Is there a market for Cheap DCC sound decoders?

[blownout cylinder]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

Randy, Did you miss the HEADPHONE part? With the GPS to change the sound as you walk aound?

As for the cost of layout based sound, that is a complex question based on layout size and locomotive roster size. It may well be a less expensive overall aproach compared to onboard sound in every loco. It would be largely software based and at some point additional loco additions would be "free".

Yes - I am aware of SurroundTraxx - this would be its next step - wireless earbud headphones.

Sheldon

I know that SurroundTraxx had the system as far as that was concerned but if you took it further---surroundtraxx still has those ding speaker issues--and incorporated the headphone thing into it--GPS and all that system would be far better off--just on sound quality alone. Now, mind the cost would be higher but I for one would save the dang money to get the ferschluggener headset and the decoders. The whole idea here is to tease out the various levels and types of technologies being brought out and utilized in other fields----check out the Stereophile mag articles recently about how the audiophile market is beefing up the iPod market with better quality speakers for headsets and such---the headsets will deliver that full on thrunm that you get from some engines.. 

It would be a vast improvement on speakers that give you lots of squeak and no bite. Regardless of cost---we need to go the extra step me thinks-----

[blownout cylinder]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

I keep saying the real future of sound in the small scales is layout based, this just might be it.

I also keep thinking about someone by the name of Stephen Beswich(sp?) who works in the field of human/technology interfacing whose ideas seem to go into creating sound systems even more surface based---entire sound fields derived through interaction with whatever you touch---a single RS11 gets touched--that loke turns on like the actual loke would---no need for the programming or any of that.

But that would be a ways off ----that

[rrinker]

 I guess I just fail to get what advantage there would be to using headphoens with GPS. If you're putting on headphones to localize the sound, then that's more of you being onboard the loco you are contorlling, so no need to change the sound based on positioning. And you could easily add wireless headphones to the Surroundtraxx system so as you stood there various trains would come by, getting louder as they approached your location and then trailing away as they left the area. Even with nothign more than today's technology I don;t see why you couldn't also then move to a different Surroundtraxx 'speaker' location and get that location's sounds on your heaphones.

 

                                           --Randy

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

Randy,

The sound should be louder, softer, left or right based on how far you are from the loco. I have not yet heard a SurroundTraxx installation, but current onboard systems, in addition to sound quality issues, often fail the distance test. In other words, even turned down low, I can still hear them when I am on the other side of the layout - out of sight, too far away.

As for all this stuff about where the sound comes from - FACT, our ears are not that good, that's why STEREO works. The combination of two sources (or more) and the nature of refected sound tricks our brains into thinking the sound is fuller than it is and coming from where its not - because we also hear a lot of reflected sounds in "real life".

Two weeks back on at a friends layout, someone left a bell on at the end of the operating session. It was not noticable until all the other noise (locos and people) stopped and the crowd started to leave. It took three of us about 5 min. find it. It was the one train parked out of the stagging yard on the other side of the back drop from the yard. Miles away in theroy. And this modeler is a big computer guy and has ajusted all his volumes very low with decoder pro.

The headphone idea should in theroy even respond to you turning your head and computer software could easily model your changing position and the changing positions of the trains, keeping all sounds in perfect balance like a movie soundtrack.

But personally, I still want my train room quiet for now. Good layout based sound would be a nice feature to turn on sometimes, but I would not want it on all the time. And for me, the cost of sound, both in TIME and money, is way low on my modeling priority list.

Sheldon

[blownout cylinder]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

The sound should be louder, softer, left or right based on how far you are from the loco. I have not yet heard a SurroundTraxx installation, but current onboard systems, in addition to sound quality issues, often fail the distance test. In other words, even turned down low, I can still hear them when I am on the other side of the layout - out of sight, too far away.

 

I heard the SurrounTraxx thing on a fellows layout not too long ago but, it either wasn't done right--the installation--or the premise is not up to snuff. I could still hear the lokes from the other side of the layout---in this case 45' away. He may have set volume up to high.

If it was in a headset form, one might be able to control that better. Also---with headsets one can have peace in the house--you want your trains to sound----wife doesn't want train to sound---headphones on head, you can listen  to that Uboat just hammering up that incline. Wife don't hear a dang thing=peace in house!

