Thread: Audio syncronization - I'm stumped

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Let me describe the effect I'm trying to get. I have a very long driveway (50' or so). I will have a graveyard along the driveway/walkway. What I want is to have a speaker on 4 or 5 of the "graves". As the person walks up the driveway they will hear (from grave 1): "What is that?" (from grave 2): "I think its a child!" from grave 3: "a child... what is a child doing here?" from grave 4: "it wants candy <maniacle laugh>".

I found little audio controll boards what I can hook speakers up to and record my own audio on each. Here is my problem... I can not find a way to trigger only the first audio and then have the others triggered off of the first. The electronics store suggests that I trigger each seperately but I know the parents will be hanging out in the driveway and triggering it out of order which will make me crazy. I also do not want them talking over the others.

I would really appreciate any help you can give me on this.

You could maybe time it in your recordings as if you walk your driveway yourself. I think that this may be a challenge due to if #1 re-triggers after a group walks through. This would be very easy. Although if they run up your driveway the theory is shot. Maybe this might help.

So you have ~5 separate audio players, correct? Each with its own recording and speaker.

You want a single trigger to play #1, wait X seconds, play #2, wait Y seconds, play #3...etc, correct?



What I think I would do, it to wire the trigger to all 5 players. But in between trigger and #2, add a 555 timer circuit timed to X seconds, another 555 timer circuit between the trigger to #3 tuned to Y seconds, etc. I don't have one handy, but there are lots of 555 circuit examples to be found and the parts are pretty cheap and available at RatShack.

But with prop triggering, you always need to decide how to handle re-triggers. Should the trigger go 'inactive' for the duration of time it takes for all 5 clips to play? If so, perhaps another 555 timer to 'disable' it. Or something on the end of #5 to re-enable the trigger, etc.



Another more elaborate approach might be a single audio track, but then switch relays on/off so the sound comes out of a different speaker at certain points.

I would rethink the whole setup, as it doesn't make sense to me. Why would you want to wait for a child to trigger the next grave's dialogue if it is response to the first graves lines? The script would sound funny if there is a significant delay between lines...think about it, a kid triggers the first grave and stops and stares at it for 10-15 seconds...meanwhile nothing happens then when he finally moves the second then third lines are spoken from different graves, all with giant pauses between them. I don't know, maybe just put the whole track in mono with a speaker in each grave that would be heard as the kid walks b each one. If they don't walk by each, it'll still sound good.