I've been doing some research on sound systems for my layout and recently came across Lance Mindheim's blog post about using a wireless headset in place of locomotive speakers. For those that haven't read it, he wired a decoder to his layout's power bus and outputted to an audio jack where he plugs in the transmitter for a set of wireless headphones. When running the layout he consists the sound decoder with the one in the locomotive. This has some appeal to me. I've been listening to sound samples from Soundtraxx and Loksound and they sound pretty good through headphones. Unfortunately, I don't have a local hobby shop to compare with locomotive-installed speakers but from many of the videos on youtube, the sound comes off as tinny on most locomotives (my step-father's O-scale stuff is another story). A second advantage for my situation would be the fact things would be much quieter for the rest of the house as my layout room is on the main floor of a ranch house. However, I would consider installing a set of computer speakers and a subwoofer on the layout for the times where I can make some noise. Anyhow the idea would be to use a Loksound decoder in the manner that lance mentions. What I would like to know is can I continuously program the decoder for different locomotives? Could I program it for an EMD 645 one week to run a GP15 and the next week program it for an Alco 251 to run an RS 11? Would it take much time to switch between sounds if I had a Loksound programmer? Since the decoder won't be on the locomotive will I lose some performance factors, such as brakes squealing when the locomotive is stopped?
Yes, but it would be a huge pain and you would soon abandon that practice. No, it would not be a huge pain if you learned about JMRI and had a computer interface to the layout and the decoder. Each time you went to manually reconfigure and download or activate all the appropriate sound files, and then to adjust the various motive CV's, it would take you many minutes, possibly a half-hour, to configure the decoder for a new locomotive. However, if you held files in JMRI, it would take mere seconds. Secondly, I doubt that headphones will give you the tonal and directional information of a locomotive moving away from you and operating in the 'layout distance'. It isn't a great feature on our small layout distances in scale, severely compressed as they are, but at least what there is of that is important...to me, anyway. I would consider an array of smallish, but capable, speakers supported under the framework of the layout scatter around the layout structure. I believe at least Soundtraxx has such a system.
Thanks for the input. I was thinking I would have to get a LokProgrammer and use JMRI to load different sounds to the decoder. I'm glad to know that it will only take a few seconds once everything is set up. I see your point on the directional advantages of the speaker in the locomotive. My priorities seem to be the opposite of yours. I really am looking for sound quality first and from what is possible through locomotives I want to consider other routes. My goal is to replicate trackside experiences and that, to me typically involves deep bass and good overall sound clarity, particularly for the prime mover. The headphones do work well for that and it has the added benefit of removing background noise. I will admit that it is still not 100%, but I even tried playing sound samples through my home stereo and came up short. I'm hoping that I will have some of the directional problems that you mention. This will be for a switching layout so I should be about the same angle and distance from the locomotive each time. Due to the slow speed nature of switching I really don't see where I wold have tonal differences from the doppler effect when a locomotive is moving towards or away from me. I think I will forge ahead. Other than a few bucks in electrical parts to mount everything, I don't think I will be out much. I should still have a decoder that I can mount in a locomotive at the end of the day. I did consider the surroundtraxx system, too. I think it would set me back around $600. I have other places to spend money right now, but considering it would be similar to outfitting 6 locomotives with sound (I really don't want any more than 6 locomotives for my layout) it is a possibility.
