Winamp, LivePRO & Microphone...

Hi all

I read somewhere in a past post that it is possible to get Winamp to accept input from an external microphone. I need to do this so that I can use the microphone/Winamp/LivePRO plugin to enable the beat feature in LivePRO.

Basically i'm going to be sat at the back of a venue with my laptop running LivePRO and I want to be able to detect the beat of the audio.

I've tried searching past postings but can't seem to find the post where it was discussed, I'm not certain but I think it was Buffo or Cruch that had the solution.

Cheers

Jem

I tried to get it to work, but ran into a problem with the cheap on-board audio hardware on my motherboard that prevented it from working.

However, here's how you do it:

Load Winamp. Right-click on the faceplate and select Play, from URL, and then type "linein://" without the quotes in the requester that pops up. Hit enter. Now start playing some audio from an external source that's connected to the line in jack on your sound card. (An I-pod will do...) If everything is working, you should see the level meter in winamp start to move to the beat. If it does, then you're all set. Load up the AVS Laser Plug-in and you've got an automatic beat-sensitive laser show.

I didn't know that Live Pro also supported beat detection through Winamp... That's cool. (Damn, that's another reason for me to upgrade to Live Pro!) Let us know how you make out...

Adam

Thanks Adam, you're a star :)

I knew it was something along those lines, I had just missed off the ':'

Sadly i've had to pack in playing with my lasers for tonight, but i'll give it a go tommorrow. I'm totally hooked on the audio features in LivePRO, you can get some fantastic effects that make a beamshow look totally customised to the music, and all without doing anything as the music's playing :D

I'll report back tommorrow with an update ;)

Jem

Quick update...

Shhhh.... I managed to sneak off to my workshop to try this out :)

IT WORKS!!!!!!!!

WOW!!!

Plugged a microphone into my laptop, started Winamp, selected line input, started the LivePRO plugin, started LivePRO, clicked on the 'detect audio beat' feature, clicked on select sequential cues, adjusted the audio settings for brightness and size of the beams, clicked on 'Play' and sat back.

WOW!!!

Beams everywhere, all pulsating, swirling, changing colour, fading in and out to the beat of the music.

A full laser sound to light show :D :D :D

I then tried it with my iPod, it is detecting the beat and I have audio input, but there is no audio output from my laptop speakers :( - Any suggestions as to how I may be able to get the audio from my iPod so I can hear it?

Jem

Glad to hear that it's working, Jem!

As to why you have no audio, it could be that you need to fiddle with the audio properties in the control panel. Check the settings and be sure the volume sliders are up and nothing is muted.

However, it may be a problem with the hardware on your computer. But try messing around in control panel first.

Adam

O.K., so now i'm going to make myself look really stupid ...

I had the microphone mute box checked :rolleyes:

Funny thing is that I had assumed that because Winamp was picking up the audio it would automatically be output to the speakers.

Ah well, everything's fine now and I have access to my full music library on my iPod :)

Oh and Adam... You definately need an upgrade to LivePRO ;) :D

Jem

Live Pro (and live pro usb) is a powerfull software!!
So cool to play with..

Jem;

Yeah, Live Pro is on my short list for upgrades to my laser software. (Right up there with adding more oscillators to the abstract generator!) We'll have to see how the funds go though; C-mas is going to be rough this year, and I still gotta pay for spring tuition and books for my youngest son...

For what it's worth, this doesn't work on all machines. I can't get this line-in trick to work on at least two computers... (Up to this point I've only tried it on the two machines that I've got dedicated solely to laser work.) But I know other people that have it working on their machines, so it *does* work if your hardware is up to snuff.

Bottom line - If you've got the cheap-ass AC97 sound hardware on your motherboard, you may encounter the same difficulty I did. (The sound plays just fine, but Winamp won't detect a beat.) If you have better on-board sound, or a separate sound card, you should be OK.

I've got a spare Soundblaster Live card that I'm going to install next and see if that solves my problem. (It should...)

Adam

what is winamp??

everyone keeps going on about it? does it come with the fb3???

