Yesterday evening, I had it with sound. Too many locos sounding uo at power up.
So, I began my quest for silence by counting how many sound equipped locos are on my layout. Turns out, I have 28 sound equipped locos, but only 6 start up the sound of the prime mover immediately upon power up.
The 22 that remain silent are all QSI, BLI Paragon 2, and BLI Blueline.
Of the remaining 6, 5 are Tsunamis. The solution for the Tsunami is pretty simple - - - CV 113 =1.
But the remaining sound decoder, a LokSound Select is driving me nuts. I have read through the manual and tried different changes to CVs but to no avail. This LokSound Select decoder is in an Intermountain F3 for whatever difference that makes.
So, my question is, how do I program the LokSound Select decoder so that it remains silent at power up?
Thanks in advance.
Rich
Alton Junction
Rich:
See FAQ for LokSound select decoders, "how do I reverse F8":
http://www.esu.eu/en/support/faq/loksound/loksound-select/
Thanks for that link, maxman.
It is interesting because the instructions and accompanying text is almost identical to that found in another of what seems like a lot if LokSound Select manuals published by ESU.
What I found most interesting in the link that you provided was the part after "Please Note" which addressed the differences in the Loksound Select decoders that are modified for locomotive manufacturers use. That seemed critical to me since the loco in question was an Intermountain F3, and the LokSound Select decoder that I installed was provided to me by Intermountain. That note was not in the text in the manual that I referenced before starting this thread.
Anyhow, I tried that 3-step process from the link that you provided, but it didn't work either. So, I am still trying to figure out to silence this decoder on power up.
Just to be sure we're all on the 'right track', you know the Loksound instructions in the link are instructions to set the decoder so that the sound starts at power-up? Normally Loksound decoders don't make sound until you press F8, reverse of most decoders.
BTW, have you tried using F8 to shut the sound off before you power down the layout, then tried powering back up? I might be wrong, but seems to me whichever way you have F8 when you power down is what it will do when you power back up.
wjstix Just to be sure we're all on the 'right track', you know the Loksound instructions in the link are instructions to set the decoder so that the sound starts at power-up? Normally Loksound decoders don't make sound until you press F8, reverse of most decoders. BTW, have you tried using F8 to shut the sound off before you power down the layout, then tried powering back up? I might be wrong, but seems to me whichever way you have F8 when you power down is what it will do when you power back up.
After trying various combinations of CV values, as indicated in various manuals, I went back to Go. I reset the decoder, CV8=8. That done, I re-programmed the long address (POM), powered down, waited a minute, and powered up. The primer mover immediately sounded. Then I pressed F8 and the sounds all muted. Powered down, waited a minute, powered up, the prime mover immediately sounded.
Hi Rich,do you have a LokProgramer?
I ran into this problem this summer.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/744/p/265135/2995628.aspx#2995628
Maybe it was the sound package I uploaded to the decoder or maybe it came that way but I had a NOT F8 and sound came on with power. Randy explains it best in that thread. I do not know how you remap F8 without the lokprogrammer, you need to make F8 F8 again, almost sounds political.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
FWIW. I just put a Loksound Select into a DC Atlas GP7. The way it came, it's silent on startup until I press F8. Whether or not sound was on when I shut off the system.
Ed
I do not have a LokSound Programmer.
I finally sent an email to Intermountain, and I am awaiting a reply.
When I ordered the LokSound Select decoder from Intermountain, a one-page operating bulletin was included, and it reads in pertinent part:
richhotrainThe F8 function key used with the LokSound Select allows for a more realistic operating experience and is not simply a “mute” button. This is done so that both the start-up and shut down sequences can be heard without any CV changes. This also reduces the power-up drain on your DCC system’s power booster. Sound decoders draw more current on the initial start-up than non-sound decoders. The F8 function key can be changed to become a “mute” button for the prime mover sound by setting CV32 to 2 and then CV403 to 32.