[fwright]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

I had this idea too! Wireless headphones, of the open ear bud type that allow you to hear other sounds as well (the person talking to you). Then, the headphones and the locomotive could have some sort of GPS and the exact volume/sound could be digitaly processed to reflect your exact scale distance/position from all the locomotives on the layout. This would allow sounds to fade in/fade out faster to create a better illusion of distance.

The really great thing is if you didn't want the sound experiance, just don't put the headphones on!

All the technolgy exists, it would just have to be applied. And, such a system could easily have large "under layout" speakers for shows, open houses etc, which could be turned on or off as desired.

I keep saying the real future of sound in the small scales is layout based, this just might be it.

Sheldon

Sorry to burst your bubble Sheldon, but the localization technology you describe does not exist.  The best bet for train localization and direction and speed information remains reading decoder commands and track detection schemes, not GPS.

The GPS signal doesn't penetrate to most basements, or even through a lot of roofs.  Try one of the mini hockey puck USB receivers or a portable GPS in your basement and let us know how long it takes to lock on (if it ever does).

Standard GPS is only expected to provide 3-5 meter accuracy.  You might get somewhat better, but never better than 1 meter, depending on latitude and ability to read multiple satellites simultaneously.  1 meter isn't going to be near good enough on most layouts.  Differential GPS (available from Coast Guard 300KHz transmitters) will take you to centimeter accuracy if within about 150 miles of a CG transmitter.  An additional receiver and antenna has to be integrated into the GPS receiver.  Railroads are one user of the DGPS signal because it's good enough to localize which of 2 parallel tracks the receiver is on.  The FAA WAAS is another form of Differential GPS, but operates at satellite freqs and does not take you into centimeter accuracy.

I do like the under the layout speaker concept; it seems well-suited to shelf layouts.  With wanting to use the space in my tiny HOn3 locos for weight instead of a speaker enclosure, I had planned on experimenting with under-the-table sound.  It looks like a lot of development work has already been done.

Fred W

[dcfixer]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

Many of the speakers available for onboard sound are very good, for their size, but physics is physics and it is not within our current technoligy to move enough air smoothly and accurately enough with a 1" speaker to make a 500 Hz tone in the open air of our layout rooms, that you and I can hear, let alone one at 100 Hz or lower like the sounds of a railroad locomotive.

 

I have to disagree in part.  There are 1" speakers with an Fs of 500-550Hz, giving a useful frequency response down to about 250Hz (- 10db).  500Hz is easily heard in open air.  That is not tinny nor squeaky.  100Hz?  No.

DC

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

DC, Having not done any specific testing, and just working from my years of Hi Fi experiance, I was pretty close. so what is the -3db? about 400Hz? I was not off by much. Consider my statement amended to say 400Hz.

Point remains that is still not much in the way of bass response, at least not to my ears. I don't listen to music on stuff like that. In all the Hi Fi work I ever did we never considered the -10db number "useful". You may hear a frequency at that level if the program does not contain too much other stuff, but other factors negate the practical usefulness or effective sound quality. If I give you the -10db of the speaker systems I designed in the eighties, you would be real impressed (18Hz), but the -3db of 29Hz is a more truthfull reflection of their ability and sound quality.

Sheldon

 

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

fwright

Sorry to burst your bubble Sheldon, but the localization technology you describe does not exist.  The best bet for train localization and direction and speed information remains reading decoder commands and track detection schemes, not GPS.

It need not be actual GPS, but any type of trianglation technolgy. My bubbles not busted, I don't need sound at all. But simply continue to point out the possiblities and problems.

Still very happy with my quiet DC powered trains.

Sheldon

[dcfixer]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

Having not done any specific testing, and just working from my years of Hi Fi experiance, I was pretty close. so what is the -3db? about 400Hz? I was not off by much.

Sheldon

 

Here's a link on a 1.1" speaker.

http://www.litchfieldstation.com/xcart/product.php?productid=999002856&cat=240&page=1

The other thing about these little speakers is that they are 2w continuous and 4w peak.  They can take some extra boost at around 200Hz with out distorting if one has a decoder with EQ abilities, or the sound sample is adjusted.

