to add more mixes, but I also added a $6 USB extension cable so my USB drive is now right inside the coin door. Very handy for when I was first creating my mix.

This is a great idea - I wish I’d thought of that when creating my TZ mix!

I’m a little disappointed the PinSound+ included a bunch of (IMO) unnecessary features but did not include an ability to connect via WIFI like a lot of other boards do. Still, it’s a great add on

For whitestar systems it seems that switching mixes is only supported on pinsound+ board, I hope they'll develop that for the original pinsound 1 board as well. I'd love to have a few mixes and an easy way to switch between them on the original board

Bummer! Well Whitestar was added after the initial design, so thats probably why they went with the new design.

You could run a USB extension cable to the coin door, as was suggested above! Then you could just swap drives to change mixes. Not quite as easy but fairly straight forward

Well it's a good thing I just bought a + for my LOTR

This feature is available on PinSound 1 since last summer.

That's really not fair, we spend at least 3 hours every day to reply to any question we receive and to support everybody.

And we definitely don't consider customer as idiot (I'm deeply sorry you felt it this way), on the contrary, we always try to improve our product to make things easier to use.

Nicolas

Nicolas, I for sure appreciated you when you helped me via email. For such a small outfit, you make a really innovative and great product. Your product saved my machine (bad audio channel on my wpc95 a/v board).

Maybe people do not realize that you guys' native language is French? You and I had talked in French and I did NOT think you were condescending at all, quite the opposite.

Oh well, hand in there. On ne peux pas faire plaisir a tout le monde...

Great! Good clarification to know!

Got my board in yesterday. We will see how things go this weekend!!

I think the Pinsound customer service has been very good. They reply to all emails and try to help in every way they can. We just need more custom mixes! I may have to dive into this.

Great news, thank you! I couldnt' find it in the firmware changelog (unlike in the case of pinsound+) so didn't realize it had been added.
I'll give it a try for sure!

Of course they act like you're an idiot! They're French, they think everyone is an idiot

QSS

Oh yeah, I bought one of the Pinsound boards for IJ and it took me days to get it installed correctly. I cursed, I screamed but eventually, with the help of forum members, I got it installed and working perfectly with Endprodukts IJ mix. It's amazing!!! Pinsound is an amazing product but it can be a little challenging to implement. Part of the fun, right!

QSS

Days? Man, I'm looking forward to this. I'll let everyone know how it goes later today!

All done! Sound files loaded perfectly and everything! I'll review this in a bit - right now I'm seeing what the new remix of BSD sounds like!

All right, so I got to play a couple games of BSD with pinsider @hazzard's remix, which was absolutely outstanding. What I have to say really isn't a review; it's more of my experience.

So the unit comes in its own box directly from France (all distributors I knew of state-side were sold out) with just some plastic covering to get it in the mail. Hey, whatever saves me shipping money - I'm ok with that!

So here is what it looks like when you first open the box. Truth be told, I did purchase the SanDisk 16 GB flash drive. Hey, they know what works best with this unit, and the price was like 5 cents different than Amazon. Take the hassle out of it for me!

20190126_125853 (resized).jpg

First things, first - FOLLOW the instructions. At first, I won't deny, I was a bit stumped as I was jumping on Pinside and the PinSound Community Forums looking all over the place for a nice, quick, simple, in-your-face set of instructions. That's when I looked in the packaging and saw these:

20190126_135913 (resized).jpg

The ones on the left come with any PS board, and they lay out ALL possible confirgurations - WPC89, WPC-S, WPC-95, etc. in a very easy to follow format. The latter handout came with the flashdrive, so I don't know for sure if it normally ocmes with each PS board or not. Now, I did one of these back in 2016, and I remember how long it takes to install the files from a zip format. Not fun.

So, what I did was go to Mr_Tantrum 's PinSound Tutorial Thread and went to his opening post: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tantrums-guide-to-pinsound#post-3715636

All you need to do is unzip the remix and then copy and paste that to the USB drive. To make things simple: FORMAT THE USB DRIVE first. Once you do that, unzip your remix of interest on your computer like so:

PS_UnZipping_Mixes (resized).jpg

Within each folder, you should have a folder set-up like this:

PS_UnZipping_Mixes_BSD_Remix (resized).jpg

Now, with Hazzard's BSD remix, he has an additional folder called "single". I do not know the purpose of this particular folder (I'll let Hazzard chime in on that one), but I do know others have installed this remix without incident, so I trusted this folder setup and copy/pasted it directly to my USB drive supplied by PinSound. With both the original and Hazzard remix unzipped, installation took significantly less time (read: 5 mins or so).

