In an effort listen to his music on shuffle without the need to touch the volume knob [Mike] build his own automatic volume leveling hardware. He knows what you’re thinking right now: there’s software to do that for you. But building the feature in hardware is a great stepping off point for a project.

He started the prototype using LabVIEW along with a Mobile Studio development board and a Bus Pirate. This project will be a mix of digital and analog components and it’s a bit easier starting off the exploration with these tools rather than jumping right into the AVR code.

The circuit will sample the incoming audio, modify it accordingly, and output the result. The output side is where the Bus Pirate really shines. He’s using some MCP42010 digital potentiometer chips to make the necessary changes to the levels. They communicate via SPI and it’s nice to have the Bus Pirate’s terminal to issue commands without the need to reflash a microcontroller.

[Mike] made a video showing an audio waveform with and without the hardware leveling. Sound quality is still great, and each clip is played at a reasonably comfortable listening level. We’ve embedded that demonstration after the break.

Continue reading “Microcontroller Based Audio Volume Level Compressor” →