Hi Andy

It's basically just a media player for Windows, available here...

http://www.winamp.com/

The reason it's so poular amongst laserists is it's ability to interface with LivePRO through a plugin. There's also other plugins available for laser visualisations.

Cheers

Jem

Quote:

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Originally Posted by andy_con

what is winamp??

everyone keeps going on about it? does it come with the fb3???

---

i see, so once i have downloaded winamp do i need anything else to get it to work with livepro

andy_con: You got the FB3? With Live Pro usb?

yeah .

without no extra cost?? Con grats! ;) we are so lucky!!
You need winamp + plugin +Live Pro and I think you are ready to try it out ;)

thanks LOL

i got one of the very first batch of fb3's.

sorry to be stupid, plugin???

Hi Andy

You'll need the Winamp plugin(s) from Pangolin. I think it's the one called vis_lp.dll but I would need to check as that may just be the visualisations plugin. You may need another one for the LivePRO beat detection.

Start Winamp, Start LivePRO, Start the plugin, if all's well you'll see a small dialog box appear mid screen, this is the beat detection window. play a song in Winamp and watch the beat detection window, you should see little bars moving across the window in time with the beat, the sensitivity can be set by a slider bar at the left hand side of this window. Once you have this bit working, go into LivePRO and click 'Play' and click on a cue. Now select the audio beat button at the top right(ish) of the screen, you'll see some activity from the visual indicators next to the beat button.

Next got to the 'Audio' drop down tab at the very right of the screen and you'll see various options for brightness, size and movement, each option has four checkboxes (one for each channel) just select these as required and watch the results :)

It takes a while to get used to the adjustments and I would advise only running one channel and one cue until you get used to what it can do as it's easy to overly complicate things. Simplicity is sometimes best or in other words less is more.

Have fun, for me getting this working was a real 'Eureka' moment, once you have mastered the above you can then start playing with the beat selectors down the right hand side of the cue section, these move the cues depending on how many beats have taken place. As usual in LivePRO everything is totally customisable :D

Jem

ok thanks, when my scanner is back up and running ill try this.

do i need to e-mail pangolin about getting vis_lp.dll???

I have uploaded the plugin to the ftp server.
Under Pangolin Winamp Plugin

Howto:
Put this plugin in winamp folder C:\Programfiler\Winamp\Plugins

Then open Winamp, press Options, Preferences.
Scroll down to Plug-ins, then to Visualzation.
Select the Pangolin LivePro Audio link plugin and press start
In live pro, on top icons.
you find a speaker, hold you pointer over it and it says "Enable Audiolink from LivePro Winamp plug-in"
Press the speaker and you are ready to use it! :)
Now you can fiddle around...

lol cool cheers

If you can't get your mic to work, there are a couple options to try with your sound card.

1st thing: open your volume control, check to see if your mic is muted, and make sure the slider is up (duh).

another thing you may need to try, some cards have headers for other inputs, and even if those inputs don't exist, the software may still have sliders for them. the way most windows mixers work is that one "input" can be selected at a time. to change this, open your volume control, and select "properties"
you'll see a menu that says "adjust volume for" with a couple radio buttons underneath. Select "recording", and in the box below, make sure "microphone" or "line in" is checked. click ok and you'll open up the recording mixer.

this will pop up another similar-looking volume control box, but if you look at it, the boxes under the volume sliders will be labeled "select" and you can only check one. if you're using a mic, make sure that is selected and vice versa. this may solve your problem. if it doesn't, you have another option:

Go to your control panel and open "Sounds and audio devices"
click on the voice tab, make sure your sound card is selected and click "Test hardware". this will start a sound hardware test wizard. if you have a mic or ipod making nosie, you should be able to hear it or at least see a level on the mic test page.


most of you probably already know this, but just in case i figured i'd spout it off.

Andy!
Did you get the plugins to work ?

i currently dont have a working scanner, so im not going to try for a few weeks.

i should be getting a blue tomorrow.
my scanner is in bits

Boring! But you could try just the software! :)
To see if it works! :D

if i get time ill have a look today mate ;)