I use JMRI to program my locomotives. When I'm on the "sound" page, all the sounds for the loco are listed with an adjustable bar to raise or lower the volume of each.(bell, horn etc). One of the bars is labeled "master volume". What does it change? I moved it and did not notice any difference.
Master volume changes the overall level of all sounds. The individual bars adjust the sounds of those items relative to each other.
For example, on every diesel I've heard, the horn is ALWAYS louder than the prime mover, even when it's in Run 8 lugging up a hill. So you would set the slider for the horn higher than the prime mover one.
Most sound decoders come witht he master volume cranked way up - you can hear the thing across the room. I prefer something a little more realistic - the other side of the room is supposed to be miles away, after all. If you reduce the master, the TOTAL volume will be lower, but since the horn is higher than the prime mover, the horn will still be the louder component.
It's like the mixer board at a concert. You set the guitarist's guitar pickup to some level, the lead singer's mic to a level, the keyboard pickups to another, the bass player's pickups, bass player and guitarist's mics to a lower level than the lead singer for backing vocals, drummer's mics and pickups, and then you set the overall total volume to fill the arena. If it all works, Starship Trooper sounds awesome.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Until the guitar player asks to be turned up, then the singer gets annoyed, and all because the drummer is too loud.. was listening to Yessongs today while building a small structure kit. That keyboard solo in Starship Trooper is the greatest 12 seconds in music.
But back to OP: knock down the master volume to something pleasant throughout the room, then fiddle with the other levels to your taste. For me, the brake spitting at idle or whatever it is is always too loud (Apologies to prototype guys for the lack of accurate terms—it’s a constant learning curve).
willy6 ... I moved it and did not notice any difference.
... I moved it and did not notice any difference.
You should have. The point of the master volume configuration variable is to set the entire sound file repertoire to a more modest level if you don't enjoy the Stentorian bellow of the factory default levels. And very few of us appreciate the loudest setting because it sounds a bit distorted and...well...awful.
In case it is of interest to you, I routinely halve my Master Volume. It's the second thing I do after shutting off the smoke on a steamer. If the chuffs, or prime movers sounds, sound good at that level for the apparent distance in scale from me to the locomotive, then I can begin to work with individual sounds. The bell gets turned down another third of the range, and the blow-down, injector, pop-off, and other annoying 'neutral' sounds get reduced even more. I like the air pumps, so those stay close to the level of the Master Volume setting. The horn is often reduced a bit more, not much. Any hisses or other repetitive sounds get turned down as if I were 150 yards away.
What this does is to keep things in scale a lot better so that when I am at one end of my layout and running a locomotive, I can barely hear the one opposite about 15 feet away. An operator close to that locomotive should have the same perception.
Thank you for the great answers. Also my layout is still being built so it lacks scenery and structures and the walls are paneled. With that said I noticed an echo in certain parts of the layout.
To amplify (pun intended) on what Randy said about the horn being louder than the prime mover (and everything else), what I like to do is turn the volume for the horn all the way up, then lower the master volume until the horn sounds 'right' - loud, but not distorting. Then I adjust the other individual volume levels.