Mark and Randy are correct. The auto adjust is great. I put a LS Select in a brass steamer with a super tuned open frame motor without flywheel. Getting it to run with the sound right was not going well. Did the auto adjust and it runs and sounds perfect. I could not get the chuff to coincide with the motor performance. After the auto adjust it was easy. I did this to the four other Select decoders I have. My fleet is a mix of brass and plastic steam from different makers and different motors and drive trains.
Do you still get the noise with the shell off? Sometimes the plastic shell will resonate with the speed of the motor spinning. This happens with a few of my diesels. To combat that I put a piece of electrical tape around the inside of the shell. This has quieted the resonance to a level that I can not hear.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
I disabled BEMF and sure enough that got rid of the humming at the expense of good low speed performance. I then ran the automatic adjustment. After this the locomotive crept even slower on speed step 1 than before. However the hum was still there. I preferred the original settings and set the CVs back to those. I haven't tried CV 124 yet. Rick I assume when you say bit 4 that you are referring to bit 5 in the Loksound manual. I have an IT background and label my bits 0 - 7, but it appears ESU labels them 1 - 8.
My Layout Pics
In the copy of the V4 manual I opened last night, it was properly bit 4, with the 'first' bit being bit 0, they may have fixed it. As long as it's the one about BEMF frequewncy, that's the one.
Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
If you want to tweak the BEMF to just get rid of the noise, work with CV56 - Dynamic Drive Control. This CV regulates the influence of the BEMF and is defaulted to a maximum of 255. By lowering this value, you should be able to minimize the sound you are hearing.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
I have tried changing both CV 124 and CV 56 to no avail. Changing CV 124 Bit 5 to use constant regulation frequency merely kept the pitch of the hum to the same frequency. CV 56 BEMF Dynamic Drive Control had no effect until I decreased the parameter all the way down to zero, which is not what I want to do.
This issue is not really that big, being that the locomotive is now sound enabled, and when sounds are on you can't hear the hum anyway. I was mainly concerned that the decoder may have a defect, but I now believe this may be normal, at least for the motor in this Bachmann GP7.
Thanks everyone for all the responses.
One more question. Anyone know the correct horn type for an EMD GP7? I spent hours yesterday trying to find that on the internet.
As Randy mentioned, it IS bit 4 that you should have tried in CV 124. It is listed as such in the V4.0 manual, it is correct in the Select manual, but bit 0 was omitted for some reason.
As for the horn, what type of horn is on your engine ? Every railroad had their own unique horns. Does your engine have a multi-chime horn on it or just a single bell horn ?
Mark,
Thanks for the help you have given so far.
The Loksound V4.0 manual labels bit 0-5 on CV 124 while the Loksound Select manual labeled them 1-5. The Select doesn't support the 6th bit. In any case V4.0 bit 4 and Select bit 5 are the same and described as Adaptive or Constant Regulation Frequency.
My Bachmann GP7 is Chessie 5606. The physical horn representation is a multi-chime horn. However, I have no faith that Bachmann got it right on this inexpensive loco. I would like to know which of the horns was most most likely used on the prototype.
Something is amiss in one of the manuals - the software is identical for both the V4.0 and the Select, so whichever bit it is, it's the same one on both regardless of what the manual indicates. Trust me, there are many errors in those manuals.
The horn on your engine looks like the typical Nathan K3. While that may be the accurate sound for that horn, there's no rule saying you HAVE to use it. A lot of Chessie engines, ex-C&O would have used a 5 chime horn.