• audio muting circuit at certain threshold?

    From Jake T@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 11 08:13:02 2022
    Quick question for what I hope might be a simple circuit. I just set up
    an ultra sensitive electret mic to monitor some bird activity near my residence. There was no AGC used, so when a jet flys close, it sounds
    like my speakers are going to burn out from the loud sounds. Of course,
    i suppose I could build an AGC, but was looking for something simpler,
    maybe something that would mute the audio when a certain audio level is exceeded? Suggestions for such a circuit would be welcome. It would be
    placed between the mic output and speaker. Thanks in advance.

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  • From Peter W.@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 11 06:30:45 2022
    https://sound-au.com/articles/muting.html

    Is a start. Battery power adds complication.

    Peter Wieck
    Melrose Park, PA

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  • From whit3rd@21:1/5 to Jake T on Wed Jan 12 18:59:04 2022
    On Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 5:13:08 AM UTC-8, Jake T wrote:
    Quick question for what I hope might be a simple circuit. I just set up
    an ultra sensitive electret mic to monitor some bird activity near my residence. There was no AGC used, so when a jet flys close, it sounds
    like my speakers are going to burn out from the loud sounds. Of course,
    i suppose I could build an AGC, but was looking for something simpler,
    maybe something that would mute the audio when a certain audio level is exceeded? Suggestions for such a circuit would be welcome. It would be
    placed between the mic output and speaker. Thanks in advance.

    There's an integrated circuit, LM13700, that has this basic function.
    See figure 17 here
    <https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm13700.pdf>

    That example uses one half the chip, and responds to pulling the 'gain control' pin low
    when the sound is too loud. The tricky part is, you use the other half of the chip
    to amplify, rectify the sound from AC to negative DC, smooth the DC with a capacitor,
    and steal some current from the "Iabc" circuit node while that capacitor
    stays negative. It's just a couple of capacitors, diode, and a lot of fiddling with
    resistor values.

    Alas, it's an oddball chip, and an oddball kind of design.

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