I have a lot of locos, both diesel and steam, with sound decoders, but all factory installed.
I have installed a number of non-sound decoders in my locos, both diesel and steam, but I have never attempted to install a sound decoder on my own.
Now, I have become interested in adding sound to some of my non-sound locos, and I am looking specifically at the Tsunami digital sound decoders.
When you install a Tsunami sound decoder, you also need to add a speaker and a baffle, is that correct?
How tough is it to install, especially in a diesel? Is there usually sufficient room under the shell?
I assume that a steam loco installation is a lot less challenging, spacewise.
Any tips on mounting the speaker and the baffle?
Thanks.
Rich
Alton Junction
Yes, you will need to install a speaker and baffle (enclosure).
I have installed sound decoders and speakers in Bachmann diesels, Proto 2000 diesels and Athearn diesels. The Bachmann needs to have some of the weight removed (either up top or on the fuel tank area) to make room for the speaker. The Athearn was relatively easy since they have MORE space under the shell.
I have not yet ventured into installing sound in steam, but I would imagine the decoder and speaker would go in the tender.
I have 3 videos on my youtube account which show the installs.
Sorry in a hurry, on my way out the door for work.....
Inspired by Addiction
See more on my YouTube Channel
Rich, some models come ready for a sound decoder. They have room carved out for a speaker in the fuel tank, as an example, which doubles as the enclosure, or which needs some small compartment added to be an enclosure. My Walther's Proto 2000 SW-8 has it's speaker in the fuel tank, facing down, and so does my Atlas Fairbanks-Morse Trainmaster.
Some people resort to N-scale decoders when space is really tight. They work pretty much just as well.
For steamers, yes, in the tender for both the decoder and the speaker. Think seriously about dual speakers because they really improve the sound. You can talk to the guys at Tony's who are very knowledgeable and helpful. When I went shopping for two sound decoders, and placed an order with them, they emailed back suggesting a correction because I let them know which engines I was going to modify.
BTW, in both cases I had wanted to try the new QSI Titan. Am I ever glad I did. I have enough Tsunamis with their somewhat generic sounds, as good as those sounds are in quality, that I wanted something a bit more tailored for a given steamer. The Titans can do that, and at least as well as the Tusnamis.
Crandell
Soundtraxx has a lot of good info on installing them on their website documents. Try there first. Also the users group on yahoo has a lot of good info.
Depending on how the loco was designed, I may use the sides of the shell for part of the enclosure to use the biggest speaker I can, install them in a sideways angle, in the fuel tanks or use a bass reflex speaker. In most installs I use 2 speakers in an HO diesel.
Richard
I've installed 3 Soundtraxx decoders, 2 diesel and 1 steam. The diesels took some cutting and filing.
This is the Proto 2K GP9:
The speaker baffle is the homemade white styrene box on the left.
A Tsunami is pretty thick as decoders go. You can see the purple thing in the top picture. Soundtraxx lists the physical dimensions of all the decoders on their web site.
I put the decoder and speaker for the steamer, an IHC Mikado, in the tender. There is plenty of space, but you need to do some planning for the wires. You need 2 for power, two for the motor and two for the headlight.
It can be a lot of work, but installing a Tsunami turns a nice engine into a great engine.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
First of all, with DCC never assume.
Take you loco in question and measure the current at 12 vdc. I usually put a slight load on the drivers with a finger. Some like to stop the drivers with their fingers. That can be hard on the gears. My way.
Open the shell and do some measuring. Some diesels will be a challenge.
ALL decoder and speaker specs are at the various decoder manufactures web site.
There are a wide variety of speakers. Many HO can use the 28 MM round. some two 28 mm. I have Atlas loco like that. Some a 16 mm x 35 mm oval. I have some diesels with those. A baffle is usually recommended. Some diesel shells make a good baffle. Remember, sound depends on the person, many times.
SoundTraxx has the Standard, 1 amp and Micro Tsunami, 750 ma. I use both.
The below fellow favors SoundTraxx and use to run an on line DCC supplier. He has a lot of info there. Take you time reading.
Again, no assumptions.
http://www.mrdccu.com/
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
I almost forgot. Tsunamis can get HOT. I haven't had one melt a shell, but you do need to provide some ventilation to it. Mounting it solidly on the metal frame will help dissipate the heat.
Yes, the 750 especially has heat issues. It happened to me also.
Some have had to attach a piece of aluminum or brass about the size of the 750 to the bottom of the decoder with a layer of Radio Shack heat sink compound.
I have seen quite a lot of discussion on the Yahoo SoundTraxx Group.
