Does anybody use background sound anymore?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Way back when, I remember reading about people who had a looping audio tape with various background sounds, birds chirping, crickets, and the click clack sound of freight cars rolling across tracks. I know with this new age of sound equipped DCC locos it’s more practical to control the sounds of the loco and coupling manually, which is fine… but I was watching a video on Google today of a layout with a sound equipped loco, and it was really neat, but the lack of ‘realistic’ background noise, and lack of noise from the freight cars rolling down the tracks, made it a bit too unrealistic IMHO.

Does anybody still use CD’s or looping audio tapes with background noise when they operate their layout? It just seems like it’d be one final touch to help add a bit more realism to what we do.

(also, if you do use background noise CD’s, please post where you acquired them, I’d love to get my hands on some)

2

There have been ads in MR from firms offering background sounds, think the most recent one that I recall said their sounds were now on computer chips. Do a Google search on background sounds effects and see what comes up.

Too much sound on a layout could be overwhelming. In real life, you’d have to be fairly close to hear some of the quieter sounds of nature. On a layout you’re almost always quite a distance away from areas where sound would originate, and you wouldn’t be able to hear them at that distance in real life. Imagine hearing a babbling brook from several hundred feet away. If you want industrial sounds - would all that noise be of much use anyway?

Bob Boudreau

3

Well I just think it’s kinda eerie to hear the locomotive, bells, and horns, but the freight cars moving down the tracks are deathly quiet. A good example of what I’m thinking about would be the way the sound affects are done on RailRoad Tycoon II. When you zoom in to about the distance we would model at, and can see the movements of the different industries (cows at the stockyards, for instance) you can hear the occassional nature sound (cows mooing in the distance, eagle screaming in the sky, etc) and whenever a train comes into view, you can hear the locomotive sounds and the click clack of the cars going down the track. That’s what I’m looking for… something that would fade in and out, not necessarily 100% ‘noise’ all the time.

If that makes any sense. lol

I may try to copy some of the sounds from Railroad Tycoon II onto CD, organized in a somewhat ‘natural’ sequence, and then play the CD on continuous play, shuffled tracks, so it’s never the same noises all the time, and it’s never ‘annoyingly noisy’.

4

Quite honestly, background sounds…even locomotive sounds…don’t translate to modeling at all well. You simply can’t scale sound. So, as Bob points out, distance can’t properly dimmish its intensity. More often than not, specific background sounds can be heard all around the layout room, instead of near their supposed source. Virtually all the sound locomotives I’ve seen on layouts run too loud and, as you point out, are isolated sounds and clearly artificial. The result reminds me far more of Lionel than of reality. I have just one sound loco and run it only for the grandkids since they think it’s “cute” to hear the chug and whistle.

I guess the only sounds that might convey realistically would be the woodland sort, if your layout is all “country”, since it would then give the feeling of being in the middle of the scene yourself. Same might apply for an all city layout, with car horns, sirens, etc. too.

CNJ831

5

When I first heard sound on a HO locomotive it was the same impression I got when I saw my first color TV. There was no turning back. I have about 30 engines that I have collected over the years and purchased 3 more BLI’s with sound even though they are duplicates. I am in the process of installing decoders in most of the remaining engines.

I also have plans for sound on some of the structures on my layout, which is nearing completion. The sounds will only be loud enough to be heard if you are standing next to the model. A good example is a drive-in restaurant with 50’s/60’s songs playing. A small bell for the church and some industry sounds. This is mostly for guests who like to stroll around the layout.

Sounds may not be for everyone but some people really enjoy them.

Doc

6

I haven’t but I certainly can see some good applications for it. A busy passenger station would have frequent PA announcements. The sound of freight cars passing over a grade crossing would be another good application. An urban area would have the sound of traffic (even though are cars aren’t moving). Background sound would certainly enhance a layout but it is one of those fine details that will have to wait until I get the basic scenery completed and the layout operating.

7

Background sounds?

http://www.greenfrog.com [{(-_-)}]

Guys, haven’t you all heard of Green Frog? They’ve been around for years. I’ve heard their tapes (now they have discs) and, IMHO, have some outstanding background sounds that at low volume would neatly fit in to any layout scene. The effect complements, not overshadows, layouts.

All you would need is to use a cheap stereo or CD player and mount small speakers at strategic points around the layout. As always, the key is to keep the volume turned low so that you would actually have to be near the area of the speaker to hear the sound.

I was impressed with the “country tape” years back where you heard crickets chirping and the sound of a distant brook. Another tape featured city traffic with the sound of a locomotive blowing its horn in the distance. There was even one tape that had a thunderstorm on it.

