Nice article by Bill Denton in the May/June NSR magazine! Thanks Bill, and you used the sexy Santa Fe warbonnets to illustrate your well thought out design and article! Thank you! I have multiple sets of I/M F units and this gives me an inspiration get started.... What decoders would one use in the A units, w/o sound but with appropriate lighting effects, to be compatible with the B unit LokSounds? Also thanks to John Colombo for his pioneering work! Regards, Otto K.
Loksound decoders in all units work and sound great! If you do not want the sound, use the LokPilot Micro mobile decoder. It has the same motion programming as the Loksound.
Say, what?! We can put sound into IM F units!!! I need to order NSR then I suppose as I have 5 IM F units with two more on the way.
Thanks Otto, glad you liked it and found the article useful. The Loksound units have such great motor control. Also a big thank you to John Colombo who, as mentioned in the article, inspired my installation. I think the biggest surprise is that this install requires NO FRAME MILLING or even disassembly of the mechanism. This couldn't get much easier for anyone trying their first sound install. Now, hopefully my magazine will show up in the next day or two !
Oh definitely, I have a couple Loksound equipped engines and they are by far the best for motor control, even better than Lenz, any that's saying a lot. The sound is not too shabby either! With the availability of new, miniature speakers on the cheap, we've never had it so good! Perhaps if we all buy a lot of the Loksound micros, the price can come down a bit....
Bill, Nice, straight forward article... picked up my copy yesterday. Jason Smith mentioned to me that you were toying with this idea for a little while. Funny thing is, I did nearly the exact same thing back in February. Here's a little "demo"... take a look and listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tja7vOLMn-4
Mike, Those B units sound great! Nice work! I am still waiting for my copy of the magazine to arrive via the mail....
Agreed. As much as I would like sound in every unit of my multiple F unit lash ups, the reality is that at plus minus $125 a pop, I can't afford to do that, or even need to. Most of my F units ran in ABBA combinations during my circa '50 era, and I have two IM FT ABBA sets with just one soundtraxx-equipped B unit in each set, and the sound is very good. So for the IM F7 and F3's, I'm thinking two A units without sound, but with proper lighting effects, one B with sound, and maybe one dummy; three powered units are plenty on my layout with 24 car trains and 2% grades. If there was a way to drive additional speakers off one sound decoder, and tweak or "delay" the sound coming from another unit, I would consider that. Thoughts? regards, Otto K.
If i had to choose though between sound and lighting I would pick lighting effects, like number boards and what not.
Oh, but I want it all, sound and lights... I just want to make it somewhat affordable, hence using only one sound decoder for the B's and motor control/lights for the A's
I wonder if one could get two speakers in the B units so it'd sound like both the A and B have sound....
Ok...I am confused.... If your B units have sound...and...you run an ABBA...wouldnt you have noise....errrrr....sound in 2 units of the same train ?
Yes. .. My locomotives, steam and diesel, actually emit very sexy and darned realistic sound. But if you do not like sound, I suppose two sound units are twice as bad as one, and four would be just horrible. All kidding aside, I've seen all kinds of bad, overly loud installations, and i can see how some would simply call it noise. But, in a controlled environment, on a home layout, properly done sound, scaled to the setting, adds an incredible dimension IMHO, to the point I'm not even interested in running non-sound equipped locos...to me ..that's like watching a silent Buster Keaton movie. And I love Keaton... But I don't want to turn this (my) thread into a sound is good vs.bad discussion; to each his own. What I am trying to figure out is how to get the sound of multiple prime movers of an ABBA or ABB set out of one sound decoder. Additional speakers in other units help distribute the sound, but it's exactly the same sound coming from all. Is there a way to perhaps delay the speaker response in adjacent units to create a lag? Some sort of capacitance perhaps? I've seen multiple decoder ABBA sets in HO, and while it is expensive, it's impressive, Actually, just one sound equipped unit in a set sounds very good I Nscale. It's the steam engine sounds coming out of HO tenders that bother me most... Just another reason to stick with N! Regards, Otto
Pardon the obnoxious lionel horns, those things were literally going every ten seconds for two days. I set my SP&S E7A to a lower sound volume than it was as delivered(when the frame was under a MILW road shell.) If I buy more sound equipped locomotives, or add sound to current ones(in need of decoders) I'd set them at a lower volume because I feel that the sound should also be considered as something being modeled so instead of 1:1 sound, it'd be more along the lines of 1:160 sound. [video=youtube;ikvWWzOiLjk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikvWWzOiLjk&list=UUPF-tA_vT-HJaNbgmKI_7Bg[/video]
Just ribbin ya about the sound. Everyone has their own preferences...so its all good That being said... Wouldnt different size/makes of speakers/enclosures...in the B units...make the sound at least sound a bit 'different' then the A unit ? I would think a sound decoder would be able to handle 2 small speakers. I remember watching the videos on the different speakers and enclosures that jdcolombo did...and none of them sounded exactly the same. I coulld be wrong there...but worth investigating...right ?
A Loksound decoder can handle speakers rated down to 4 ohms. One way to get sound out of multiple units that will nearly always be run together (e.g., A_B_A, A_B_B_A) is to put just a speaker (8 ohms) in one unit, then run two wires from that unit's speaker to the unit with the sound decoder. Wire those in parallel with the wires to the speaker in the sound decoder unit (that speaker needs to be 8 ohms, too), then hook them to the LokSound. Now you will have sound coming out of both units. As George points out, you could intentionally use a slightly different speaker in the second unit to get a slightly different sound from that unit. The wires running from one unit to the other would look like MU hoses, and you could use two-position micro connectors on these wires so that you could pull the units apart if necessary. It's funny how I've gone from being a diesel-sound skeptic to "I can't live without it". Sound that is done well and not overdone adds a huge amount of realism to a layout, IMHO. I think it also affects operational behavior: my operators run sound-equipped locomotives at much slower overall speeds (and much closer to realistic scale speeds) than units without sound. Must be some sort of psych experiment there . . . John C.
Thanks John, for the advice, I will experiment. As to operator behavior, your observation about train speeds is spot on. Perhaps they are enjoying the journey rather then just getting the train from point A to point B. Regards, Otto K.