I then installed my new board into BSD. Thankfully, this part is rather "NPO proof" (read: idiot proof) as the two main power connectors are uniquely pinned (so they cannot be plugged in incorrectly), the ribbon cable only goes one way and has a raised housing so you cannot accidentally installed it "off center" (installation where you think all the pins and holes line up, but truth be told you installed the ribbon connector one set of pins off), and the speaker wires do not matter as they should complete a circuit connected either way.

20190126_130245 (resized).jpg

Nearly 25 years difference in technology. Love the potentiometers which act as equalizers for treble and bass. I also love the bottom left corner. Notice how there is a note on the bottom left connector? The PS guys mark off which 5V connector NOT to use by covering it up with that note, so you do not inadvertently damaged your new board. Pretty awesome!! Great attention to detail - or "cover your ass" method - depending on how full or empty you see the glass.

Once installed, I plugged in my USB drive, double checked all my connectors, double checked that I had all of them hooked up via the instructions, and then fired the game up. Takes PinSound about 7-10 seconds to initialize, and then the automated voice informs you "Scanning audio files, please wait." or something of the sort. Plays some "happy lil' elevator music" while you wait, and again, you don't wait long if you unzip the files as described above.

Once it's done, you get an "escalating in excitement" 3-chime jingle, and then off you go! I did not take a video of the actual game as you can view it currently on YT:

So, overall, a very simple install. Took me maybe 25 minutes total from opening the box to hitting the start button on my game. Now, that being said, I took advantage of the knowledge and struggles of those before me, and I have had previous experience with PS on a very VERY problematic TAF that had a 5V circuit hitting 4.75V regularly (read: reset nightmare). Even with the Kahr board, that TAF was simply struggling to fire on one, much the less all, cylinders.

To keep things simple: find a remix you like and THEN buy one of these boards and let someone else do the heavy lifting (making the orchestration remix). That lead me to a very simple and fulfilling installation. As time goes on, I may reference Mr_Tantrum's thread for the tools on creating my own remixes just to experiment with it and get more familiar with "beyond the install". As of now, wow, am I happy with this product.

Also, my only experiences rest with WPC89 games, so anyone struggling with Stern SAM games, I'm sorry, I have no experience to provide insights on what could be wrong.

My advice: if you can "get over the hump" of installing the unit, follow the directions to a "t", and take things slowly - the PinSound board seems to be a great product. I can see where people would get frustrated waiting 1-3 hours for the sound files to unzip and install, and THEN the board starts giving you errors and acting up. Do yourself a favor: unzip them on the USB drive - it makes the install go MUCH faster. Hazzard's BSD remix is about 430 Megs; along with the original sounds to install it took about 5 minutes total.

Next, making your own 2.1 stereo harness and introducing your own power supply for the 5V needs to keep your game's 5V breathing gently....!!

Great write-up, thanks for sharing all of the details & success of your Pinsound experience!

Nice and detailed review! Singles are sounds that won't repeat, thus great for endings and game over sounds etc.

Thanks for the detailed review, I'm glad it worked as expected.
For information, the unzipping part is not mandatory, since the PinSound+ is more powerful, it doesn't take as long as it did with the PinSound 1.
We'll shortly release new video guides on how to install the PinSound board on the different machines, I hope it'll help others users.
Thanks to all of you (and especially Mr_Tantrum) for the help!

First video on how to install a PinSound+ board in a Data East pinball machine.
More videos to come for others systems.
Hope you'll find them useful!

https://www.pinsound.org/help/installation-videos/

As you requested, here is the thread detailing how to do this:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/powering-colordmd-and-or-pinsound-with-external-supply

The original Pinsound board has separated volume knob for cabinet and backbox volume. On Pinsound Plus, how can I adjust the volume balance between backbox and cabinet?
Seems this feature is gone... Or am I missed something?

Anyone working on a Simpson’s pinball party remix ? If one game could use an upgraded sound package it’s that one.

I believe the subbass pot is the cabinet volume.