If you wish, you could process the audio data using an eight-bit Arduino Mega microcontroller development platform with 256 Kbytes of Flash and 8 Kbytes of SRAM running at 16 MHz.

You could get by with just one analog input and seven PWM outputs if you merged the two channels (this will be discussed later). Assuming we wish to display the left and right audio channels separately, we need at least two analog inputs, two regular digital outputs, and 14 pulse-width modulated (PWM) outputs. We can construct this audio spectrum analyzer project using pretty much any microcontroller that supports the required set of features. This allows me to use the output from my headphone socket to drive both an external speaker system and my spectrum analyzer.Īt the same time, I ordered two stereo audio cables and a cheap and cheerful amplifier and speaker system. Thus, my first step was to purchase a stereo splitter cable on Amazon. Similarly, if you are using the iPad to drive a Bluetooth boom box, for example, plugging something into the iPad’s headphone socket will terminate the Bluetooth audio feed. The problem is that plugging anything into the headphone socket disables the internal speakers. Since I want to keep things as simple as possible, I intend to drive everything from the iPad’s headphone socket.

Let’s start with the fact that my music source is my iPad. In these cases, I’ll kindly ask anyone who already knows this stuff to bear with me.

Since I think this will be of interest to beginners, as well as practicing engineers, I will go slowly and take the time to explain some basic concepts here and there.

Software audio spectrum analyzer