Sound
is One of the Five Senses!
It Has Much to Do with Our Love of Railroading
Engines, be they diesel or steam, are LOUD and their sounds dominate their
space. The clanging, hissing, chuffing, popping, and the shrill steam whistle
or throaty diesel horn are as much a part of the railroad experience as
is the visual presence of the engine.
As railroad modelers, part of our challenge is to recreate that experience and scale sound is one way to make your layout come alive. Fortunately DCC provides the control mechanism that has given rise to an advanced generation of sound-equipped locomotives. It's now easy and relatively inexpensive to add sound to locomotives.
More Than Just A Chuff
In fact, it's way more than that. With your handheld throttle, you can ring bells and blow the whistle or horn. But today's systems also provide all the multitude of sound effects that go along with loco operation. Their are steam cocks popping, coal shoveling, water loading, fuel loading and even more (check out the chart below).
Real Sound !
The sounds you hear from your sound-equipped loco are most usually from the real loco. The best manufacturers use real engine sounds that have been carefully collected, digitized, and written into firmware memory on the decoder. You don't just order a sound decoder, but a sound decoder for a specific engine.
Tsunami Sounds - The SoundTraxx Tsunami line is the current leader in scale sound decoders so we'll use the Tsunami as an example of sound decoders. Many manufacturers offer sound decoders in a variety of versions to handle different scale engines. The chart below shows the available sounds from the Tsunami and gives you an idea of the scope of DCC sound.
Foreground Sounds: These are controlled by throttle function buttons, directly or indirectly.
Background Sounds: These are activated by programming or randomly launched.
| STEAM SOUNDS | DIESEL SOUNDS | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Foreground | Background | Foreground | Background |
| bell | air pump | bell | Engine start |
| whistle | blower | air horn | air comp4ressor |
| short whistle | fireman | short air horn | cooling fans |
| coupler clank | grease gun | coupler clank | |
| side rod clank | cylinder blow down | brake release | |
| steam hiss | driver valves | brake squeal | |
| dynamo | brake squeal | dynamic brake | |
| brake squeal | pop valves | engine exhaust | |
| water stop | engine shutdown | ||
| brake release | air tank pop | ||
| power reverse | |||
| air horn | |||
Volume Control: There is individual sound volume adjustment on all sounds plus a master volume control.
Dynamic Digital Exhaust (DDE): This control senses changes in the throttle setting and motor back-EMF and adjusts exhaust sound to match the prototype engine under similar conditions.
Reverb: Adjustable reverb allows simulation of multiple sound sources and other effects.
Equalizer: Multi-Band audio equalizer enables the decoder output to be matched to the speaker characteristics for best overall sound.
Motor Control: All the now standard motor control features such as Back-EMF load compensation, High frequency PWM silent drive, Torque control, and adjustable momentum are included.
Lighting Effects: Four function outputs for lights are provided. Each of these outputs can be set to any one of 14 Hyper light effects. A new feature is LED Brightness Correction corrects for the output differences of LED's to give correct lighting effects from LED's.
Playable whistle: The whistle sound may be varied from the throttle.
Sound Decoder Comparison
| Mfg | Model | Bits | Price MSRP |
Sounds | Sound Downlds |
Cam Chuff Sync | Light Func |
BEMF | Indiv Vol Ctl |
Spker ohms |
Other Features & Notes |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoundTraxx | Tsunami | 16 | $119 | 22 | N | Y | 4 | Y | Y | 8 | Reverb, Equalizer, P-Whistle |
||
| SoundTraxx | Micro Tsunami |
16 | $139 | 22 | N | Y | 2 | Y | Y | 8 | Reverb, Equalizer, P-Whistle |
||
| SoundTraxx | DSX | 8 | $85 | 11 | N | Y | NA | NA | N | 8 | Sound only | ||
| SoundTraxx | DSD-LC series | 8 | $65 - $70 | 4 | N | N | 2 | N | N | 8 | Low cost | ||
| QSI Solutions |
Quantum Revolution | 8 | $110 | ? | Y | N | 6 | Y | Y | 8 | |||
| Digitrax | 8 | $ 48 -$90 | 12 | Y | N | 4 | Y | N | 32 | P-Whistle | |||
| ESU | LokSound | 8 | $139 | 17 | Y | Y | 4 | Y | Y | 100 | V3.5 | ||
| MRC | 1626,1627 | 8 | $68 | 12 | N | N | 2 | N | N | 8 | |||
| MRC | 1630,1631 | 8 | $85 | 19 | N | N | 4 | Y | N | 8 | |||
| MRC | Sounder series | 8 | $35 | 12 | N | N | 2 | N | N | 8 | |||
For a discussion of Sound Quality Factor, CLICK HERE.
Obviously there is much to choose from. Many units can be programmed to specific locomotives and that may be your first criteria. You also need to consider: decoder size, current capacity, feature set, and costs. Litchfield Station carries the following brands: SoundTraxx, Digitrax, LokSound, MRC and QSI. NOTE: Bruce is a trained SoundTraxx installer. Click for certificate.
