My friend, Peter heard the double cube speaker sound at our last NMRA meeting when I did my Show and Tell.  He asked me if I could do one for his Shay On3 logging loco.

Before the surgery, we took it outside for a couple of "publicity shots."

Peter is an excellent photographer and he brought his stage.



Then we disassembled it and inserted the two cube speakers.  They face each other in a kind of 'hyperbaric' configuration.  They are 8 Ohms each, wired in parallel = 4 Ohms.



Then I wired in a Loksound V4 decoder and downloaded the Shay project file from the ESU website.  As Peter's is wood fired, I removed the coal shovelling sound and tweaked a few of the controls.

Because I didn't have any On3 track, I put her up on blocks to hear what the download sounded like.



Here's a rough recording of the sounds . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hr4mHNDvRM

 Avant d'accéder à YouTube

Here's how the photo shoot turned out . . .





. . . and here's a copy of his Function Map to tell him what goes where . . .




. . . a very enjoyable way to spend Saturday arvo'

Thanks for that, Max.
Fascinating stuff.

When Peter gets back from his trip to the Narrow Gauge Convention in the US, we hope to make a movie on his excellent layout.

Watch this space. 

We'll be watching Max. :thumbs

As you know, I've commented elsewhere on the results.

Those who haven't watched the clip yet - I urge you to do so - it's not time wasted !!!!

I look forward to the movie of the loco in action.  I've always liked the Shay, such an unusual configuration.  The sound is very impressive - the whistle and bell reverberate very nicely.

Thanks Max.

John

 

Thanks, guys.  I'll post the movie as soon as it's done.

Those speakers are brilliant Max.

No distortion and so real.

Thanks, John; and they are the same price as the round ones.

Thanks for posting that, Max that is really interesting. I have a Bachman Shay that I now want to equip with a sound decoder. Yesterday I spent the day at the 7mm narrow gauge association's Surrey group operating day. I was not a member of the group but as a member of the association, I (along with others who lived locally) was invited to attend. I decided to take a test track and my one and only DCC sound loco, a Bachmann Climax. This was the first time I have had a chance to run it and talk to some other On30/O16.5 modellers.

I must admit that I was not really convinced about sound but yesterday has changed my mind. I was impressed with what the Climax could do straight out of the box. I am now in the process of finding out what else is out there. I am also interested in providing some of the other sounds that are not directly connected with the trains themselves. I have seen (heard) layouts that have other odd sounds like the blacksmith's hammer etc but what about the ambient noise to tie the whole scene together? 

I was thinking of just recording the 'silence between the trains at my local station…

There is a picture of my test track with the Climax running on my new blog HERE


Ralph.

 

Hi Ralph.  Nice to see you and Sue smiling back at us again.

The sound decoder I used was a Loksound Version 4 4 Aux.  The sound project was downloaded from the ESU site and I hardly had to change much at all.  Peter's is wood fired, so I removed the coal shovelling, then remapped a few of the functions and set up the performance parameters.  Easy to do with the Lokprogrammer.

I made up some ambient sounds for one of our club members which included trains leaving, passing and arriving.  I copied and pasted the 30 minute result until we had 4 hours.  I did it in .mp3 and he plays it in an old iPod through a 5.1 under his layout.

I can let you have a copy if you would like one, or I could make a bespoke one for you.

I enjoyed your blog.  :thumbs

Thanks for the information, Max.

[user=269]MaxSouthOz[/user] wrote:

I made up some ambient sounds for one of our club members which included trains leaving, passing and arriving.  I copied and pasted the 30 minute result until we had 4 hours.  I did it in .mp3 and he plays it in an old iPod through a 5.1 under his layout.

A copy of your ambient noise would be nice to experiment with - thank you! I had not thought of using a 5.1. I was debating going custom…

I really need to explore the possibilities of DCC fully. I am still at the Cor! and Wow! stage at the moment and that is just what my MRC Prodigy 2 can do on its own!! For me, it is the research that I enjoy. I have a basic knowledge of electronics and I am looking at all sorts of uses for micro controllers. I have been playing with the Arduino ( http://arduino.cc/ ) of late and I can see all sorts of possibilities here, especially in the area of mood setting and scenic effects, including sound.

Now this is going to sound really silly, but I have been messing around with plastic croaking frogs. The electronics that drive the speaker can be used to drive an LED to flash and dim in a seemingly random way, musical greetings cards have similar potential. go to my workshop blog: http://ralphsworkshop.blogspot.co.uk/ and put enter "Frog" into the search box. There are two or three posts referring to this strange carry on…

Thanks for your kind words regarding the blog - it is very early days as I only set it up at the end of last week. The railway website has had some attention as well but I must find some time to add some more content over the next few days.

Ralph ;-)



 

[user=386]Fishplate42[/user] wrote:

A copy of your ambient noise would be nice to experiment with - thank you!

PM me with your address and I'll put it on a stick and post it to you, Ralph.  It's too big to email.

There are a myriad of electronic gizmos around now for us to play with and subvert to our models.  I'll be watching with interest to see what you make of them.  :thumbs