Even though the Lok Sounds have won me over, I'm still looking foward to hearing a diesel Tsunami. From my limited understanding of acoustics the overall sounds will be clearer and more dynamic whether at high or low volume, provided that the best speaker enclosure/baffling is installed. Supposed to be as clear or even more dynamic than the sounds eminating from BLI diesels, which help set the benchmark a few years ago. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).
I've heard the steam Tsunami and was very impressed with it. I can't say anything negative about it other than it's a shame a greater variety of steam whistle offerings aren't available with it.
"I like my Pullman Standards & Budds in Stainless Steel flavors, thank you!"
jacon12 wrote: Another question. Can you take the 'typical' sound decoder that came stock.... say, in a P2K GP-9... out of the locomotive and put in a Tsunami decoder and come up with better sound? Thanks for the help in understanding sound decoders. JaRRell
Another question. Can you take the 'typical' sound decoder that came stock.... say, in a P2K GP-9... out of the locomotive and put in a Tsunami decoder and come up with better sound?
Thanks for the help in understanding sound decoders.
JaRRell
Any decoder can be used to replace factory decoders as long as space is available and the speakers installed are the same ratings in Ohms impedance. Most of the diesels that have sound installed like the GP9 uses special mounting for the speakers and these would be hard to replace. The old standard was 8 ohms, but Loksound uses a 100 Ohm speaker which is not compatible with the Tsunami or QSI. I am not sure of the Digitrax, but they might have a 30 ohm speaker impedance. For instance, if you use a 4 ohm speaker with an amplifier that is rated for an 8 ohm speaker, the amplifier will burn out or damaged. You can normally use a higher rating than the minimum, but a lower rated speaker will damage the Decoder.
I use two of the oval speakers in series for my Tsunami, which is rated at an 8 ohm output, but the two speakers in series equal 16 ohms impedance and the sound is very good. If the two speakers are wired in parallel, they will damage the amplifier since their wiring in parallel equals 4 ohm impedance.
How you wire them is very important.
If you install the Tsunami in a Genesis Challenger or Big Boy, be sure to replace the junk speakers also.
A sound wave has 2 qualities - frequency (pitch) and amplitude (volume).
When digitizing a sound wave, the sample rate determines what frequencies will be present in the digital signal. Sample rate needs to be at least twice the highest frequency desired to be recorded. Audio CDs use a sample rate of 44KHz on each channel to ensure they get all the human audible frequencies in.
When digitizing the amplitude of a wave, the number of bits says how accurately the amplitude of the wave is captured. 2 bits gives you 4 volume levels at each sample, 8 bits gives you 256 levels, and 16 bits gives you 65,000 levels. Audio CDs are generally digitized at 16 bits. Whether you can hear the difference between 8 bits and 16 bits depends on the quality of the speaker, the ambient noise level in the room, and how good your hearing still is. You might approximate the difference as an audio CD compared to a 128 bit MP3 recording.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred W
I don't know about bits, bytes or teeth marks BUT............of all the various DCC sound systems I've heard the Tsunami is so far superior in all sounds compared to the others it's not fair to even compare them! The Tsunami has truly wonderful sound. You will definitely be happy with them.
If resolution means the sounds are better.... then they do have better resolution than all the others including the other Soundtrax decoders.
A happy customer,
Roger
jacon12 wrote: In the latest issue of Model Railroader magazine, the article on sound decoders says that the tsunami decoder has 16 bit whereas a 'standard' (my word) decoder has 8. It mentions the 16 bit gives better "resolution". What does resolution mean in the context of sound reproduction? For those that have tsunami decoders, do you hear a big difference in the quality of the sound? JaRRell
In the latest issue of Model Railroader magazine, the article on sound decoders says that the tsunami decoder has 16 bit whereas a 'standard' (my word) decoder has 8. It mentions the 16 bit gives better "resolution". What does resolution mean in the context of sound reproduction?
For those that have tsunami decoders, do you hear a big difference in the quality of the sound?
The information in red below is from the Soundtraxx advertisement. It would seem to indicate that speed is also a part of the new 16-bit processor they use for this application. At some point, higher resolution does not make any difference to our hearing or the running qualities since we are limited to what we can hear. Most limitations in HO sound is due to speakers size.
In our real world PC computers, 64 bit processor are now coming on line.
The difference in resolution between an 8 bit and a 16 bit processor is rather large. An eight bit processor has a resolution of 256, while a 16 bit processor has a resolution of almost 64,000. These numbers are devived by using the total 8 bits compared to the total 16 bits and not what Soundtraxx actually uses. The total instructions for an eight bit processor is extremely small compared to a 16 bit processor. It this keep on expanding, we will be using 32 bit processors and dual processors to create unbelievable sounds in the future.
Just a thought.
At Tsunami’s core is a true 16-bit Digital Signal Processor, or DSP, capable of executing over 120 million instructions per second. With this new level of performance, SoundTraxx was able to give Tsunami 14 functions, over 22 individual sounds, and 4 special effects including the ability to alter the exhaust sound automatically in response to changes in the engine load. The motor controller received numerous enhancements as well, including the use of high frequency PWM and load compensation. To keep the size down, only components available in highly miniaturized packages were selected for use in the Tsunami resulting in a form factor that measures almost 30% shorter and 50% thinner than the DSD-150.