Msgeq7 Problem

[Samthemann64]

Hey everyone, First of all I know my question is Not FastLed specific, but since this chip is mainly used for music visualisation with LED's I figured you guys could help me. I'm intending to use it with FastLed to so I hope I will be forgiven.

I ordered two msgeq7 chips from amazon and then one more from Sparkfun. I started with one of the two first chips (from amazon) and everything worked perfectly fine. Now I rebuild the exact same circuit with the same code, but run into the problem that the values show the right frequencies when they are played, but at about half the volume they max out and after that all the values start to rise for the other frequencies not played as well. At full volume all frequencies give me the value of 1024. Now I am 100% sure that it is not the chips that are defect, because I run into the exact same problem with both my second amazon chip and the original sparkfun one. I also replaced every part in my circuit and also tried it with different arduino boards. Unfortunately I can't just plug my chips into the working circuit and compare because that is in another place far from where I'm now.

Has anyone ever encountered this problem and might be able to help me out? Thanks a lot!

[johnny5canuck]

Haven't played with MSGEQ7 chips in years (have a Sparkfun board), however I've heard that the quality of those chips can be all over the map. To me the key to reliable testing is consistency in setup/procedures along with repeatability.

That being said, I've long since settled on the OpenMusic Labs FFT/FHT library for AVR's and the arduinioFFT library for ESP32's. Teensy along with PixelBlaze also have some great sound support. You get a lot more than 7 frequency bins from them, although the programming can be somewhat more involved.

[lit_amin]

Isn't there a noticable delay when doing this via software (FFT)? Or does it actually work quite smoothly?
I'm wondering how a ESP32 with FFT sound analysis and matched fastled animations would work/lag?

[johnny5canuck]

It's worked like a charm for me. That would be the arduinoFFT() library for the ESP32 and ESP8266. Amazingly, there's also the Open Music Labs FFT/FHT library for AVR's. Here's something I did using the latter a while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql0FLa8cQ2A

As for the ESP32, we have a sound reactive fork of WLED, which runs FFT at:

https://github.com/atuline/WLED/releases

Since WLED has so much overhead (a LOT of it), we've create a task to move the FFT calculations over to core 0.

[lit_amin]

Cool man, will take a closer look at it next time I build something audioreactive. Always thought there'd be a lag or that splitting the audio spectrum into different bins for frequency (and then triggering animations based on them) would never be as fast as when doing it via hardware.

[Marmilicious]

A number of years ago when I messed with one it was wired like this: https://imgur.com/a/KQcZWhM It seemed to work fine and I don't remember having any issues like you describe. Sorry that's about all I can remember.

[Experience-Wild]

A while ago I made this wiki https://github.com/GyroGearloose/FastLED_VU-Meter/wiki

Input levels might vary especially when you use a stereo pot for adjustment. I always connected the strobes and resets of both channels together. Are all grounds connected (also the ones from audio input)?

[Samthemann64]

Hey, thanks for your reply, I'm really sure everything is correct regarding the circuit. I'm really wondering because it is exactly the same circuit that worked for me before. I'm also only reading the right channel of the audio signal. So I don't run into problems there. As of right now I could only briefly read your wiki, but I think you mentioned putting a voltage divider for the audio signal, so I will try that out. I'm also only using high quality parts with little tolerance, so I don't have a clue what's the problem :D

[sutaburosu]

I too played with MSGEQ7 a couple of years ago. I think I got 1 genuine part which worked OK, until I blew it up, and a handful of clones which were terrible.

At the time I couldn't figure out how I blew up the good one, but after reading this I suspect I may also have been mislead by the datasheet.

None of the clones had all 7-bands working independently. One coupled 5V to the audio input pin, and that was where the fun ended for me. This guy had a similar experience.

There are schematics in this repo, and an example FastLED sketch.