There are some really detailed step by step sound deocder installs in the Yahoo group RPM-Rick Bell. Message discussions are limited to the current project underway, but the file section contains PDFs of all the previous installs, in a variety of locos. Not all Tsunami, but the concepts are the same regardless. For tight spaces especially I'd use a Loksound Micro, they sound just as good, are smaller, adn do not have the heat issues of the TSU-750. They really need to fix that.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
F units generally have more space than geeps. As someone else posted, Athearns have a lot more space than say, Atlas or Proto units. In some cases it is easier to just remove the weight, than do a lot of grinding on it. If I recall, the Protos required a lot of grinding on the weight. I usually run two or more locos in a consist, so removing the weight in one unit isn't a problem. It might be, if you are running a single unit with a bunch of cars, or if you have grades on the layout. I have done around 50 sound installs, and they are all slightly different, with different dimensions and problems. I have installed sound decoders in F units, with a second speaker in the B unit. Works well, and I have never burned out a decoder.
Well, as always, tons of good information and advice, and I appreciate it all.
I have spent considerable time trying to absorb the replies, and here are some of my conclusions.
1. Steam should be no problem since there is plenty of space in the tender. I do have one question though in that regard. Someone mentioned that wiring can be a problem. You need 2 for power, two for the motor and two for the headlight. I need to study that more, but am I correct in assuming that all of that wiring is currently available in the tender?
2. Diesels pose somewhat of a problem due to the tight space considerations. I have to say, I am not thrilled about cutting into the metal, so I have reservations about converting my diesels to sound.
3. It seems that two speakers are better than one. I will keep that in mind.
4. I initially was focusing on Tsunami, but there seems to be a preference for QSI and I will keep that in mind.
5. Thanks for the tips on sources like Tony's and Yahoo groups. That is good to know.
I am not planning to convert all of my non-sound locos to sound, but here is a list of my non-sound locos by manufacturer and type.
Steam
Proto 2000 Heritage 2-8-4
Spectrum 2-10-2 2-6-6-2 4-6-2
Diesel
Athearn Genesis f7
Atlas gp38 sdp35 dash 8-40bw
Proto 2000 gp9 s1 s3 rs-1
Intermountain f3
Most of these locos were acquired between 2004 and 2008, so they are somewhat older runs.
richhotrain 1. Steam should be no problem since there is plenty of space in the tender. I do have one question though in that regard. Someone mentioned that wiring can be a problem. You need 2 for power, two for the motor and two for the headlight. I need to study that more, but am I correct in assuming that all of that wiring is currently available in the tender?
Yes, if you already have a decoder in the tender and a headlight in the engine, and the unit picks up power from the engine as well, then you should have all 6 wires already there. That should greatly simplify the installation. The steamer I put sound in was DC.
MisterBeasley richhotrain 1. Steam should be no problem since there is plenty of space in the tender. I do have one question though in that regard. Someone mentioned that wiring can be a problem. You need 2 for power, two for the motor and two for the headlight. I need to study that more, but am I correct in assuming that all of that wiring is currently available in the tender? Yes, if you already have a decoder in the tender and a headlight in the engine, and the unit picks up power from the engine as well, then you should have all 6 wires already there. That should greatly simplify the installation. The steamer I put sound in was DC.
Ahhh, thanks for that additional info, Mister Beasley. Sorry that I referred to you as "someone". I thought that it was you when I replied but once I started my reply, I could not go back to double check.
I've installed over 30 sound decoders from different mfgrs. Digitrax, QSI, and Soundtraxx. 4 or 5 QSI and 1 Digitrax. I pulled all of these out and replaced with Soundtraxx due to the much better sound(IMO). That's about $450 worth of decoders sitting in a box, but a lesson learned. Rick Bell and his sites are great as mentioned above. Here is his website, he taught me some things several years ago that are important.
http://dccinstallsandsales.com/
He will mill your frame/weights for your diesels, if you wish.
Hey Rich,
So here's the deal. If you use Tsunami, you are limited to 8 ohms resistance in your speaker. That generally means 1 speaker, or 4 speakers (hooked a combination of parallel and series)
QSI can drive two 8 ohm loads with no issues. But finding that much space in a tender is tricky. QSI recommends a speaker in the tender and another inside the boiler (for bells and whistle sounds) That being said, I do NOT recommend this approach. The P2K Berk, and Bachmann 2-6-6-2 are already very light weight. Putting a speaker in the boiler would necessitate drilling the stack and removing weights in the boiler.
QSI does have one more advantage, they have an open cylinder cock sound when starting the engine which automatically kicks in if the engine is sitting still too long (just like the prototype) There's also startup and shutdown sounds.
The QSI's also have a better back emf in my opinion.
QSI has two disadvantages:1. Slightly more expensive then soundtraxx2. Considerably more complicated to program.
