I've had nothing but bad experiences with the MRC Briliance sound decoders, to the point I've written them off from future consideration. Bad sound, burnouts, lousy motor control, you name it. Now I see a new generation, specifically the 1957 and 1959 decoders. MRC keeps coming back and people keep buying them, presumably? I like "the drop in" concept, and I wish and hope they'd finally get it right. But I've been burned too often by MRC products, so the question is, are these new decoders any better? I have a bunch of F7s and F3's and a set of FM Eriebuilts I need to put sound in....is it even worth exploring the new MRC's. I like the Tsunamis but they are a lot more work and money... Any thoughts from folks with actual experience withe the new MRC's would be much appreciated. Regards, Otto K.
The 1900 series are a pretty good bang for the buck. They are now 16 bit sound. They have a BEMF system that works and is pretty easy to program for chuff matching on the steam locos. The throttle on these is much improved as well as the sound. As long as they have the sounds you want built in, they are not half bad. My only complaint is that on a lot of them, the speaker is part of the board so if you want to relocate, or use a better speaker, you risk damaging the speaker removing it from the decoder board. I've been stocking them more and more at the shop. The average person is happy with how the new decoders perform and they don't see the value in the added cost of a Tsunami and its install.
I'll go along with skipgear. I've installed 1900 series decoders in Atlas geeps and Kato F units and they are an improvment over earlier MRC decoders. The only complaint I have is that the sounds in general, and specifically the horns, are not loud enough but that's only a personal opinion. I have a 1956 steam decoder on the way to try in a Kato Japanese 2-8-2 to compare with an earlier version in another engine, the Kato D51 has the tender designed to fit an MRC decoder and speaker. I think MRC sound decoders are in the same predicament as Bachmann locos, modellers who bought earlier versions rightly think of them as junk from those first impressions but in reality they have been much imporoved in recent releases. And as I'm fond of saying, I don't see Soundtraxx, Digitrax or ESU stepping up to the plate with their own truly drop-in sound decoders in N scale, if I can use an MRC decoder without milling away parts of the frame and trying to fit speakers and wires in somewhere I'm happy with them.
I know that the 16XX series of MRC Drop in decoders were problematic and gave people cause for pause. Some of my die hard DCC enthusiast friends warned me to stay away from them because they were 8 bit sound and had issues. The 18XX and 19XX are 16bit and I am told are much more reliable. I just ordered 2 for my mid production Kato SD40-2's. this will be my first real experience with the MRC decoders. Hoping that that it is all Positive..... Cautiously optimistic Andy
Buying one for an FP-7 right now, on these recommendations! Thanks brothers! If it's any good I'll youtube a vid for you.
I'm a fan of MRC sound decoders. I have them installed in 9 diesels and I am happy with the way they perform. I do think the 8bit decoders are better then the 16bit. I also use the MRC HO stationary sound decoders located around my HCD layout. I did switch one of the MRC 16ohm 10mm speakers to a 8ohm Soundtraxx. Wouldn't suggest this conversion in diesels. I couldn't detect any improvement in the quality of sound.
Hmm, I'm going through some issues with N scale diesel sound decoders right now. I have a mixture of MRC and mostly Digitrax with one factory-installed Athearn F45 Tsunami. I recently installed I believe it was an MRC 1833 for the IM FP-7 and it is quite loud (needs to be turned down which is a nice surprise), has BEMF and low speed control. I'm very happy with this and BTW, they are going for $34.99 clearance at a very well known vendor (not a TB advertiser though). For that price, it almost makes me want to buy another IM FP-7! The 1833 install was easy and everything worked well from the get go. I also installed a MRC 1806 V3 (which I guess is their 16-bit upgrade from the 1806) in a Kato SD40-2. I'm not happy with this one, it is way too quiet and the master volume CV doesn't work-it also doesn't seem to work on the 1960 decoder, which is also way too quiet. By too quiet, I mean you can barely hear anything with your ear 6 inches from the engine at max volume. I wrote to MRC and they claim they designed their 16 bit decoders to be not as loud. They say you should not be able to hear any sound if the loco is 2 feet or more away from you. Well, even a Kato drive and normal wheel on rail noise is louder than that! I've ended up replacing the speakers with 8 ohm vs the OEM 32 ohm, but since Soundtraxx has discontinued their 8mm (3/8") speaker, you have to use the Digitrax 10 x18 