In-line audio visualizer hardware

[High_Speed]

Okay, so you all have to remember the old-school amps of yesterday (and some of the really high-end amps of today) with the visualizer needles. And up into the 80s and 90s, digital LED visualizers became more popular. I miss those! And I know it's a useless "bell" or "whistle," but dog-gonnit I like 'em! And it just irritates me that you can't find an amp or receiver today with anything like that.

I have a fairly nice Onkyo HT receiver. The things got more inputs and outputs than I can count, including something like 4 optical inputs and 2 hdmi outputs. In other words, it's got all the needed "av features."

But here's my question. I was sitting at my desk today listening to some MP3s on Winamp, and I just glanced at the little visualizer bars built into it and a lightbulb went off in my head. Does anybody know of anybody out there that makes just a simple hardware device that can go inline somewhere (i don't know, perhaps between a preamp and amp for example) that will display anytype of "visualization" be it needles or LEDs? For example, I would be happy with a box that had LEDs across it that had optical audio in and that same optical audio out. And in the process, it just interpreted the frequencies in the audio and used that to fire up the LEDs (for example), or needles showing the volume of the audio.

Does anybody know of anything like this at all?

[Rich-n-Texas]

Didn't they used to call them fluoroscan meters? I've been receiver shopping recently but haven't seen them on anything in the price range I'm looking at.

Welcome to the AR forums BTW.

[High_Speed]

Didn't they used to call them fluoroscan meters? I've been receiver shopping recently but haven't seen them on anything in the price range I'm looking at.

Welcome to the AR forums BTW.

Yeah! Remember the old Pioneer Fluorscan receivers? Those things had some sweet looking meters. I'm in the same boat, though. Everything these days that has ANY meters is worth more than my car!

Thanks for the welcome, btw.

[nightflier]

How about plugging your laptop into one of the outputs and using a software program to do this? Or is this something you want sitting in your rack? If so, how about an equalizer with a spectrum analyzer?

[High_Speed]

Nah, I want something to sit in the rack. Now, I didn't even think about an equalizer. Anybody know of a good one with a spectrum analyzer?

[bfalls]

Years ago Radio Shack had a power meter kit you could put together. You might try going to their website. You might also try the Elliot Sound Products website www.sound.westhost.com. They have many sound articles and projects.

[High_Speed]

Okay, so I've found a few decent looking spectrum analyzer equalizers on the bay. My question is that they have obviously just a left and right channal in. With a modern day 5.1 receiver, how would I go about feeding just my left and right channel audio into an old unit like this? Again, I'm talking just for the light show.