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Author Topic: Sound upgrade?  (Read 1392 times)

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Offline GRAND MOFF TARKIN

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Sound upgrade?
« on: October 14, 2006, 10:20:11 AM »
Greetings folks!

I was wondering if anybody has modified their FX's sound module. I have an Obi Wan and
an Anakin ROTS and I am not super impressed with the volume or the sound clips that MR used.
MR did a great job with the product overall, but I was wondering if anybody out there has figured
out a way to upload diffrent sounds or at least up the volume of their FX saber?

Ultra told me that if I change over to a luxeon blade the sounds will be louder due to less of a power
draw on the batteries for lighting the saber. To be honest I feel that my Hasbro ROTJ from 1995 has a better idle hum then my FX's do.

Working with electronics is not my strongest area so I have yet to take apart the battery holder and see whats in there.

Also does anybody know about ramping up the power output of the MR blade boards? Do we know what the power limit of the leds are in the MR FX sabers?
« Last Edit: October 14, 2006, 10:47:50 AM by pianoman »

Offline Mojo_LA

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Re: Sound upgrade?
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2006, 02:50:05 AM »
I know this was an old post, but I've been thinkng about sound, too.

First of all, I doubt you could alter what's in a MR saber, since most likely all the sound is hard-wired into a sound chip.

Also, I'd be surprised if converting to a Lux made the sound louder.  In fact, when my batteries start dying, the blade seems to fade before the sound, so the speaker is getting plenty of power.

On top of that, the #1 factor affecting the sound quality on the MR is the fact that it sounds like 8-bit sound at a low sampling rate.  During the idle hum, you can clearly hear "static" in the background, which to me sounds like the aliasing of low-res audio.  If MR upgrades to a better chip (which probably means going from a 64k memory chip to somelike like 256k), the sound would be MUCH clearer.

Memory is so cheap now, I'm sure MR could do this sort of upgrade without affecting price.   Now that we've heard they are going to include movie-accurate sounds on the sabers, this means new sound chips - hopefully it will be upgraded sound quality as well.

Offline BEN KENOBI

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Re: Sound upgrade?
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2006, 04:29:14 PM »
Hi Everyone
    I have an obi-wan untouched from masterrepicas and an obi-wan ultra saber with a lux blade. I will tell you that the obi-wan ultra saber with a lux blade is louder than the untouched masterreplicas obi-wan. That's what my ears tell me.I don't know why?DaJoQuim

Offline GRAND MOFF TARKIN

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Re: Sound upgrade?
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2006, 09:25:04 PM »
Because more power is going to the speaker with the luxeon then when it had to power 64 led's.
Thats what Ultra told me. Im going to just wait for Ultras board and get that when It comes out.

Mojo- We will see what MR does with the new ANH Vader, as Im sure it will be a look to the future
of MR sabers.

 

retrousse