I read that as your loco should be functioning the way you want it, out of the box from Intermountain.
That is: it is quiet on power on, not drawing excess electrons, then F8 initiates the start up sound.
A wise professor taught be the should does not equal is.
I looked at my manual and I don't see how you undo NOT F8 and MF8GA (make F8 Great Again)
BigDaddy richhotrain The F8 function key used with the LokSound Select allows for a more realistic operating experience and is not simply a “mute” button. This is done so that both the start-up and shut down sequences can be heard without any CV changes. This also reduces the power-up drain on your DCC system’s power booster. Sound decoders draw more current on the initial start-up than non-sound decoders. The F8 function key can be changed to become a “mute” button for the prime mover sound by setting CV32 to 2 and then CV403 to 32. I read that as your loco should be functioning the way you want it, out of the box from Intermountain. That is: it is quiet on power on, not drawing excess electrons, then F8 initiates the start up sound. A wise professor taught be the should does not equal is. I looked at my manual and I don't see how you undo NOT F8 and MF8GA (make F8 Great Again)
richhotrain The F8 function key used with the LokSound Select allows for a more realistic operating experience and is not simply a “mute” button. This is done so that both the start-up and shut down sequences can be heard without any CV changes. This also reduces the power-up drain on your DCC system’s power booster. Sound decoders draw more current on the initial start-up than non-sound decoders. The F8 function key can be changed to become a “mute” button for the prime mover sound by setting CV32 to 2 and then CV403 to 32.
Yeah, it would seem that sound should not come on at power up unless and until I press F8. But that is not the case.
CV403 at 32 is enable the sound when the function key is off. You want the opposite, which is CV403 = 16. So set CV32=2, then CV403=16. The full details are actually in the v4.0 manual, since CV403 isn't even mentioned in the Select manual except when they say to set it to 32 to disable the quiet on power on.
All of the ones I have so far came out of the box quiet until I hit F8. The way it ought to be.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
CV 403 is mentioned in the FAQ link I posted above.
rrinker All of the ones I have so far came out of the box quiet until I hit F8. The way it ought to be.
I agree, the only problem being that if the loco see a momentary short it assumes that the power is "coming on" and restarts the starting sequence.
It would be nice if the decoder could be programmed to remember what the sound/silent setting is so if the sound was on when the power is removed it comes back when power is restored, and if off when power is turned off it remains that way when power is restored.
rrinker CV403 at 32 is enable the sound when the function key is off. You want the opposite, which is CV403 = 16. So set CV32=2, then CV403=16. The full details are actually in the v4.0 manual, since CV403 isn't even mentioned in the Select manual except when they say to set it to 32 to disable the quiet on power on. All of the ones I have so far came out of the box quiet until I hit F8. The way it ought to be. --Randy
Here is what I did:
Power up, sound comes on immediately.
Press F8, sound mutes.
Power down.
POM, CV32=2, CV403=16, sound still on.
********************************
One thing that I notice. When I power up and sound comes on immediately, I need to press F8 twice to mute the sound. Thereafter, F8 toggles sound on and off as long as I do not power down, but if I power down, then power up, I have to press F8 twice to mute the sound.
When you press F8 to mute the sound, does it just turn the sound off, or does it do a "shut down"?
How did you power down?
When I was messing with Rule 17, lifting one side of the engine wheels should have had the same result as powering my command station on and off. It did not.
Yes.... that makes no sense, at least to me, but it was repeatable.
BigDaddy How did you power down? When I was messing with Rule 17, lifting one side of the engine wheels should have had the same result as powering my command station on and off. It did not. Yes.... that makes no sense, at least to me, but it was repeatable.
richhotrain I finally sent an email to Intermountain, and I am awaiting a reply.
Here is the reply:
If you're wanting the CVs for the F unit decoder that we discussed in 2015, the setting is:CV32 = 2 FIRSTCV387 = 16This setting will then require the activation of function 8 to start up the prime mover. It will also shut-down the prime mover if the locomotive is in idle. If the locomotive is moving or if the prime mover isn't in idle, function 8 acts as a mute key.
