Let's strike up a conversation on N scale sound. Specifically diesel sound. Does anybody have a recommendation other than MRC drop in decoders? I just installed a couple in a pair of Kato F-7's. Unfortunately, my satisfaction in at 50% with them. One works fine, the other max's out at about 1/2 volume and is a little "hissy". Is there a good diesel sound decoder out there other than springing the big bucks for BLI/Broadway Limited?
I have been very pleased with the Soundtraxx Tsunami that came in my Athearn FP45. I know what you mean about MRC tinniness. I have one of those in my Challenger. it's probably going to get ripped out and replaced with a Tsunami or LokSound when I get the chance.
i had a mrc 1644 in an ac4400... these decoders are just a piece of crap. very poor running characteristics and poor sound. i also have two e8/9 with a paragon2 decoder. WOW !!! sound is surprisingly good. also running characteristics are far better than any digitrax decoder. i really hope these paragon2 decoders will come out for other models as well.
Their U23B and PA decoders aren't bad as long as you don't expect to hear them at a crowded train show. Still waiting for someone to come out with some competition for MRC drop in sound decoders. Some said we were going to be up to our ears in them once certain legal battles were over. Sountraxx and Loksound have the technology, they just have to package it on a drop in board.
I have the MRC drop-in and the FP45 with Tsunami, and neither of them are perfect. I like the throttle control with the MRC better than the Tsunami, and I like the sound of the Tsunami better than the MRC. I like the fact the Tsunami allows read back of my programming efforts, where MRC has to be taken more on faith. I have noticed with the 3 MRC decoders I have that speaker placement is everything. I was at a Tsunami seminar a couple of weeks ago, and was impressed with the new technology for steam sound decoders, but that's a topic for another thread.
Who put on the Tsunami Seminar? Go ahead and let the info fly on steam sound if you like. I'm interested in both but haven't tried steam sound yet. I figured diesel would be the easier of the 2 to tackle so that's where I started. I was not aware that there were some legal issues concerning a combination sound and control board. After some late night study, it appears there are "component" systems that provide diesel sound as well as steam. It's kind if odd, everybody but MRC is the $100.00 range. Hopefully time will drop those prices. If the manufactureres can't get the cost down to something a little more reasonable, IMHO, sound will remain a novelty. I just ordered a couple F-3's and I don't think I'll go with MRC again. There "drop in" board was a little misleading. They dropped in all right and popped right back out! The boards are too thick and after a few seconds of installation, the clip flies off and the decoder looses contact. I ended up soldering the motor tabs in place on the decoder board. This serves two purposes, it keeps the motor electrial contact tabs in place and holds the main board in place. No more board and clip coming loose!
Speakers are everything Athough the throttle control on the MRC decoders isn't perfect right now it is all we have. The Locsound and Tsunami decoders just won't fit in most N diesel loco's at this time. The MRC's can be made to sound pretty good. The speaker and it's enclosure are the key. My first experience was installing an MRC SD70 decoder in my Athearn SD70. It does not have the frame opening in the rear that the Kato SD70 does so I had to mill out a pocket for the speaker. I made the minimum relief in the frame that I could to make room for the speaker. The decoder worked but was tinny and not very full sounding as mentioned above. I had the loco at the shop and a customer heard it and decided to try one in his Kato Sd70. I brought the loco home and installed it for him. The Kato frame has a much larger space in the rear for the speaker. The two loco's sounded completely different. The Kato with the same decoder as mine was twice as loud and sounded fuller. I even thought it was a decoder issue and swapped the two decoders between loco's. The Kato was the same with my decoder in it. I decided the extra space in the frame was the cause so my Athearn came apart and was cut on to make it similar to the Kato frame. After doing this, the Athearn Sd70 was much better but I still wanted more. The MRC decoder uses a 30 ohm speaker but can handle down to an 8 ohm speaker. Lower impedance should make more power from the amplifier so I tried it. I ordered an 8 ohm Tsnami speaker that was the same size as the MRC. Installed it in the decoder and it was now louder but lost any clarity it had. The final step was to create a speaker box (enclosure) for the speaker. I removed a little more frame and built an enclosure to fit the loco and speaker as large as I could. The enclosure helped quite a bit and I am now pretty happy with the install. I may yet add photo etch fans on the roof to allow a bit more sound out of the loco but it serves it's purpose well now. Sorry I don't have pictures of the opperation.
Now you'e got me scratching my head Skipgear. The louder of the 2 units I did is a F-3A. The B unit is muffled.I may swap the decoders and see if the diminished sound follows the decoder.