mm oval and find space, which usually means frame milling. The MRC 16 bit decoders with Digitrax 8 ohm speakers are an acceptable combination, barely loud enough, but I won't be using MRC anymore if this is their design philosophy--I don't need loud sound, as the quality in N scale diesels is iffy at best, but you have to hear the decoder above the ambient room and mechanical train noise. Another MRC that seems fine without mods is the 1808 for the Kato SD80/90 series. The other problem I'm finding with MRC sound decoders is that they don't play well with others, ie. speed matching is very difficult with, say, a Digitrax sound decoder or any non-sound decoder. It's very hard to get good slow-speed control and smooth starts unless your particular MRC decoder has BEMF/slow speed control and few of them do. I had to remove an MRC 1644-2 from an Athearn SD75i because I could not get smooth starts and slow speeds--I just put a non-sound Digitrax decoder in and forget the sound. That decoder would be OK with a better mechanism like a Kato SD70 series. I believe most of the MRC 16 bit decoders don't have some type of slow speed control programming or BEMF, so they are lagging as motor decoders. Now they've made them excessively quiet by design. And they don't have any extra functions for ditchlights, etc. nor can they be reprogrammed like Digitrax. With Digitrax of course, you are looking at frame milling and adding keep-alive capacitors, so a lot more work, but they are much louder and have much better motor control, are often cheaper than MRC, have extra functions and can be reprogrammed with different sound files. Right now I have an MRC 1828 to be put in an Atlas SD60, but I'm thinking maybe I'll just get the Digitrax SDN144A1 instead and use the MRC as an undertable accessory decoder connected to a subwoofer. I haven't any experience with ESU Loksound, but I probably should try one. They would require frame modification also, and some people claim they are too quiet also.
If these MRC decoders have the speaker floating loose somewhere in the middle that's the reason they aren't loud. My GG1 sound decoder was just loose in a hole in the board, and had no baffle. I glued the speaker back to the board and put a thin round disc of styrene over the speaker cone -- it had a adhesive rim, just had to pull off the protective paper ring. These two changes really boosted the sound level, so this might work for the other decoders.
[If these MRC decoders have the speaker floating loose somewhere in the middle that's the reason they aren't loud./I] That would certainly be true, but most MRC hood diesel decoders have an 8mm round speaker stuck to the undersurface of the board by a high-density foam baffle: the speaker front is baffled off, and the sound comes out through several small holes in the back. I have tried and reversing this orientation doesn't change anything. If MRC went to a 4 or 8 ohm speaker instead of a 32 ohm, that would make a major difference in sound output, and they claim their amplifier can handle it. You can certainly drive a full-size hi-fi speaker with an MRC decoder and get quite satisfactory sound. I still can't figure why the 1808 and 1833 models are so good, while most of the others suck. Some of their newest decoders are pitifully lacking in output. I have sent a 1960 and a 1644-2 back with the comment "can hardly hear the sound at max volume"; I await MRC's response.
You need to consider the loco they are installed in also. I installed a 1600 series in and Athearn SD70. I had to mill clearance for the speaker and some components on the board. I was worried about pulling power so I only removed the minimum needed. Shortly after a customer heard the loco and wanted me to do the same for his Kato SD70. When installing his, and having the locos side by side, the Kato was 2-3 times louder than my Athearn install. The Kato has a huge cavity for the speaker to resonate in where, my Athearn just had a small pocket milled out for the speaker. I decided that was the primary difference and as a result, went back at the Athearn frame with the dremel and cut as much as I felt safe. The sound now bettered that of the Kato version. I took it a step farther in the Athearn and repaced the speaker with an 8 ohm and created a sealed enclosure the filled the entire space I had created. The sealed enclosure improved sound quality and the 8 ohm speaker kept the volume up where I wanted it even with the smaller tighter enclosure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hF_iq4gWWE
A few years ago I bought a Kato SD70M then I got a sound decoder (1644)from MRC. It was so easy to install and worked great.Then I got a Kato AC4400. I got the MRC 1960 sound decoder for it, had to cut the body to fit, also the sound is not as loud as the older sound card and the small led is about half as bright as the older type. Not impressed with the new 19xx's.