CV387?
Yep, that worked. I had been trying to mute the sound on power up with CV403.
Go figure.
I appreciate all of your replies.
Secret CV's ...who knew?
At least Intermountain is responsive. That has to be a setting in their OEM project. I just used Lokprogrammer to change F8, and the only CV it changes is 403! 16 for silent start, press F8 to turn it on, and 32 for start up with the sound on, F8 will mute. As documented in the Select manual.
It actually does make sense once you dig into how the sound sequences work in a V4.0. CV387 is line 9 in the code, CV403 is line 10 in the code. Obviously they have the prime mover on/off in line 9, not line 10 in their project. Others may have the prime mover logic in line 10, in which case the manual's use of CV403 would be correct. Same values - 16 = with F8 on, 32 = with F8 off.
In fact I think I just had an insight into how this works, trying to decipher this in the manual. Kind of neat, really. There are 9 logic conditions, 2 physical outputs, 2 logic outputs, and 3 sound outputs per row in this table. So you cna have up to 9 conditions for something to happen. The 2 physical outputs allow you to select any combination of up to 16 function wires (really only 12 max supported, the other 4 are alternative configs for the headlights and F1/F2 for ditch lights), anything from no wires doing anything up to all 12 (so a single Fkey can turn on 1 light, or 4 lights, whatever you want). The 2 Logic Output CVs give control of 16 options like notch up, notch down, doppler on, light dim, dynamic brake on/off, etc. And the 3 sound slot CVs let you pick any combination of 24 sound slots to play sounds based on the conditions.
There are 40 rows in this table. 16 CVs per row. 480 CVs! This is all just CV setting - you can effectively write 40 lines of code to make the decoder do things based on keys, direction, speed, acceleration, deceleration, whatever. All without editing the sounds or even needing a Lokprogrammer.
Too much I think is simplified in the Select manual and it doesn;t explain this at all. Plus the CVs don't wlways match - what CVs are what lines in the table depend on hoow the OEM created the sound project. Just be glad this is Intermountain and they actually have internal documentation on their sound projects - unlike MRC which can't tell me which of the 16 horn sounds is what kind of horn in their decoders.
On that note, I think I may just use V4.0 going forward. If I happen to buy sound locos that have Selects in them, I won't change it out, but for my own I will probably use v4.0 - I kind of have to for all my RS-3 fleet anyway, as the horn I need is not in the Select project. It's not in the v4.0 project either - but it was a couple of clicks and I made one since the horn sound I need IS in the Loksound files, I didn't have to do audio editing, I just had to swap the sound being played and now I have a v4.0 project with a 244 prime move and a M3RT1 horn. Except now I have to do it over so I can use the latest Full Throttle project as the basis.
rrinker At least Intermountain is responsive. That has to be a setting in their OEM project. I just used Lokprogrammer to change F8, and the only CV it changes is 403! 16 for silent start, press F8 to turn it on, and 32 for start up with the sound on, F8 will mute. As documented in the Select manual. It actually does make sense once you dig into how the sound sequences work in a V4.0. CV387 is line 9 in the code, CV403 is line 10 in the code. Obviously they have the prime mover on/off in line 9, not line 10 in their project. Others may have the prime mover logic in line 10, in which case the manual's use of CV403 would be correct. Same values - 16 = with F8 on, 32 = with F8 off.
It's one thing to program the decoder by coding different prime movers, horns, whistles and bells. It's quite another thing to document the different coding patterns.
The LokSound Select Diesel and Steam Users Manual indicates that CV32=2 and CV403=32. When I bought the decoder in 2015 from Intermountain, the Operator's Guide for the Intermountain F-units indicated the same CVs and the same CV values. But in the reply to my email today from Intermountain, it indicated CV32=2 and CV387=16.