Digitrax makes some drop in sound decoders, the sound is far supieror to MRC sound but the capacitor on them arent that great. You need perfect trackwork and clean tracks or it stalls and the sound resets.
I have installed MRC and Digitrax sound decoders in Atlas, Kato and FVM locos. I also have a couple of Athearns, an F45 and FP45 with Tsunami factory sound. My installations are all in narrow hood diesels, so only the MRC/Digitrax decoders can work. In every case but one (the MRC 1808 decoder in a Kato SD90MAC), the sound was so quiet that the frame was milled, and an enclosure was made for the speaker. Every MRC speaker was replaced with either a Soundtraxx 10mm round, 13mm round, or Digitrax oval 10x18mm, these are all 8 ohm speakers, and with an enclosure will sound much louder and not significantly more distorted. Unlike a previous post, I disagree about the Digitrax sound--it is not, in my opinion, far superior to MRC, it's usually much more distorted and the available effects much more limited. With Digitrax, every install I have done needed a pack of keep-alive capacitors which take up valuable space in the shell. Without them, the Digitrax decoders are unusable. The Tsunami equipped locos sound the best but they are in full width carbodies with bigger speakers than a hood diesel can take, so the comparison isn't entirely fair. If you look at the frequency response of speakers under about an inch in diameter, they simply cannot produce sound at frequencies much under 300 Hz or so at levels that are audible. They do make them, you just have to have the speaker in or next to your ear, like ear buds or headphones. We are asking this type of speaker to produce acceptable sound at much greater distances from our ears. Naturally, the high frequency sounds like horns, whistles, bells, air sounds and squeals will sound quite good, while the prime mover sounds will suck, no matter what is done. Even on the Tsunami locos, you really don't hear any bass, everything is just louder and a bit clearer. I've been using sound for a couple of years now, and recognize that N scale diesel sound is pretty crappy--but still much better than no sound! Using speakers with sealed enclosures, judicial placement, proper adjustment (loudest is not always the best), and a bit of luck with individual decoders, you can turn any loco from just a mobile model into something with a "personality" or life of it's own, and a silent engine just doesn't seem to cut it. It can be a lot more fun operating a sound equipped loco, especially if your layout has limited operational interest, like my two test loop layout currently is. I will say that Digitrax sound decoders are a great fuss to install, their available sounds and sound effects are limited but the sound volume is usually more than adequate with proper attention to speaker selection and placement. Even though they supposedly have superior motor control compared with MRC, they have this extremely annoying habit of slowing down quite noticeably when some sounds are activated, like the horn for example--this is really unacceptable and detracts from operational enjoyment. Still, I keep putting them in because there isn't all that much choice, and you can download other soundfiles into them (although I'm not necessarily impressed with what is available from Digitrax's SoundDepot-the SD70ACe file seems to go from idle to notch 8 with nothing in between). The MRC decoders are much easier to install, but almost always need the factory speaker to be removed and replaced with a lower impedance speaker in some sort of enclosure, even then the sound volume is usually not loud enough. They don't need added capacitors and they don't slow down when the horn is sounded. Until they came out with their new line of 16 bit decoders, you didn't even know what the prime mover sounds were in most cases. The new 1960 decoder for the modern EMD and GE hood diesels, does not have a GE prime mover, it has 3 EMDs and 2 Alcos. I kind of like the older version of this decoder better, the 1644-2, even though I'm not sure what the prime mover sounds are. I find the MRC sound to be more "musical" and pleasing to the ear, just lacking in volume and lacking in prime mover choices and a Canadian horn like the K3L. The MRC dynamic brake also throttles down automatically when engaged, then throttles back up when turned off, and the brake and flange squeal sounds were much better than Digitrax or Tsunami until they went to the 16 bit decoders and removed a lot of these cool added sounds or chopped them up into much shorter clips. For both the Digitrax and MRC line, the included LEDs are usually inadequate (too dim) and have to be replaced too. This also applies to many non-sound decoders since they went to the tiny surface mount LEDs as the main lights. Most modern N diesels, esp Katos, run so smoothly that sophisticated motor control isn't really needed, and I could not agree with the comment that MRCs run crappy, I'd say they are adequate with room for improvement. I particularly enjoy the sound of a pair of connected sound equipped locos just idling away, making all their added pumping and air release sounds--this is actually quite convincing. I was about 300 feet from a pair of idling CN ES44DCs the other day, and even being downwind, it was hard to tell they were running and that's less than 2 feet for N scale. I think we expect our model's sound to be too loud. My layout shares a room with a freezer and a refrigerator and one or both of them is usually on, so if I unplug them for a few minutes, the engine's sounds are really louder than I perceive with all that background noise. The really deep bass you hear from an engine under acceleration and close up may never be adequately simulated from an onboard speaker, but all the other sounds are so directional you can't beat them coming from the source. I can tell whether I've placed the speaker at the very rear, mid-rear or in the tank or two speakers in two locations in one engine, it's that directional. I would really like to see other players enter this field. I don't know if the Loksound Micro is narrow enough to fit into a N scale hood diesel, then again people have said they also have a problem with sound volume and for a much higher price. I was going to say that MRC has really evolved and improved since they first came out with sound decoders, but I'm not very happy with their new 1960 decoder, which is meant for a lot of modern engines--the SD70 series, the C44-9W, the AC440CW, the GEVOs, big disappointment as the old 1644-2 is no longer made.