Now onto speakers:
With the Standard tender (as found on the back of the 2-8-4, you'll get a Soundtraxx medium oval to fit (1.1" wide) It's a good speaker. The 1.1" mega bass speaker is another excellent choice and will give some "deep-chest" to your steam whistle.
With SD/GP/RS diesels (narrow hood) the biggest speaker you can put in there is the soundtraxx small oval speaker (.78" wide x 1.56") you may have to file down the sides a little to get it to fit. But in a way, this is a good thing. I'll explain why in baffles in a minute...
People will often recommend a baffle. The baffles purpose is to absorb the rear soundwaves so they don't cancel out the front sound waves. Here's the deal I can tell you as someone who used to tinker with speaker designs...The best baffle is the infinite baffle. You will get a more flat, loud, less distorted response from the cone. Obviously we can't use an infinite baffle, but the bigger the baffle, the better the sound. Most speaker baffles are too small in this regard.
Here's what I like to do with steam: A LOT of steamers will have 3 types of tender coal loads:
1. Molded 1 piece to tender: drill a bunch of #60 holes into the coal load. (Drill them at angles, not straight down...makes them less visible this way...and it helps diffuse the sound) Place a flat piece of styrene across the inside bottom of the coal load. Cut out hole slightly smaller then speaker. This will serve as a speaker mount. Place double sided tape gasket for speaker up against styrene sheet. Mount the speaker. Let the tender serve as the baffle.
2. 2 piece coal load: Some tenders have a removable coal load. When you remove the coal load, you'll see a slanted interior "bunker" pit similar to the prototype. It is typically solid at the bottom. The solid bottom contributes little to the structural rigidity. You can safely cut most of it out. Doing so will increase the size of the baffle. Place the speaker under the removable coal load similar to step 1. The P2K 2-8-4 has a removable coal load with a hollow bottom. (After you remove the screw under the tender roof) the 2-6-6-2 has a removable load with a solid bottom bunker
3. There's an actual fully detailed bunker with mechanical screw at bottom of bunker (usually reserved for brass)...I can't give advice yet as I have yet to do it. (Two are on my future conversion list) This is a tough call, a real tough call, but I would be inclined to drill into the floor of the tender instead of the bunker as this could affect resale value.
There is usually a hole near the front of the tender where back-speaker sound-waves can escape. This typically doesn't affect the sound that much. But if you are worried about it, you can take a SMALL SMALL cotton ball or batting and stuff it into the opening, and it will not affect the wire movement that much. Obviously you can't do this is a drawbar passes through that hole (ie: P2K 2-8-4). You might impede it's swing movement as it's much larger then flexible wires.
For really small engines without a tender (0-6-0T) I found space for the decoder in the cab roof, and room for the speaker inside the boiler! (I've done 3 of these conversions)
(speaker Inside boiler)
For really REALLY big steam, like my H-8, I went a lil nuts. I put in a diagonal baffle board and fit two 1.5" deep bass drivers in entire length of the tender with a QSI chip. They fire upward and out the coal load. I just got the work done. Now that thing SOUNDS INCREDIBLE.
Now onto diesels:
Some people like put speakers above the front or rear truck, pointing downwards. The sound will come out the trucks. There's lots of opportunities for backwaves to escape and cancel out the front waves (There are a few exceptions which I'll explain) I find the volume to be not nearly as loud or clear as the second method. SPACE WILL ALWAYS BE TIGHT as they fill them with weight. Grinding will almost always be necessary.
The exceptions: if you can create a flat front baffle plate that extends the interior width of the shell, this is an acceptable configuration. One example of this is the P2K RS-2 and is similar to how I do mine.
Option 2: Place speakers directly under the radiator fans. I really like this option as you are more likely to have space and the sound is more direct. If you have unused fan grills which are open, seal them up with a thin strip of styrene. On my GP-35 I use 4 speakers. One under each fan grill. And it sounds wonderful. It would challenge many E & F Unit Factory DCC Units. Also, there's usually enough metal weight in the engine beneath the speaker to serve as a block for the back soundwaves from escaping through the truck opening. So no baffle is necessary! The disadvantage of this method is the speakers are sometimes smaller causing a loss of bass response.
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!
The Atlas locos will probably have A Frame speaker mounts. That means you get two speakers for sides automatically and the enclosure is built in. I used two 1.25" (32mm i think, not sure... definately 1.25" though) for my Dash 8-40CW and they sound great. If you are looking for diesel speakers I recommend you consider bass enhanced speakers. (note that high bass speakers will not fit in the atlas A frame) Railmaster hobbies DSM-8 is a direct fit for intermountain gevos and is sized to fit in diesel locomotives. I am using one of those with a leftover QSI speaker in my athearn c44-9W (technically C40-9W... NS loco). I personally prefer Loksound Decoders... they are set up to start with the prime mover off unlike tsunamis that power on as soon as power hits the locomotive. Loksound can also be custom programmed. However, you won't go wrong with tsunami.
