TOPIC: 3.7V Sound Boards

So I'm running a little low on space which forces me to stick to a 3.7V sound board. I know the Crystal Focus can be modded to do 3.7V but it's also a little expensive for me. It's kind of come down to the Spark 2 or Prizm V4 I think. I've read all of the comparisons for features and such, clearly the Prizm offers more features with the better color changing ability, more sound fonts, ect. But most of those features don't do much for me, I was hoping someone could give me some more comments on one to the other that you wouldn't really discover until owning one or both. Such as one having better motion tracking, easier adjustment of settings, ect. Is all you get for the extra money on the Prizm 3 more sound fonts and color changing?

Thanks.

There is a more direct competitor to the Prizm, the Spark Color 2 - It's the bigger brother to Spark2, and features up to 4 channels for LED mixing, and will Drive the Saber Forge X4 stars properly. It is also $115

That being said, both the Prizm and Spark Color 2 require dual switches to function properly, the Spark2 can be setup to use one or two switches for operation.

Color mixing
Spark2 features two channel color mixing capabilities, and is generally setup to have a main color blade, and a secondary color to mix in blade effects and FOC on a Tri-Cree - With the X4 star you could setup to have two main blade colors with the two mixing for blade effects and FOC. It has some pre-defined FOC and blade shimmer effects. The Spark Color two is basically identical except up to 4 channels and it allows for 10 color profiles.

Prizm features three channel operation and is designed to work with a 3up styled LED (tri-Cree). One diode on each channel. It allows for full RGB color mixing, and features some cool FOC, and blade shimmer options that are fully configurable and has 10 color profiles.

sensitivity

Spark2 and Spark color 2 are have very high levels of motion sensitivity - I would say better than the Prizm, however some people don't like how "noisey" the saber can be since every little gesture gets registered as a sound. Other people love that.

Prizm is pretty sensitive, but takes a little configuring to get just right. It's Clash detection is SUPERB and beats the NEC boards IMO.

sound

Spark2 holds 3 sound fonts, Spark color 2 and Prizm hold 6.

extras

All the boards feature LED accent pads, the Spark boards have preconfigured settings for various blinking modes, the Prizm accent pads are fully configurable for the sequences. All three boards feature button affects (blaster block sounds usually), lockup, FOC, blade shimmer, and some level of color change. The spark Color 2 and Prizm allow you to change colors on the fly within a font though, the Spark2 ties the color to the sound font.

install

All three boards are moderately difficult to install. The Spark boards require bridging the X-drive and has some small pads in key areas (especially for power). The Prizm has some nice sized pads for most connections (accent LED pads are small), but the layout is not as install friendly as the Spark boards and generally requires more creativity when wiring.

Another board to take a look at is the Nano Biscotte v3 (NBv3). It's not as feature-rich as any of the other boards mentioned... but that could just be enough for what you want. You get 2 font banks and single blade color* + FoC. No Aux effects (blaster block, blade lockup) and no color changing. Sound and motion on it are still great.

*Just because you can't change the colors doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. You can mix any blade color using 2 LEDs that you want, then use the 3rd die for FoC. The FoC with NBv3 is more of a "shimmer of clash", so it's layered "on top" of the main blade. White is the most common FoC color, but Amber is nice with Green or Red blades too.

Both what Jas-Ot and KelbournX stated are true.
But me being a fan of the Prizm V4, when I plan on doing 2 switch set up its my card of choice.. I'll also add a few more details to the Prizm, as stated it does have color changing on the fly, and will retain the color setting you last used for the font, it will do this for each font, plus when you insert the kill key and remove it, it also will stay on the last font you were on. Something I find Annoying with NEC Boards is it goes back to font1. Now this might just be me, but I also think the Sound is a lot cleaner than sparks, this hold true through all of Plecter boards vs. Nec (at least to me) the only exception is a Ignitor 2 that I'm running 2 speakers 1 bass/ 1 normal with max amp, its loud and pretty damn clear, but its a lot of extra wiring.

For Single button set ups I do usually go for a Spark 2, I like having blaster blocks and lock ups. but the NB3 is a very sturdy, and easy card to work with.

I agree, Prizm gets my favorite board vote as well for dual switch installs.

For a simple single button install, I go back and forth between Spark2 and NB.

Spark2 has all the nice extra features, but, the NB is so easy to install and just works.

That being said, the NEC boards are simpler to "configure" with the preset effects (Igniter is fully configurable). Prizm does take a little time to get just right, but I find that fun.

First off, thanks so much for the input from everyone.

I'm mostly not interested in much color changing on the fly and I doubt I'll need that many sound font options which is why I was kind of not sure if the Prizm was worth the extra cash. I was also avoiding the NBv3 because I wanted the lock up effect.

That being said I already have the holes drilled for two switches so I could easily accommodate the Prizm and would likely do a second switch even for the Spark2. I'm also not to afraid of a challenging setup, I'm far from a pro when it comes to wiring but I'm at least above average and the settings don't worry me much at all.

I'm more concerned that the settings allow me to adjust the board to fit my preference. For instance I believe the spark 2 will let me control percentage wise the brightness of the two channels for both FOC and normal running right? Does the Prizm allow something similar?

I've also heard that the NEC boards are designed to play sounds over one another, so basically the hum plays non stop and a swing sound will play over it at the same time. Where as the Plecter boards play one sound at a time but their sound fonts are designed with that in mind and so have the hum playing behind their swing and clash sounds correct? On paper it sounds like the NEC method would be preferred but I assume it must play out well in actual use for Plecter to be so popular.

