Volume, NOT the old stupid question, a new stupid question

[Subarubrat]

I can't think of any good reason to regulate the volume after final amplification. Wouldn't it be much easier to regulate the volume in the pre-amp section? Since the factory volume setting controls the attenuation going into the amplifier through a resistor network it seems like it would be a simple matter to insert a pot in place and have total volume control before the amplifier. I am sure there is a reason that this hasn't been done but I can't imagine what that would be.

[alstonj1]

there isn't any reason you cant do that except each machine is different by each vendor and most mods around here are done to make it easier for the average user to modify their machine in a generic way other wise known as the kiss principle . Feel free to enlighten us as to your method and if its easy enough to do i'm sure most people will be happy to do it to their machine .

[djcasper_bpm]

ditto, it could be done, just need to locate the correct wires... the only question i have is why are these things so darn loud to begin with? onimusha made my ears bleed the first time i turned it on. cant imagine a room with hundreds of those things.

[Subarubrat]

You would think with their being so many games on lumina or other common chassis that it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

[vasco]

Thank god i have a onimusha with volume control. Otherwise the sound would be to high, and my kids would wake up everytime i would be playing. Now during the day i can play it louder (great sound man) and in the evening i play it with the volume down... i am in heaven...

[dattia]

You are one of the lucky ones. I had to have volume controls put in all my machines... with the help of my PachiFriends, of course!!!

[pachinut]

FORTUNATELY, Aladdin was the first machine that I've had to do anything to. The others all dropped to reasonable volumes at the lowest setting. Aladdin had three settings, loud, louder and loudest. I'd love to know how to solve the problem at a lower level, but I have no schematics. As far as I know, no one does. So, I threw a HUGE fifty ohm resister at each of the four speakers. It worked. No, it isn't the best way. But it was the best way I knew of. Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Regards

PachiNut

[djcasper_bpm]

why do these things have to be so loud in the first case.. i am a dj so i am used to loud speakers right next to me. but good lord, onimusha just about made my ears bleed the first time i played...

[pachinut]

Check out P-mart.net. The parlors have our pop music running at very high volumes, and operators talking over that. Add several hundred pachi machines and the result is the tower of babel. So he who has the loudest voice wins. The manufacturers try to override all that so that you hear what they wanted you to hear. I can understand that, kind of. But my wife, in the next room, couldn't even hear the television. Short of the Allmam Brothers, I've never heard anything like Aladdin. BTW, the Allman Brothers were way better...

[Subarubrat]

I have had my Golden samurai for about 2 years, and my Star Wars Pachinko for about a year and I was still fiddeling around with the options. So last night I got home form work, soldered a 50 ohm 10 watt in line with each speaker on the Golden Samurai, and on the Star Wars I soldered in the same, it was still too loud, so I added a resistor bridge that dropped the volume but kept the speaker resistance at 8 ohms. After that the volume was great on both of them and I played them more that evening and saw more great scenes and action than I did in the whole time I owned them so far.

[alstonj1]

the only problem with your suggestion is like most computer sound cards the sound is generated and amplified on the same card making it almost impossible for the electronically challenged to find the correct location to sever the lands on the circuit board and solder their pot wires .although the easiest would be to desolder the slide switch and hook your pot in series with the lands on the former slide switch lowest setting this should give you exactly what your looking for considering most slide switches just switch between resistors on the board anyway .

[MaxW]

Yes I agree with with you. It´s wrong to put a simple pot directly on the speaker cables because the pot shouldn´t handle that kind of power. I´ve actually smoked 4 out of 5 of my Tomb Raider machines before I had to put an x-tra heavy duty pot on the bass speaker at the back (That speaker is capable of handling 20W!).
And I´ve also smoked my Star Wars machines pots. So the only right thing to do is to change the built-in threeway switch to at pot, it wouldn´t hurt to ask for a audio-pot from your local electronic-shop if you like to have the best sound quality.

Max

PS About the Tomb Raider I´ve also had to make new transformers which could cope with the power. The original only gives 100W and it would need at least 200W.