The best I have is a Life Like E8, plastic frame, made into a dummy, with a 16 bit Soundtraxx with a large oval speaker. The next and only because I would like them just a little louder is three Atlas GPs with the new 16 bit 1955 decoders. I tried a 8 ohm soundtraxx speaker and could not hear any difference? Two Athearn F45s that are loud enough but don't sound correct IMO. I really love this loco set of FA/FB, the FB is a dummy that is hard wired to the FA. The FB contains a soundtraxx 8 bit decoder and 8 ohm speaker, it sounds great.
The Loksound 3.5 micro will fit in the Kato F7 both the A and B units. I have one of each with this decoder installed. It requires removing a little of the weight at the rear of the frame and trimming the plastic frame of the standard speaker. The Loksound 3.5 micro is also narrow enough to fit in a narrow hood diesel. I have two mounted in Kato SD40-2 units. The installation in the SD40-2 isn't easy, it requires quite a bit of work to fit the speakers in the fuel tank. THe Loksound 4.0 micro has been released and is supposed to be smaller then the 3.5, however I haven't installed any yet.
Hmmmmmmmmmm...IF....I was so inclined to want to install sound. I could expect to pay $100.00 for a digital soldering station. $100.00 for a sound decoder and speakers. $100.00 for beer. 100 man hours to modify my locos, decoders and install the 'guts'. And in the end I will have sound that equals an old $10.00 transisitor radio ! Am I close? :tb-wacky: :tb-tongue:
I support the comments of Ram53. I have installed MRC sound decoders in 9 of my diesels and while the sound levels can be a mixed bag, I am happy with the product, as sound is better than no sound at all. From my limited experience, the best are MRC 1808 in Kato SD80s; 1812 in Atlas H15-44 and B 23-7; satisfactory 1644 in Kato SD70Mac, 1645 Kato P42 and 1658 in Kato F7; and poor 1955 in Atlas GP7. Although I have read various positive comments on the 1955, I may have one that is not so good, but it still works, albeit very quietly. As far as running characteristics of these decoders go, I find them OK. I am also very satisfied with MRC's level of support.
RIGHT ON!!! I run the real things and I think that helps me hate sound that much more. No traction motor whine, sometimes I don't have to go into throttle to move lite power (or trains), other times I'm in 8 and going 10mph. I chuckle when I have a sick sounding horn at work, but I don't want one on every engine in my fleet at home. Worst of all, THERE'S NO BASS!!! If there's an engine load testing in my engine terminal I wanna feel it! Running time on the layout is relaxation and quiet time.
I wonder if you can have an onboard decoder playing high pitched sounds, and a stationary decoder playing the bass sounds. Imagine that, you would hear the whistle or horn from the loco but hear the rumble from a subwoofer. I think the only issue would be you would need to disable some sounds or the large speakers would overwhelm the small ones. Another interesting idea is a surround system hooked up to occupancy monitors. Soundtraxx has something along those lines called SurroundTraxx. I would think a system like that would work better than trying to play bass frequencies over basically headphone speakers.
Besides sound decoders I've heard that some manufactures have an under layout sound system. The speakers positioned under and around your bench-work. Has/does anyone have any information on this? Or is this one of those rumors that fly around. See ya Ron
I don't know about manufacturers, but it'd be really easy to do this. You could use a good set of computer speakers with a nice subwoofer for the middle, then use a small MP3 or CD player preloaded with sounds to do background sounds. Also, you could take the output of some DCC sound decoders and run that through a similar (or by using a simple mixer, the same) system, for the locomotive sounds. With a DC layout, I vaguely remember something about setting up sound to be triggered by throttle position (probably by voltage) to control a locomotive sound generator.