I have the 1.06" round one with factory baffle now,  but I think the enclosure could be a little larger, and made of something other than plastic. I think the square 1.1" will fit in my P2k E8, so I'm going to experiment with this one and my own baffles just to see if the texture and bass can be improved.

Granted, +/- 3db is a more standard and realistic spec. Having my original JBL 4311 studio monitors, I'm pretty spoiled, and would never want to listen to music on 1" speakers either, but for my HO model loco sounds, these little speakers are impressive - especially for the money.

DC

 

[fwright]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

It need not be actual GPS, but any type of trianglation technolgy. My bubbles not busted, I don't need sound at all. But simply continue to point out the possiblities and problems.

Still very happy with my quiet DC powered trains.

Sheldon

Hadn't thought of triangulation technology applied to model railroad layouts.  In the long run, it might be cheaper and easier than traditional track detection methods.  3 fixed transmitters (some layouts would need more) and a receiver/processor in each loco would be the equipment needed.  Also, a data comms link would be needed back to the speaker control unit.  Timing accuracy and frequency would determine accuracy capability of the system.  A location system to plus/minus 1/2" or so would be useful for a lot more than just speaker sound routing.  Signalling and automatic train operation are obvious applications, but I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of.

Biggest problem would be the onboard antenna/receiver/processor/data link for each locomotive.  However, elimination of sound processing from a decoder would give the physical space on essentially the same size board.

At presently, I'm also a soundless DC person.  But adding under the table sound (when desired) that follows the locomotive along a shelf has been part of my someday vision.  As has occasional fog generation and background sound for particular scenes like my dog hole harbor.

yours in animation

Fred W

....modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it's always 1900....

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

Fred,

Aristo Craft already has reliable radio reciever/transmitters for larger scales and has done reciever only for HO. I believe a reciever/transmitter is in the works for HO for use with their new REVOLUTION TRAIN ENGINEER.

I use the older track side train engineer for my HO, with a push button cab assignment system that allows cabs to be assigned/unassigned as you walk with the train from control panel to control panel.

Point is, reliable radio is no problem these days, even without much antenna in the loco. I shortened my 27 MHz Train Engineer transmitter antennas to about 3" and can still run the trains from 100' outside the train room.

The location of the listener also plays a roll and with headphones the listeners locoation would need to be tracked as well.

I will definately stay no sound until some effective layout based sound is developed. Who knows, when a bunch of more important projects are done, maybe I'll see what I can come up with.

Sheldon

[Graffen]

Returning to the question at hand. Isn´t the situation more of like this: How come hasn´t the prices dropped more on the Sound-systems that are on the market? A well-recognized economic-model states that electronic consumer-products should loose half their market-price in 18 months. I have yet to see this in DCC systems.

[fwright]

 

Graffen

Returning to the question at hand. Isn´t the situation more of like this: How come hasn´t the prices dropped more on the Sound-systems that are on the market? A well-recognized economic-model states that electronic consumer-products should loose half their market-price in 18 months. I have yet to see this in DCC systems.

The original post called on DCC manufacturers to produce cheaper sound decoders with generic sounds.  I'm not familiar with this well-recognized economic model that consumer electronics products should drop in price by 50% every 18 months.  I have never seen anything that level of price drop in the consumer market either.

The only "law" I have seen along those lines in the electronics space was Moore's "Rule" - I prefer the word rule as more accurate than law.  Moore theorized that the processing power of CPUs would double every 18 months.  History has shown that this trend was fairly accurate for many years, but I question whether it still holds or will extend into the future (we are approaching physics limits in processors).  Because the rule worked for so well for CPUs for so many years, many have tried to extend the rule to other technologies or to prices where there have been rapid technological advances.  The rule generally won't hold, with perhaps the exception of solid state memory.

For prices to drop 50% in 18 months, there has to be significant untapped market potential (buyers that haven't bought yet), and significant economies of scale on the production side.  The model railroading market is quite finite, as the limited production of models attests to.  The big question in the model railroad business is how many of X are we likely to sell at any reasonable price.  Production has to be limited to that number or the whole supply chain takes a bath.  Because the market is so limited, a lower price does not necessarily produce sufficient extra sales to justify investment in more efficient production facilities.