When you say this do you mean that each movement results in a swing sound even slower movements? I could see that being a bit noisey and annoying. Can you turn down the sensitivity to not have that happen anymore?

Kazul wrote:
That is the unfortunate thing with the Crystal Shard not being available to the public... it's either NBv3 basic features, or all the way up to a Prizm if you want to use Plecter. If all you want is simple mixing and aux effects, sound like Spark 2 might be the one.

The nice thing about having RGB (Prizm or otherwise), is that you can make unique FoC colors. With dual-channel mixing you're limited to just the two dice that you have for the main blade. For me, that's the biggest draw to RGB. I could have Red flash Orange, Blue flash Cyan, Green flash Yellow, Purple flash Pink, Cyan flash White, Orange flash Amber, etc etc etc. I could care less about "color swapping", as I usually just assign one color to each font.

Kazul wrote:
Both boards will allow you do that, and have their own Config Editor. If it's not on the SD card, you can grab it from their websites.

Kazul wrote:
On NEC boards the hum is played constantly, and any effects are separate files mixed on top. So when you swing, it plays a swing sound and the hum at the same time. Plecter boards don't do the on-the-fly mixing and require a soundfont to have the hum pre-mixed into the other effects. Overall, Plecter offers higher sound quality. But it is nice to be able "mix and match" your NEC sound fonts by just swapping around effects and hums.

Kazul wrote:
The issue there is that NEC boards have no variable for a delay between consecutive swing sounds being played. You can still set the sensitivity, but as long as the motion passes the threshold you'll get one swing sound immediately after another. It's not that bad with short swings, but on long swings (such as an overhead strike) you'll get a second swing sound playing at the end of your stroke.

So basically having the Prizm nets you three color channels to use if you have a R/B/G LED and lets you get basically any color you want. So rather than color swapping on the fly there is also value in just getting exactly the color you want and FOC you want. Which I definitely see value in.

Ah, I could see that being annoying. I'm not sure it'd be an issue for me because I won't be doing any dueling. It's more just a hobby project and for cosplay. However the higher quality audio from Plecter is a big draw.

Such a shame that both sides have ups and downs which still leaves me feeling a little split. Your color mixing thing does interest me though, I had only thought of changing colors rather than being able to fix them to my preference. Typically I prefer just a deep red but I could see value in mixing to obtain something a little different.

You could still do a Deep Red main blade + other color FoC with the Spark 2. Either with the SF quad LED, or with a tri-Cree. dR/dR/PCA* is fairly impressive; you'd just have the dR/dR on one channel and the PCA on the other. Brightness loss over a quad dR would be negligible with the proper optics from using a tri-Cree.

*PCA = phosphor coated amber; basically it uses a blue die to excite the phosphor in the coating to emit a brighter amber than normal amber

I plan on starting with dR/dR/W to have a very basic setup. My current setup is all R because I have no soundboard for any mixing or FOC. But I could see myself getting bored or deciding to mess with things to obtain some more outlandish colors which might give me enough reason to go with the Prizm and it does seem like it has enough praise.

Realistically my primary goals are to have the card with better sensitivity to movement and sound quality. The way Plecter sound fonts are done isn't exactly my favorite though, I'll have to hunt around and make sure there is a complete sound font I am happy with on Plecter before I go for it. But I am starting to lean towards the Prizm.

I would actually recommend not using White for FoC with Reds; it just makes a sort of pink. Amber (or Green) would let it flash to Orange/Yellow.

In my experience, my Crystal Shard saber is louder and more clear than my Spark Color 2 saber. Though, it could just be the speaker in the SC2 build that's giving it such a drastic difference (I plan to have it rebuilt with a bass speaker). With a good speaker and a proper resonance/echo chamber in the pommel, the Spark 2 should sound pretty good.

If you want to preview fonts you can head over to saberfont.com. Though they're all good fontmakers, my favs are LordBlako, Shameem, Madcow, KSith, and Saber Baron. Many of them also take commissions for custom fonts, if there's nothing already made that really speaks to you.

You could also download the various default files packages for the different soundboards since they include a handful of free fonts. The Igniter 2 package should get you all of the NEC ones. Crystal Focus and Nano Biscotte should get you all of the Plecter ones (Crystal Shard has all 3 "meat" fonts, but Grey Meat is also on CF). I actually just ripped all of the default CF fonts out of the package for my own personal use yesterday (and labelled them, lol).

My original plan was to use just the two reds for the main blade and have the FOC be just white. Or is that just hopeful thinking? I'm not a big fan of the really drastic changes in color, like the ones that go blue to purple or something which is why I was aiming for white for the more standard look. I was thinking however that a different red might be better, so perhaps red orange or amber would be a good call. Is there enough of a difference between deep red and red?

Deep Red is a true RED, regular Red has quite a bit of orange in it. Side-by-side, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Red was a Red Orange.

White could still work for FoC if you use it separate from the reds instead of adding it to them; so the red blade is replaced with a white one. It's just not my preference.

I'll start with the red and white, give it a shot. I'm not entirely put off by pink personally so I won't worry on that to much. No big deal for me to pick up and wire in a new LED if I don't like it. I do like the sound of maybe an orange or amber instead but we'll see how that goes.

I've already gone ahead and ordered the Prizm seeing as it seems to have the biggest following and the Spark2 isn't in stock currently.

Thanks so much for the advice.