I hve been experiementing with a variety of sound producing options on my DCC HO layout
They fall into three groups:
GROUP 1. Three way decoders installed directly in the body of the loco or tender. I have several installed as snap in loco specific fits, an equal number hardwired in older locos. I have used exclusively Tsunami, and various Soundtraxx LC series decoders.
GROUP 2. To forgo the hassle of trying to get a decoder and terrible sounding speaker into a narrow body loco or small switcher (for me any single speaker 1" or less is pretty disappointing), I have created "dedicated' loco specific cars that couple with various groups of locos.....that is early EMD LC decoder in a box car or under a coal load in a gondola mounted with 2 to 4 large oval speakers in parallel series to keep the ohm rating low. I then hook the speaker wires up with the tiny snap in connectors which I have wired to protrude unobtrusively from a loco and a dedicated trailing car. These sound great, by the way.
3. Non dedicated sound cars with sound only Soundtraxx DSX decoders installed with their own rail wipers. These are programmed in consist style with the desired loco....again, a narrow body or switcher that could not accommodate the 2 to 4 large oval speakers firing through the floor of the dsx sound car. These need only be coupled with the chosen loco....no connecting of micro connectors is needed.
Why these three systems? All experiements to overcome the inability of installing decoders and ridiculously ineffective tiny speakers in narrow body locos and swithchers.
So far to good. I am well pleased with the qualitY of the sound....which is paramount with me. I can install good budget motor and light decoders in the locos and hook up one or other of the type of "soundcars".
Now I am wondering about the usefulness of a "layout" sound system such as the MRC symphony 77 systems or their new soundbox system which is to provide overall layout sound effects rather then integrated in an individual loco.
I am going to continue installed all three of my types.....Tsunamis and LS where ever they will fit. Loco specfic LC series where they will fit. And continue to build my rumbling versions of dedicated sound cars tha outperform all else.
But has anyone had experience with a "layout system" with speakers strategically placed around the layout and a sound controller in hand? Does anyone bug MRC make anything like this, and how good are they/
Thanks for any advice. Just trying to cover all bases in my pursuit of rumbling realistic sound.
The MRC systems use 8 bit sound samples. They are midrangy, with no spacialization (reverb/ echo) and the repetitive sounds like chuff and river/stream and rain are very short samples, making it obvious they are recordings very quickly. We use the MRC Synchro units, steam and diesel, and a City/Country unit, and while both fill an otherwise empty room with sound, it is not very impressive sound.
Many people really like these units, but I am an amatuer musician, and sound reinforcement/studio engineer, and have been an audiophile since Fosgate (the original) and Alpine ruled car audio, and when active crossovers used 110v and were only a dream for car audio. If onboard sound, in HO scale anyway, sounds good to you, I'd suggest a trip to a LHS or a friend's house to audition these units before you plunk down your money. Of the units specified, we like the Synchro diesel prime mover samples, and the City Country unit's church bells, dog, rooster and cricket.
Our layout soundspace consists of several layers of available sounds:
1. The MRC Synchro units, and
2. A PC CD player, generating 16 bit CD quality background bird, water and insect samples, and
3. Winamp, triggered by a simple (and free) keyboard mapping program (Superkeys), playing 16 bit CD quality digital samples of train bypasses, foreground wildlife and weather samples, and various industrial sound effects, with all three of the above audio sources feeding a Behringer 12 channel mixer with effects loop (ambiance/reverb on FX send 1, EQ on FX send 2), which in turn is routed back into the PC, where it drives a 580 watt THX 5.1 speaker array, and
4. Onboard locomotive sound units, and
5. Layout mounted single purpose sound units for the saloon and sawmill, with their own speakers.
In the near future, we are planning to add the software capability (Discwelder series) to mix and burn DVD-A audio disks, and will replace the current CD background (birds, water, insects) audio CD with 5.1 mixed DVD background audio.