Take your sound decoders.  My "scientific" guess is that the total market for all sound decoders to be on the order of 100K model railroaders willing to have 5 sound-equipped locomotives - and that's probably overstating the market by a factor of 2 or 3.  Of those 500K sound decoders, how many of those are going to be installed by the model railroader instead of buying factory-equipped locomotives with sound decoders?  10%?  20%?  Assuming 20% (again large by a factor of 2 or 3 if I'm investing my money), how many manufacturer's are making sound decoders to fill that 100K sales potential?  5?  Even if I could corner 50% of the market, that's only 50K units spread over the next 5 years.  Given how dear my $$ are to me, if I'm Soundtraxx, I'm only going to make 5000 Tsunamis and see how they sell.  That means all my development and setup costs are going to have to be amortized over the 5000 units.  A good economic rule is that early adopters of new technologies pay more.  Future runs will sell for less, but probably won't be any bigger unless my costs of funds gets cut to $0 like the big banks.  And that has happened.  The 1st Tsunamis were over $100 each.  Now, they are in the $80 range.  And probably in 5 years they will be down to $50-$60.  The real cost has decreased futher because inflation would otherwise push up level prices.

The same has happened with DCC system prices.  The cost of bringing out a new system is not trivial.  Most owners of existing DCC systems are quite happy with what they have, and are not going to replace with new for a while to come.  One of the sales points for Digitrax is that your system won't be made obsolete for a long time.  So the market for a newly developed DCC system is pretty small unless you can come up with a compelling feature to get the turnover of the old systems.

my thoughts, your choices

Fred W

[Paul3]

Graffen,
Please don't compare mass market consumer goods to model railroad electronics.  There are over 2 billion cell phone users (possibly 3 billion), and most homes in industrialized nations have a PC, a DVD player, etc.  Compare that to the US model railroad market, which is estimated to be around 250,000 out of a total population of 300,000,000 (that's approx. 0.8%), and it isn't even close.  Then it gets better when you realize that DCC is approx. 25% or 33% of the total hobby, so we're talking about a market place in the USA that's less than 100,000. 

As Fred said, mass market consumer goods are less expensive because they can make it up in volume of sales.  The big companies can invest in the latest technology that makes product faster and cheaper in other countries that have less expensive working conditions.  Most DCC items are assembled in-house here in the USA.  Here's a link to NCE's manufacturing plant: http://www.ncedcc.com/nce2_008.htm and here's some shots of the interior: http://www.ncedcc.com/nce2_009.htm 

That being said, sound decoders have come down significantly in price from their introduction.  Original Soundtraxx DSD-LC HO sound decoders in 1999 were around $125 each, IIRC (and in 1998, the higher cost DSD's were $180).  Nowadays, you can get DSD-LC's from Soundtraxx for $65.  Perhaps in another 10 years, they will drop 50% again...but maybe not.

Edit: Ironically enough, when I found the DSD-101LC on the Soundtraxx website, I had forgotten that they still made them.  So I went to Tony's Trains to see the prices, and he's selling them for $51.95.  Is that close enough to being a "fleet" sound decoder?

Paul A. Cutler III
*******************
Weather Or No Go New Haven
*******************

[Bapou]

I've seen a few mentions of the DSD Soundtraxx decoders, here is a link to them on the Tony's site. The DSD decoders are very quiet, but the sound quality isn't that bad.

[Texas Zepher]

Graffen

Isn´t the situation more of like this: How come hasn´t the prices dropped more on the Sound-systems that are on the market?

But they have dropped.  Dramatically.  A sound decoder we now consider to be pretty cheesy used to cost $295, now one can get a much better one for $95.   However it is unreasonable to expect them to drop as a mass markets commodity item does.

[blrrfan]

even China-made sound decoders are around the US$70 range, see http://www.modelrailway.com.hk/china_trains.htm and scroll to DXDC.
(the QJ one for HK$588 which is about US$70)

cheers/jw
(jens)