On the subject of the 19xx's, here is the reply from MRC when I complained of unacceptably low sound volume: "the newer 16 bit decoder have a much softer sound then the old 8 bit versions normally the prime mover can only be heard approx one foot away with horn and bell audible to approx. two feet away if the decoder is too low at these distances send it in with a copy of your receipt for warranty purposes and i will have it checked and repaired/replaced if needed" Try to imagine what that really means. If you are more than one foot away from the engine, you shouldn't be able to hear it. Even the best mechanism makes noise louder than that, to say nothing of wheel noise, ambient room noise, etc. I don't think they have thought this out. How often in normal running are you less than one foot from the loco? If you take the same decoder and set it up as a stationary sound decoder connected to a large 12" bass-reflex hifi speaker, it will make very loud sounds, too loud in fact. So it's not the amplifier, it's the speaker and enclosure MRC uses. They are obviously limited in what size speaker and enclosure if any in order to have a ready to run product, but at least a lower impedance speaker (4-8 ohms) should be used in place of the 32 ohm 8mm round they use. The benefits of higher quality, 16-bit audio are lost if you can't hear the sound anyway. And they really should have kept the BEMF and low speed motor control some of their earlier decoders had. I would have to say one step forward, two steps back with the newer MRC decoders.
Tony, Can you give us more into on the enclosure that you made.. That looks like an interesting idea...
Not really much too it. I made a box as large as I could fit from .030" styrene. I milled out the frame to make room for it.
I finally put the 1956 steam decoder in my Kato Japanese D51 2-8-2 on Saturday and gave it several hours of running at the club meeting on Sunday and I have to say I'm very impressed with it. It doesn't have the tinny sounds of the earlier MRC steam decoder that I have in another D51 with an identical installation and seems to have improved running characteristics and more programable options. You can choose from 17 different whistles and 10 different chuff sounds, I chose one with a slightly off beat exhaust which gives the engine a bit of character. I have installed several Soundtraxx Tsunamis in N scale steamers and I find, unless you can find room to stuff in the huge capacitor, they are very picky with dirty track which causes them to stop and start and if in a small tender with confined space tend to overheat and stop running with frustrating regularity. The MRC decoder in the small Japanese D51 tender with hardly enough room to squeeze the top back on ran happily all day. My one critisism was that like the newer MRC diesel decoders the maximum volume was a bit low but there were also a Walthers Y3 and an Athearn Big Boy present and after a few laps of the layout all present decided that after listening to them for a few minutes the sound volume of them seemed quite annoying by comparison so I'm changing my way of thinking here. I'm sold enough on the 1956 to install them in my other steam locos with room for them and maybe even replace the Tsunamis. One other club member was impressed enough to be going home to order one, and a Bachmann 2-10-2 for me to install it in for him.
So Skipgear, you said you replaced the 32Ohm speaker on your MRC with an 8 Ohm speaker with better enclosure, that that made the sound volume louder? Reason I ask is that I have an Atlas SD-35 in which I have an MRC #1812 sound decoder, and I can barely hear the horn and diesel rumble noise. I'm thinking if I replaced the speaker and added an enclosure I could get louder sound. That, coupled with replacing the radiator and exhaust fans with BLMA higher-detail fans, that would let the sound out better.
The enclosure will make the sound crisper. A speaker needs the wave created by the front of the speaker cone separated from the wave coming off the back of the speaker cone. If they are not at least baffled the sound wave cancel each other out. The lower impedance speaker generates more power from the amplifier at the expense of distortion. Adding the enclosure more than makes up for the added distortion that loading the amplifier harder creates. Most of the sound coming from a diesel is in effect noise and distortion anyhow. I really don't think that opening the fans up increases the sound at all. If anything it allows you to hear any distortion that the speaker experiences more clearly. Not removing the fans in tends to make the shell a band pass enclosure which helps with bass response which N scale needs desperately.
Based on previous experience with MRC sound decoders and the lack of customer service, I will not be buying any. They may have gotten better, but I'm just not interested in MRC. Their customer service was very poor. Hope that improved too.
My 2 cents, based upon experience installing sound in steamers . . . . I agree with Pete 1000% period. Tony is "exactamundo" on the comments regarding speaker enclosures. A correctly made/sized enclosure will run circles around the ones that come with speakers. I can attest to that with an ESU Loksound decoder, Knowles Fox speaker, and DIY enclosure into an EM-1 tender. By far better than speaker that came with the decoder. If you search for posts by J.D. Colombo you can see and hear all the testing that he has done. Well worth the time. Tony is up on it too. I know you are talking about diesel installs but the principles apply there too. Carl