I think that the 2015 Operator's Guide mistakenly copied the CV sequence from the LokSound Select Diesel and Steam Users Manual. However, the current instruction sheet on the Intermountain web site has corrected that error if, indeed, it was an error.
The manual's use of 403=32 is to make it NOT need F8 to turn on. The wording is a little tricky, but the paragraph above it goes on about how the default is that the decoder is silent until F8 is pushed, we think it's best this way, blah blah, but you can change it if you want, and then says set CV32=2 and CV403=32.
Again, looking int he v4.0 manual, you can see that 387 and 403 actually do the same thing, except that 387 is line 9 of the program and 403 is line 10. The meaning of a value of 16 vs 32 is exactly the same - 16 means when F8 is on, 32 means when F8 is off.(the NOT F8 thing)
My Select Bowser switcher either follows the Loksound standard, ie the manual, where the F8 sound control is on CV403, or Bowser just used a project supplied by Loksound instead of custom writing their own. Intermountain appears to have done a custom sound project, in which the settings may vary from the generic defaults in the Select manual. It's not a special decoder, it's the same as any other. At least for now, there aren' stripped down Loksound decoders fro OEMs. The Loksound v4.0 I bought as an empty (just the test files loaded - useless unless you have a Lokprogrammer) that I loaded a standard Loksound sound project on (but modified the horn) also defaulted to CV403=16 and won;t start up until I hit F8. The Select in my Bowser F unit, same thing. So the difference is something Intermountain did differently in their sound project. I suspect similar issues may arise with Rapido locos, since they are in some ways really pushing the limits of the decoder. Same with the Scale Trains Turbine, since it has TWO start up sequences, the main one which starts the diesel and then the one that starts the turbine.
Bottom line, if the OEM has diverged from the defaults mentioned in the Loksound manuals, they will have to make sure we the purchasers are aware of that. And people writing definitions for JMRI need to be aware of that as well - if all JMRI knows to control the silent startup if CV403, you could have reset your decoder over and over with no results. Or worse - if 403 was no longer the startup setting, changing the value could have altered some other sound or effect on the loco.
Excellent follow up, Randy. I agree that the IM version of the LokSound Select is not really an OEM but rather just some programming modifications of the standard LokSound Select v4.0. That's why I described it as an OEM of sorts.
The current operator bulletin on the IM website does correctly identify CV387, but that did not seem to be the case back in 2015 when I purchased the decoder from IM. I am convinced that the coding was correct (obviously) but that the original operator bulletin was incorrect.
It may even vary dependin on which IM loco you are talking about. The one you have clearly has a project design where the CV needed is 387. But is that true for ALL Intermountain with Loksound? Or is it ones before a certain date use the defualt of CV403, ones since now use CV387? I'm sure if anyone with a different IM sound loco has an issue, IM can point them in the right direction. The only other person who might know is Matt Herman at ESU as he works closely with the OEMs in creating the sound files.
rrinker It may even vary dependin on which IM loco you are talking about. The one you have clearly has a project design where the CV needed is 387. But is that true for ALL Intermountain with Loksound? Or is it ones before a certain date use the defualt of CV403, ones since now use CV387? I'm sure if anyone with a different IM sound loco has an issue, IM can point them in the right direction. The only other person who might know is Matt Herman at ESU as he works closely with the OEMs in creating the sound files. --Randy
IM doesn't produce all that many different types of locomotives, but there are four different start up procedures.
I have an F3 with the LokSound Select decoder. To have sound off at power up, CV32=2, CV387=16. This is true of all IM F-units with LokSound Select.
For ES44AC / ES44DC & U18B locos, CV32 = 2, CV403 = 16.
For SD40-2 locos, CV32 = 2, CV419 = 16.
You can see that progression of increments from 387 to 403 to 419.
For all other IM locos equipped with LokSound Select, the standard LokSound Select protocol is followed: CV32=2, CV403=32.
