I'm working on a little side project to project the PF/player and DMD
to a screen (pf) and a tv (for the DMD). I also would like to add
audio if possible since sound gets washed out with distance and
ambient noise. Can I just stick the mic next to one speaker (two
speaker mono) or do the games feature true stereo sound with separate
audio channels?

I can't think of a practical way to capture the stereo effect if it's
the latter, except by dangling a microphone front and center of the
speakers and that would distract the player.

@fusion301 - I considered that route, and would definitely do it if it were a machine I owned but this will be in a tournament environment with other peoples' games so I don't have that option.

@letter k - maybe a condenser mic is the ticket with the levels tweaked. It will be a high ambient noise environment but what I want is for spectators who may be positioned 20 feet from the game to still get a sense of the audio. I find that without audio pinball loses a lot of appeal. Doesn't have to be cd-quality. Likewise, the actual game speakers will hopefully contribute to the effect so the end result is palatteable.

Just found this:

http://www.pinballnews.com/learn/speaker/index.html

Looks like drbond was right!

That's good news. Makes my job much easier...

Your mention of an article gave me the idea to google around and I found it.

Yeah, midi is pretty "old hat" these days, though it was a great format when bandwidth and storage space were still expensive, and samples came at a premium.

Yeah, the mic on/near the one speaker should work I guess. Not sure how the set up dimensions will work but ideally, I'll just dangle a mic from the camcorder's jack as close to the speaker as possible and see how it sounds. If that picks up okay, that would be great because then I don't have to monkey with a bunch of mixing later.

I should have the whole thing ready to go and test next week. The guys at Lucky Ju Ju said I could bring it in to test, and they even have a spare 22" flat screen monitor. So my plan is to project the playfield on a wall or large screen (like 100" diagonal) and then send the display (dmd or score reels) to the flat screen.

I'll also use my little crappy bookshelf stereo as well. If it can put out okay sound, I would rather use it in the future because it's portable and I won't be sad if someone decides to walk away with it.

hmm regarding sound, how do games regulate the volume? Like in BSD, when things get cooking the sound can crank up A LOT. Is this a soundboard function? Such as just cranking more juice to the speakers? If so it could have a multiplied effect with an amp in the mix.

I guess you could nullify it with a low level converter, but then the volume changes would be lost altogether too.

Yeah, not a bad idea at all. I was thinking about that, and there's also things like sling boxes for video.

In my head I foresee there will be some issues here and there moving the equipment around. I did these quick sketches in paint to get an idea what a typical layout would look like.

simple.PNG avreceiver.PNG

Well, I ran into a problem with the base - it sucks, very unstable. Once in place I'm not worried that it will fall over but I made the hitch pin holes too big so it's not really adjustable either. I might just bite the bullet and buy a christmas tree stand.