I have a lot of old DC locos, and a ten-pack of engine-only decoders from NCC. Before installing the NCC decoders as upgrades to my old DC fleet I would LOVE to know if anyone has info or experience piggybacking a Soundbug or other brand sound-only decoder on another company's engine decoders. A few of my old engines are junkers, but more than a handful are worth upgrading. I'd love to add sound!
Any tips, info or directions to related resources will REALLY be appreciated!
Good news: Yes, the Soundbug isn't connected to the regular decoder per se, it's connected to track power, so any DCC decoder would be fine with it.
Bad news: In my experience, the Soundbug is very susceptable to losing power/sound if track and engine power pick-up isn't perfect. If you have older DC steam engines where the drivers pick up on one rail and the tender the other, you are certainly going to find the sound cutting out every so often. I had one installed in fairly recent Kato SD-70 and it would cut out sometimes, even with it's excellent all-wheel power pickup. Eventually I replaced the Soundbug with a regular sound-and-motion decoder, and it has no more issues.
I'd suggest just using the regular decoders for now to get your fleet converted. If the engines have (or you hardwire them up to have) a standard eight- or nine-pin DCC receptacle, you can always unplug the NCE decoders and plug in sound decoders down the road.
I do not have Soundbug decoders, so I am no expert. But I was looking at adding them to some of my locos, so I was researching them on the Digitrax site. As far as I can tell, Digitrax makes two sound-only decoders that should work with any brand of DCC mobile decoder: https://www.digitrax.com/products/sound-decoders/sfx0416/ and https://www.digitrax.com/products/sound-decoders/sfx064d/
Note they are not called Soundbug. The only Soundbug I see looks like it is to be used with a Digitrax decoder.
There are older Soundbug products out there which may or may not work with other brands of motor decoders. The best advice I have is to look up the model number and see what it says.
Gary
I have a couple of Soundbugs and a couple of the SFX decoders. I have paralleled them with other brands with no problem. I like the SFX decoders for use in sound-only dummy engines, because they support a couple of lights as well as sounds. The are great for adding sound to a powered/dummy consist.
I have one Soundbug in a building in my carfloat terminal. It has the same address as an 0-6-0 that runs there, and since it's in a tight corner the sound always seems to be with the engine.
I did find that the output volume of the SFX decoders was very low even when turned all the way up.
Remember that you need to program separate decoders with the same address separately. I ended up disconnecting first one decoder, then the other to get them both programmed. Once that was done, they both worked fine.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
The Soundbugs were designed to work with Digitrax decoders in the sense that the only overlapping CVs are the ones you would set the same anyway - address, momentum. There is no conflict so you don;t have to disconnect one to program the other. If you use the Soundbug with another brand decoder, this may not be true, and you will almost certainly have to disconnect one and program eash decoder one at a time.
I have one but never used it. I tested it connected on my workbench to my test track, and had the speaker just laying there, no enclosure. My GF complained she heard it int he other room watching TV - I don't think they are that quiet. Just saw a post on the NCE Group where someone complained about the Digitrax speaker that came with his decoder, after replacing it with a sugar cube and baffle - which leads me to believe he installed the Digitrax speaker with no enclosure or anything. Well yes, a small speaker like that with absolutely no form of sealed enclosure WILL be pretty darn quiet!
The real issue is that the Soundbug is the old 8 bit style decoder and can only play 3 sounds at a time, so if the bell is on and you blow the horn, the other background sounds stop. And with only 8 bit detail, they sound not so great anyway. The plus is, as a sound only decoder, there isn't the problem of the loco slowing down when blowing the horn like on the original Digitrax sound and motor decoders.
I was going to hook mine up as a stationary sound player, with a larger speaker. I'm certainly never putting it in a loco.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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