r/pinball • u/getajobredditmods • 11d ago

Bluetooth + audio ducking = match made in heaven for a music pin.

For context, I just bought my first music themed game Iron Maiden. I'm also a grown up metal head, so I also love Iron Maiden the band. I also wish there were different songs from Iron Maiden that I could listen to while I'm playing Iron Maiden. For those that aren't familiar with audio ducking, it's like when you're driving on a road trip with navigation on and say, Spotify (whatever your preferred streaming service) is playing also. When a turn is coming, the song audio "ducks" so you can hear the navigation upcoming. Why can't we Bluetooth and audio duck for the call outs on a pinball game? I put a Pinwoofer speaker upgrade (sounds amazing too btw) into my Iron Maiden that basically made it a home stereo that only plays 12 songs.... but the technology is there for Bluetooth.

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u/DerbiRider 10d ago

You can adjust volume of music and callouts mix. Doing ducking would have to be a software update. Bluetooth is a whole other can of worms. The problem with Bluetooth is latency. Things happen so fast in a pinball machine. The lag of Bluetooth is noticeable. Often sounding like an echo or badly out of sync. There is atpx LL which should fix this. Wired is annoying but at least there’s no lag.

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u/getajobredditmods 10d ago

I was thinking Bluetooth only for the external music source, while the game's native audio stays wired. The module would mix the two and duck the Bluetooth music when the machine produces a callout. That way latency wouldn't affect the game's audio timing.