"Talking" string?

[Macboy]

I'm curious what the best way to create a "talking" string might be? I have a horizontal strand across my garage that I'd like to use for a spoken audio track I found. I'd like it to "talk" like the LEDs on Knight Rider (if i remember correctly). I'd like it to emanate from the center of the segment and be able to control how wide out it goes before bringing it back in for the next syllable/phoneme.

I've seen it done with Arduino robot projects and the like (in case I'm not explaining myself clear enough).

[bwinter]

Cool idea.

My first guess would be to try to use some “intensity level” or “EQ level” that would translate the volume into a level-spike on the LEDs.

Then mirror that effect left-to-right to get the Knight-Rider effect.

[Macboy]

It appears the face effect will do the trick here! I'm repeatedly impressed by the resource that is the Xessentials series.