Hi everybody,
I could not resist not joining this discussion after I read Digitalgriffin's post. I have relatively short experience in sound installations, therefore I am interested to read such informative explanation - and usually read other posts. I mostly have European models, but have sound only in US models. Until today I installed sound in Athearn Big Boy, Proto 2K 2-8-8-2 and Trix Mikado (in all three I installed Tsunami decoder).
I do not know why many modelers omit to mention CAM as part of sound installation (I installed it in all three above – small magnet and miniature reed switch). I find CAM extremely important, especially if layout has grades. Of course, that applies on Tsunami decoder installations, because they change chuff volume and timbre in relation to locomotive load. I think QSI also offers such feature. I like very much when chuff changes as locomotive goes up or down the grade, or when I release throttle. It creates more dramatic loco sound.
I would like to ask Digitalgriffin, if you can give us more light on sound installation in your H8 (I intend to buy it in a future and install sound). Any picture would be very helpful, especially how you installed diagonal baffle board and a speaker. Which speaker did you use (round, square)?
For sound installations I used square 32 mm VISATON speaker (German manufacturer of Hi-Fi speakers). This is direct link to this speaker:
http://www.visaton.de/en/chassis_zubehoer/miniatur/bf32_8.html
This speaker has excellent frequency response - it is a true Hi-Fi quality speaker.
Tsunami decoders have one very useful feature - equalizer. It can make wonders, and considerably improve sound performance. Of course, you must be careful not to "over do it" – because then sound becomes unrealistic.
Furthermore, I am not sure that any other sound decoder can offer 44 kHz sampling rate as Tsunami do. High sampling rate is a prerequisite for pure sound (if original recording is on high quality level, of course). I must say I am curious about QSI Titan and ESU 4.0 – to hear them in person.
What I would like to see in Tsunami decoders as improvement in the future:
- more function outputs - 4 is absolutely not enough
- better BEMF - if QSI, ESU, Lenz can do it, I am sure Sountraxx can also
- open cylinder cock sound (as Digitalgriffin mentioned for QSI) - it gives more realistic sound, I find this effect very nice. It would be the best to link this sound effect to one function button, because sometimes locomotive drives quite a bit without "chuffing" - not all locomotives start chuffing after just a few driver revolutions.
- better cooling - I have to install small aluminum plate under the Tsunami heat sink, because without it, it can overheat and temporary stop working until cooling down
- more available sound sets – to have more variety on a layout
- maybe more powerful amplifier?
One more link from QSI web site, I find it useful for beginners (like me) – with theory and practice on loco acoustics and sound installations: http://www.qsisolutions.com/pdf/loco_acoustics_design.pdf (I assume Digitalgriffin’s installation in H8 is similar to one shown on Figure 29 in this document).
Well, that is all for now…I am curious on your opinions.
Hi Rich-
For a first time sound install I'd start with either of your F units. Both will easily accomodate a large 28x28mm high bass speaker in the rear and a smaller 1" round speaker in the front. Yes, you will need to disasemble the drive train and remove some of the frame to fit the speakers. Yes, it is easy to do with a good bimetal hack saw. work slowly and measure carefully.
If you check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SmpuwL0xuA&feature=plcp the same principles apply to your diesel locomotives.
The bachmann steamers are a little trickier because I always replace the connecting wires between the tender and locomotive.
Also check out this vid on the TsuDie EMD 567 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ok8k3F_VMQ
This ones on the Beta testing for new QSI Titan Sound Files http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MVphAIEq2A
Hope to have the Titan EMD Beta files up soon too.
Erik Fiske
I couldn't fix your brakes, so I made your horn louder
Lots of great info here.
Sorry to say, I am sufficiently scared off that I am afraid to attempt it.
I am seriously considering just send some of my diesels to a pro for conversion to sound.
What I may do is start with one of my Proto Heritage steamers which seem less complicated.
As mentioned, if any of your Atlas locos are Silver series versions of the Gold series that came with sound, they will have the speaker A frames so there is no frame milling or any of that required. They will be as easy to convert to sound as they are to just as a motor decoder (ok, there are two extra wires for the speakers). In Diesels, Atlas is one of the few that does that - wish more did - make the DC version using the exact same chassis as the factory sound version. With steam locos, many more recent ones come with the speaker mouting in the tender, ready to drop in a speaker and wire a decoder - also really not any more complex than installing a motor only decoder.