Analog vs. Digital: The Best Mic for Audio Reactive WLED

[@withanHdammit]

Nice comparison. Welcome back!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! Good to be back... and good to hear from you!

[@davidricebowled]

Hope you had a good break, it's good to see you back!

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! I greatly appreciate it. The break was nice and I spent some time working with another individual on a pretty big project (video of that project hopefully coming soon!). I truly do appreciate the comment and kind words. Thanks again!

[@holohane]

Hello from Ireland. Good to see you back. Great video as always. Eddie

[@ResinChemTech]

Thank you! I appreciate it. It was a nice break, but it's good to be back as well.

[@EdwinPWeston]

Wow, great video, glad I stayed to the end, I have been wanting to try line-in on one of my projects, thanks for the schematic!

[@ResinChemTech]

I haven't tried the line-in option yet, but am also interested in possibly trying on of those line-in to I2S boards to see how the LEDs react. Thanks for watching... and for the comment!

[@rodneysmith1750]

Great to see another video today glad that you survived the vacation. I would have guessed the digital mic to be the best when you began but I was surprised how far apart they were.

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks Rodney! I think you can tweak the analog mic for a particular situation, but as soon as something changes (type/tempo of music, effect, distance, etc.), you have to tweak the mic settings again... and each time thereafter. But with the digital mic, it pretty much works will little-to-no changes to its settings. Glad to be back... and glad to hear from you again!

[@georgevue8175]

Excellent video - I am a WLED newbie & purchased the Dig-Quad & for simplicity I chose to go with the analog microphone for my home project. After watching your awesome video on my next project for my son's college dorm room I will go with a digital microphone, I liked the way the digital microphone performed over the analog.

[@ResinChemTech]

From my personal experience, the digital microphones are so much better, easier to setup and configure and overall much more responsive. Let me know what you think after trying a digital mic. Thanks for watching and taking a moment to post a comment. I appreciate it!

[@richsadowsky8580]

Good to see you again. I've given up on analog mics unless its a really lo-fi application. I find the INMP441 is the best choice in most cases, especially voice reactive wled. I love audio reactive lights.

[@ResinChemTech]

Agreed. I used analog mics (mostly MAX9814) but once I tried the INMP441, I never went back to the analog version. For the most part, the digital mic is "set it and forget it" as it works well across a lot of different situations, where the analog mic seemed to need constant tweaking based on source and distance. Thanks for the comment... and I'm glad you took a moment to post it!

[@MaultierKojote]

Great video as usual! I would be interested in the line-in solution as well...

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! I haven't tried the line-in option (yet), but I think the easiest way would be to just pick up one of those line-in to I2S adapters. Then it would be wired much like the INMP441. It's something I may take a look at down the road. Thanks for watching... and for the comment!

[@VIPvog]

Great demonstration of the 2 microphones. Do you know how to install a 3.5mm jack or rca's instead of a microphone? Thanks for your time

[@ResinChemTech]

While I haven't personally tried it, you can find info on using line-in options with WLED on the WLED site: kno.wled.ge/advanced/audio-reactive/#line-in-options

[@shaneparker5364]

Fantastic vid! My analog mic only seems to work sometimes in the sound reactive wled 0.13.4 version. I can't seem to get the audioreactive versions of wled to work with my analog mic like you did here. I noticed you mentioned that you shouldn't use an ADC2 pin for input. Does this apply to the data out wire from the esp32 wifi board to the leds? I currently have this data out wire running to what I think is an ADC2 pin (it's the D2 pin). Other than that, I have a similar configuration with no reaction from any volume of audio and am not sure what the issue might be.

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! As far as the ADC2 pins, yes you can use them for digital signals like the data line for LEDs (or push buttons, digital sensors, etc.). You just cannot defined and use one of the ADC2 pins as an analog input at the same time as WiFi. From the Espressif site: "ADC2 is used by the Wi-Fi driver. Therefore the application can only use ADC2 when the Wi-Fi driver has not started." But you can use these pins for purposes other than analog. As far as the analog mic, it can often be tricky to get it tweaked so that it reacts at an acceptable level. There are a number of things to try. If you've lowered the squelch and increased the gain settings in WLED and still aren't getting any reaction, you might try increasing the gain on the mic itself. Instead of connecting the gain pin to Vdd, try connecting it to ground (boosting the gain from 40 to 50 db). I've had this work with a few MAX9814 mics. If none of those ideas work, nor changing to other ADC1 pins, then you may need to look at wiring or the mic itself. It's always possible that you simply have a faulty component.

[@Toolauction01]

I use the same digital mic on a few of my led strips after seeing it on one of your previous videos. It works very well. You can adjust the sensitivity to use leds to light up a room when a pin drops if you want to.

[@ResinChemTech]

Yeah, in some of my older videos, I used the analog MAX9814. But since then, I've discovered the digital mic and how much better it works. So I decided to make this video in the hopes that anyone that might have seen one of my older videos with the analog mic might also stumble across this one and see how much better the digital version can be. Thanks for watching... and thanks for the comment!

[@Keinmotovlog]

Sir I make wled project on vehicle, I need an idea 😅 ( on motorcycle) my idea is 3 channel which each channel have some segment, but i still have a problem on setting welcome light

[@Max-jg5uf]

Thanks for the nice video. Your videos help a lot to get into the topic of WLED! :) Just one thing that I noticed when I use audioreactivity on WLED is that I often have the impression that it lags behind the sound a lot. In your video it also seemed to lag behind the sound a bit. What do you think about that or do you have an idea on how to improve the reactivity?

