Thanks, but all credit for the 230V solution goed to ajhippel !!
This night I spent about 3 hours for two things:
- get the sound just like I want it
- get the knocker sound just like I want it
There are 4 pots on the soundboard:
R6 = clock frequency of the voice. This controls the pitch (tone) of the speech
R13 = controls the input level from the DAC to the amp (game sounds only)
R15 = volume adjust of game sounds
R16 = volume adjust of voice
Now this took a bit of fiddling. Already had done the pitch (R6) but I thought the voice volume was too low compared to the game sounds. So I upped R16. That improved it. However there was some balancing needed with the input pot (R13) and R15 and of course the main volume pot on the test panel. If you don't set this correctly, the game sounds may end up sounding distorted.
Next was the knocker: I wasn't happy with the sound. It was to much a sharp, high pitched "tack" sound. Of course I remembered that the developpers had intended some foam to be installed at the knocker so that the should would be less sharp and more of a "thud" instead.
So I got out some soft (furniture) foam and some plastic kind of stuff and experimented.
One thing that annoys me is the sound that happens when the plunger is release back to it's rest position. Of course there is a small rubber "catch" there but you still hear it. Wanted to silence that as much as possible.
I settled for the plastic kind of stuff for that part.
The actual spot where the knocker hits the metal I chose for the soft furniture foam though. After all, curly and Q*bert are soft living beings that drop down in the cab, not some metal
Sounds WAY better and I think this is what the designers had imagined it to be.
Glued both to the knocker. It looks weird but I think it'll work great.
One of the disadvantages of using this foam is that the starting postion of the plunger is quite a bit higher than normally so the power of the hit is less but that's not a real problem IMHO.