If testing show it feasible, we will also remix our digital train bypass samples to 5.1 specs so the train not only moves left or right in the soundspace, but also back to front and up and down. The big question here is DVD access time. I know the Superkeys program can trigger playback of a selected sample from DVD or hard drive, but a more robust playback engine that can handle the DVD-A files, along with the larger files and possible DVD seek/access times may introduce unacceptibly long response times, the train may be long gone before the sample begins.
The best advice I can give someone who wants more sound and orders of magnitude better sound than today's onboard and stationary sound systems can give on your layout, is to get a PC into the audio chain at your earliest opportunity. Without exaggerating at all, the difference is literally the same as between an 8-track player with a very limited selection of tapes for playback, and a Digital Audio Workstation(s) running a multi-million dollar digital recording studio.
When it comes to audio, today, the whole world revolves around the Personal Computer.
Just one example, to illustrate this. A free utility, SIR, allows you to play a test sample, digitize the reverberation and echo sequence and timing, and then map all desired sound samples through similar processing. In effect, this means you can sample ANY soundspace, from Madison Square garden, to the St. Petersburg Cathedral, to a hanging valley 20 miles up a 4WD trail in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, to an urban canyon between high rise office buildings and vast warehouse wastelands, and play back any or all of your layout sound as if the sound source were IN THAT LOCATION, in terms of ambience, echo and reverb. A less than ethical person could map the responses from a $100,000.00 Lexicon reverb processor and duplicate them on command, at no charge.
These ambience processing files are common format, and large databases of FREE mapped soundspaces already exist online. This is very similar to ripping CDs, and trading the music files over the internet, except you aren't stealing and distributing music or intellectual property, you are mapping the RESPONSE of a given room, or location. Except for mapping commercial sound processing units like the lexicon examplke above, there is no legal or ethical question involved.
If you want your train's whistle to sound just like it would inside the Moffat Tunnel, the biggest problem will be getting into and out of the tunnel safely and legally, to map the response. There is no body of law or ethics concerning the use of that response map, in fact, you could probably copyright the response file YOURSELF, and prevent the owners of the Moffat Tunnel from using it (just your file, not similar other files), because you set the mike placements and angles, and captured the file yourself.
That's just ONE example of what a PC brings to your layout soundspace, and you don't need a world class business machine or supercomputer to do it either. Although our normal layout PC is a 1.8 gigahertz Athalon, that unit is down for repair and in the meantime, a Pentium I 200 megahertz machine is filling in with all the functionality listed above. In fact, even an old Intel 486 DX2-66 machine could accomplish all of the three numbered functions above, with the exception being limited to physical hardware compatibilities with the 5.1 soundcard and the demands that modern operating systems place on your computer.
For $200 you can buy a 4 track digital recorder no larger than a pack of cigarettes, and together with one or two decent microphones, you can capture your own sound samples live next to a yard or train track in the real world, to use on your layout. If live capture isn't your cup of tea, (be careful, DHS may give a vigorous response to a railfan wiring up a train trestle, even for audio capture, not demolition), there are huge sound sample databases online, and there are vendors at all the train shows with first class digital samples on CD already captured. I have a 12 minute sample of a 6 unit diesel freight working the Texihapi loop I can mix, cut, chop process and spacialize to my hearts content from one of the train show CDs that cost me $10. My Silverton RR DVD contains about two hours of audio, every bit usable, without narrator overlays, as long as I just play those samples here on our layout and don't try to distribute them.
The sooner you build your layout sound around a PC, the faster you open up your world. If you do this this week, within a month, you will be ten years ahead of any and all commercial layout sound options, and from all indicators to date, you will stay ten years ahead of commercial layout sound options for the forseeable future.
A $200 second-hand PC, a 16 bit soundcard costing $10, and a home stereo amp and speakers are all you need to get started. If you need to expand and use more input devices later on, you can get a simple, servicable mixer just like ours from a pawnshop or music store for around $100 or less.
What are you waiting for?
:-)