[@ResinChemTech]

Yeah... there is (and probably always will be) a very short lag. I don't know if this could ever be precisely in sync as the microphone has to pick up the sound, send it to the ESP which has to process that signal, then send a signal onto the LEDs. This process will always introduce at least a slight delay between what your ears hear and what your eyes see. I haven't tried it, but using the line-in option might reduce this lag slightly. To be honest, when I have rather loud music playing and a lot of different WLED displays reacting, I generally don't really notice the lag unless I'm specifically looking for it. I think the only way to get perfect synchronicity would be with something like the Hue Syncbox, where the signal is received and processed for light output BEFORE it is sent to the actual display that your eyes see.

[@jstro-hobbytech]

cool vid. do you find that some of the esp32s3 boards with micro usb and cheap serial programming chips like the ch34x line are hard to program because it tries to pull too much current from the pc usb? i've had to use programmers for my old ones unless there's a usbc port. plus the micro falls off so easy. i've repaired so many usb micro ports on so many different devices over the years. especially cheap smd ones. they have no structural integrity. some usbc ports are as bad too though, i've always got a pile of ps5 controllers to fix. because the usbc pads tear.

[@ResinChemTech]

I actually have a few s3 boards in my parts, but have yet to actually use one for anything yet. I haven't personally had any issues with the USB ports or current draw of any of my varieties of ESP8266 or ESP32... yet! But there are certainly manufacturers out there that are selling the boards so cheap, I imagine that any sort of fraction of a cent they can save on making the boards, they are going to implement. I have had "bad batches" of boards before, but those generally wouldn't even power on or just couldn't be flashed. I guess part of dealing with bulk manufactured, low-cost parts. Thanks for the comment!

[@ZACZELDA32]

good evening and welcome back, beautiful comparison and explanation, as always you are very good, a little question, in your opinion if you can use the same analogue microphone connected to an esp to update an old wired alarm system, for example in case the alarm sounds a notification will arrive via esphome or via tasmota? thanks in advance...your fun from Rome

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! I enjoyed the break, but I'm glad to be back. If I understand you correctly, you want a system that would listen for the alarm buzzer/siren and when detected, it would send a notification, correct? If that's what you are looking at doing, then I stumbled across something based on another question regarding dryer notifications. Instead of a true analog microphone, you may want to use something that triggers based on an (adjustable) sound level. Something like this: amzn.to/3ZZH0Yf This could be connected to a GPIO pin and it will trigger when the sound is above a level that you can set via the onboard potentiometer. In ESPHome, you could define a GPIO binary sensor. When the alarm sounds, it would turn on the binary sensor and this could be used as the trigger in an automation to send a notification to your phone (or make an announcement on a speaker, turn on a bunch of lights, etc.). It might have issues with false triggers if installed in a noisy location where other loud noises might exceed the sound threshold, but if the alarm siren is as loud as ours, it probably won't be an issue. If that wasn't what you were asking or looking for, please let me know and I'll try to provide an answer to what you were really asking about!

[@Keinmotovlog]

Sir please help, i set my wled with welcome light set on my preset at boot but it is laging , why?

[@ResinChemTech]

I'm not 100% sure what you are asking, but if you are powering on the WLED controller based on some outside trigger or event, there will always be a bit of lag time because it takes a few seconds for the WLED controller to boot up and connect to WiFi . The signal will only be sent to the LEDs after the boot process completes and WiFi is connected (the time to join WiFi is likely what is causing the delay before the LEDs turn on). If you want the LEDs to react faster based on something like a motion or distance sensor, then you probably need to leave the WLED controller powered on and use either a relay just for the LED power, or simply turn the LEDs off (instead of powering off the entire controller itself). I hope that is what you were asking and provides some pointers.

[@Keinmotovlog]

@@ResinChemTech great answer sir, i will try to redesign my project,🙏🏻 apologize me for my English language, I just learning.... Great from Indonesia 🇲🇨

[@MrJacoob75]

Another video using a microphone to control sound. Maybe someone can post a video on how to control via USB? Why do I need this? Because when I use headphones the visualizer won't work.

[@aamiddel8646]

I guess they are both analog microphones. But using different 'front ends'. Would be interesting to see how they perform when just te microphones are switched?

[@ResinChemTech]

I'm not sure I follow. The MAX9814 is analog and communicates via an analog pin on the ESP32. But the INMP441 is definitely digital and uses I2S to "talk" to the ESP32. And not sure what you mean by different 'front ends'. Both controllers and the LED displays are identical, and both controllers are using the exact same version of the WLED firmware. The 'front end' is identical for both. The only difference between the two setups are the microphones that are connected to each of the controllers... and of course the microphone configuration in WLED is different for each. Otherwise, it is an apple-to-apple comparison as only the mics are different. Maybe I am misunderstanding to what you are referring as the 'front end'.

[@aamiddel8646]

@@ResinChemTech Most likely on the 'digital microphone board' there is an old fashion analog microphone. With the 'front end' on the digital board i meant the chip that converts the analog signal from the microphone into a digital signal (A to D converter, ADC) and after that in an I2C data signal. On the 'analog microphone board' most likely there is only an amplifier and the ADC is done in the ESP32. My comment has nothing to do with the WLED processing. Hope this clarify my suggestion.

[@jstro-hobbytech]

using little opamp circuits and cheap cyclet mics works in a pinch but it's messy.