whats your opinion, non tmcc rail sound or proto-1?

[Anonymous]

What are the differnces between non tmcc railsound and MTH Proto-1 for a
steam engine? Dose one sound better than the other? One more
reliable than the other?

[Anonymous]

The whistle/horn sounds of a TMCC engine are tops. You only need TMCC to access additional sound effects like crew talk/cab chatter and manual rev up/down, coupler effetcs. PS-1 has more sounds but they are harder to trigger unless you are adept at pushing buttons and shifting track voltage. They are also of general poorer quality, particularly the horn/whistle.

[Anonymous]

PS1 also has the battery issue.... it's an older design. I would prefer newer Railsounds.

[ChiefEagles]

10-4 to both of those replies.

[Anonymous]

Any sounds that enhance the realism of your layout is worth adding and the vendor makes no difference. I buy MTH and Lionel products because they both add quality to my layout. Don't forget to look into the sound systems offered my MRC.

[Anonymous]

Proto-1 sound is superior than NON-TMCC railsounds. One dows not have to push funny buttons or flip handles to get the same basic sounds to work (Bell Whistle/Horn). CHUCKN is correct as reguards regular TMCC but that was not the Question.

[cpsteamer]

My Lionel Railsound boxcars and tenders work great and sound terrific AND I don't have to push a bunch of buttons or handles to operate them conventionally. I do not find the PS-1 sounds as good. Now Lionel Trainsounds are another thing, not as good as Railsounds IMHO.
I runn both conventional and TMCC as well on 2 separate tracks.
Ken

[3railguy]

Both early Railsounds and PS-1 protosounds sound crude compared to current sounds. Both are pretty generic and neither sound better than the other. In their day, they sounded great and what we didn't know didn't bother us. We've come to expect more after hearing today's sounds.

[ben10ben]

I've never really cared a whole lot for PS-1. The sounds always sounded too fake to me.

Railsounds, by contrast, have always sounded great, even from the first versions. Lionel went to great lengths to make high quality recordings back in the early days, and their effort has really shown throughout all the many versions of Railsounds. Most of the recent developments have just added more TMCC features and improved amplifiers and speakers.

By the way, in conventional(non-TMCC railsounds) the only functions you can acess are horn/whistle and bell via their respective buttons on the transformer. I'm not quite sure what the previous poster meant when he said that you needed to use combinations of button presses to acess functions. That's characteristic of PS-1 and PS-2, and never of Railsounds.

[ChiefEagles]

Proto-1 sound is superior than NON-TMCC railsounds. One dows not have to push funny buttons or flip handles to get the same basic sounds to work (Bell Whistle/Horn). CHUCKN is correct as reguards regular TMCC but that was not the Question.

 

See, you get opinions.  As the saying goes, "Everyone has one".  I say any Railsounds is better than PS1 or PS2.  But you see, that is mine.  Test them both and see which one YOU like. 

[chuck]

Railsounds in conventional mode will ony respond to whistle/horn and bell buttons.  You will hear sounds vary (rpm/chuff) with track voltage/speed as there is a wheel sensor or a Voltage Controled Occilator to trigger the additional sounds.  PS-1 (and PS-2)  require "morse code" button pushes or rapid voltage shifts to trigger additional sounds.  Lionel's own sound systems inlcude baffling/ducts to improve the sound quality.  This is not necessarily true of Lionel sound boards OEM'd in other vendors trains.  Most loco's or sound cars just have the speaker stuffed in the bottom of the fuel tank or tender or car.  While there is a larger variety of sounds available on a PS-1 loco in conventional mode versus a RailSounds unit in conventional mode, the quality of the sounds is very different matter.