I still say 32 is wrong - 32 means "Not F8", 16 means "F8", that's NOT something that can vary by project, it's a value for a CV that defined by the decoder itself. WHICH CV gets that value is what changes based on the sound project design. ANd it does make sense - CV419 is line 11 in the function mapping, for the group that includes F8, just like CV403 is line 10, and CV387 is line 9.
The chart is on page 52 of the V4.0 manual. The CVs in question are part of the input block column CV C. Page 53 describes what those blocks are. CV C block has options (bit patterns, like how CV29 works) for F6 on and off, F7 on and off, F8 on and off, and F9 on and off. The manual shows the value, not the bit, so for F8 on is has 16, or bit 4 set (0001 0000) and for F8 is off it has 32, or bit 6 set (0010 0000). Since the manual shows actual values, if you wanted the sound to be on only if F8 AND F7 are on, you add the values, it would be 16 (F8 is on) + 4 (F7 is on) or 20.
Hopefully there is plenty of memory space in the decoders to add more, if the NMRA ever expands beyond F28, as there are currently 9 condition CVs to cover everything from F0-F28, plus "loco is moving" "loco stops" "direction forward" "direction reverse" "wheel sensor on" , "wheel sensor off", plus 4 more sensor inputs. They would need one more CV per every 4 function keys.
It's really kind of neat and not that hard to figure out, it's just 40 rows of the same set of options for input cinditions and then what happens when said conditions are met - turn on an output, play a sound, both, or "do something" like notch up or down the prime mover. The table covers CV257 to CV384, in sets of 16 CVs (line 1 is CV257-CV272). The first 16 lines need CV32=2, the next 16 lines need CV32=3, and the final 8 rows need CV32=4. According to the manual, this table is constantly read by the decoder, several 100x a second.
Lokpilot 4.0 has the exact same table, same CV values and all, excpet for the sound slots. It does have a 'virtual sound slot' that you can enable on the same key used to turn on sounds with Loksound, so that the startup delay is synchronized. So to consist a Lokpilot and Loksound, you would add a row to the function table int he Lokpilot setting the CV C value to 16 for F8 on, and the corresponding CV O value to 1 to enable the virtual sound. Now if you start the pair but do NOT hit F8, there will be no sound from the sound loco, and both it and the non-sound one will start moving together (assuming you haven't messed up CV2, or speed tables). If you hit F8 and turn on the sound decoder, the non-sound decoder will also have the same delay before moving as the sound loco.
The standard Loksound Select decoder defaults to Sound Off at power up.
However, the Intermountain supplied version of the LokSound Select decoder defaults to Sound On at power up.
To test that assertion, I went down to the layout and reset the LokSound Select decoder (CV8=8). The sound effects immediately came on. So, I powered down, then powered up, the sound effects immediately came on. Pressed F8, the sound was muted. Pressed F8 again and the sound effects came on. Changed two CVs, CV32=2, Cv387=16. The sound effects immediately shut down. Pressed F8, the sound effects came on.
That makes perfect sense based on the manuals. The default CV values can be set with the project, which is what Intermountain did. So if you do a reset and then read the appropriate CV (387, 403, or 419), it should be 32. Which means, the sounds will come on as soon as you power up the loco, as it does. Putting it back to 16 means you need to press F8 first, which it does.
16 = sounds are on when F8 is on, 32 = sound are on when F8 is off. Exactly what is happening.
rrinker That makes perfect sense based on the manuals. The default CV values can be set with the project, which is what Intermountain did. So if you do a reset and then read the appropriate CV (387, 403, or 419), it should be 32. Which means, the sounds will come on as soon as you power up the loco, as it does. Putting it back to 16 means you need to press F8 first, which it does. 16 = sounds are on when F8 is on, 32 = sound are on when F8 is off. Exactly what is happening. --Randy
But that is the source of so much confusion.
You have to wonder why IM chose to have sound on at power up as the default when the standard LokSound Select is just the opposite?
They did have some sound locos using Tsunami before they switched to Loksound - maybe to keep them all the same.