Hey everyone,
I was wondering if anyone has noticed a dramatic difference in sound between Athearn Genesis Tsunami locos from say 2009 and the newer Genesis locos 2012? For example I have a few of the (I think first generation) BNSF SD70Ace (No. 9303, 9271, 9131) with Tsunami sound and they are a lot quieter than my newer UP/WP Heritage SD70Ace (No. 1983). I wondered if they are using a different speaker which would be easy to replace or is it a difference in the chassis design (speaker enclosure design) or sound board? I have filled the hole in the speaker mount on some of my older units, but the sound is still much quieter than the newer units. I checked the master volume CV on one of the older locos but I think it is at max (I believe the max value is 255). Maybe I can simply reduce the master volume CV in the newer units to try and balance the volumes. Thanks for any ideas or solutions!
The speaker enclosure on the original run was poorly designed and was not properly sealed. You may need to tune the decoder by downloading the Tsunami technical reference and tweaking the reverb and mixer settings.
I think the older ones MAY have been MRC(that was true of my Challenger and I know they did diesels too for Athearn) while the newer ones are Soundtraxx. Not certain of the exact years though.
Richard