I recently acquired a Bachman sound equipped S-2. The sound effects are all there but the volume is nowhere near what it needs to be. I am pretty new to this DCC thing (have never messed with any of the more advanced settings) and I am wondering if the unit is defective or if this is is something I can correct. Have several other locos, one of which is a Bachman, and have never experienced this out of the box.
They may have actually shipped a loco witht he volume not on max. CV128 is the master volume control, 0 is silent, 255 is max. Max volume may be too much for the tiny speaker that fits int he small switcher and it may distort. Compared to a steam loco witht he speaker int he tender, the speaker in the S-2 is downright miniscule - there's not much room in there for the motor, flywheels, decoder, speaker, and weights.
I'll wager the others are all too loud, I've yet to see a factory sound loco come out of the box without the volume cranked up way too loud - you really shouldn;t hear the loco across the room, that'd be like hearing a real train more than 20 miles off.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks. I have learned something new.... This masked the problem as the other ones were indeed too loud... I never considered this. CV128 on this particular unit was set at 192 which I am guessing some engineer put some real thought into as when I set it to 255 there was no noticebale difference. The speaker was probably being chewed up so I set it back... Someday I might open the thing up and see if any improvements can be made on the acoustics. The volume is still too low but by turning the other ones down there is a bit more consistency.
EWT123
One of the things I learned early on with DCC is exactly what Randy said. The manufacturers of most DCC sound decoders and sound equipped locomotives seem to think that we all have hearing problems so they ship their products with the volume cranked to the max. I can't count the number of times I have fired up a locomotive with a new sound decoder in it only to have my teeth fillings rattle and my wife protesting from the next room!
In all likelyhood Bachmann has shipped your locomotive with the loudest sound level it can produce without distortion. It's unfortunate that the volume isn't loud enough for you. I have a Bachmann S4 and I find the volume to be quite acceptable right out of the box, but keep in mind that I lowered the volume on almost all of my other locomotives.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!