Greenfrog’s new website though is harder to navigate. I like their old one better. You can e-mail them and ask them questions.

Hope this helps!

8

George Thorogood, Meatloaf, Dr Feelgood…

9

We currently use a sound system which is not integrated with the layout, but eventually, the speakers will be mounted in the benchwork, with racks to hold the equipment suspended underneath.

There are two seperate sound systems, each with two speakers, for a total of four. One is an MRC City/Country sound system with speakers, and it is self contained, not electrically connected to the other sound system or to the layout. The samples in this unit are of relatively low quality, and it is only used for the church bell sample, and once in a great while, a dog’s bark, a cricket, or a rooster. All of these are short samples, triggered by a pushbutton on the unit’s control panel. The unit also has other triggered samples that aren’t very good, and some looped samples, triggered by an on-off switch, which are so short that the looping becomes obvious very quickly, and irritating shortly after that.

The other sound system is a bit more complex. We use a Radio Shack DJ mixer to combine sound from three seperate sources, a pair of MRC Synchro Sound units, diesel or steam (only one is in use at any given time), controlled by DPDT switches, a PC, and a seperate line in from the PC’s CD player.

The Synchro Sound units provide a basic background sound, which parallels throttle settings for the various locomotives in use. Occasionally we will use the horn/whistle triggers on the Synchro Sound units, but the samples there are not of very high quality. The coupler crash sample does a reasonably good job of mimicing the slack coming out of a long string of cars, it works well with momentum turned on at the throttle pack. The steam release is a good one, and works well for both diesels and steam engines.

The CD player is used to generate natural background sounds, using one of two CD’s we made here at home using samples obtained from the internet.

The daytime CD combines several forest bird samples and several stream/waterfall samples. From the main throttle, the maj

10

Small sound kits would be good for this, but I dont know anyone who makes them. I had seen some on ebay back in the beginning of the year.

11

Jshrade _ I use backround sound. A quite simple and nice way too. I have an extra one and you are welcomed to have it. The backround sound is water running and birds chirping. I actually kinda made it myself remoing the inside of the glass pictures that have water running and looks like it is too. You now the ones you see at Chinese resturants? Thats the one I used and I have one more. Would you like it for free? If so let me know. It sounds nice and has a volume control, and also you can put the speaker wherever youd like. Let me know sir.

12

I use shop sounds in the machine shop area of my roundhouse. Presently it’s on tape however it will be replaced with a digital recording.

13

Hey jerrers_mz,

Nice job on the sound system. I can’t wait to hear it. Will you use one CD and play all the sounds from it or will you have separate players located around the layout playing different CD sounds?

Doc

14

This company has some rather unique approaches to the science, and I say science because they certainly seen to know about sound. The soundtracks are incredible as you can sample and see, there are quite a lot of available subjects and the ideas about installing speakers, etc. are great. Try it out I think you’ll be as impressed as I have been.

Thanks Rudywa [8]

http://www.fantasonics.com/store/cd.html

15

There is quite an active Yahoo discussion group on this topic. You can find it here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LayoutSound/ In order to participate, and to read the messages in the archive, you’ll have to join Yahoo Groups, and then also join this particular group, but both processes are pretty easy and quick. The possibilities for environmental sound have gotten somewhat more sophisticated than running a background soundtrack, as has been published already in several articles.

Word from the above discussion group has it that there’s going to be an article very soon in Model Railroader on using a few of the products available from Fantasonics and Pricom to create believable background sound scapes for your model railroad.

If you’ve ever been to a really good museum or zoo exhibit, or paid close attention to a recent theatre release or made-for-TV movie, you’ll have some idea of what can be done. A very immersive atmosphere can be created. Some of the people that design environments for museums, Walt Disney parks and put together equipment for television studios are members of the Yahoo Layout Sound group.

In a nutshell, just turning the volume down on a recording of prototype sounds will not give a believable effect. Due to the way that the human ear functions, when a sound is at low volume, the spectrum of the sound that we perceive is affected. That’s the reason why you may see a “Loudness” button on your sound system. What that button does is boost some of the frequencies that we have difficulty hearing at low volume. So, knowing the details of the physiology of hearing, the expert professional can compensate for it. What you get after such manipulation is a recording that sounds like you’re there, but the volume is just very faint. It’s subjectively a different, more realistic sound than what you’d hear if you just turned the volume down on a non-compensated recording.

If the technician has also manipulated the timings on some of the reverber

16

background sound sucks

17

One CD plays background sounds like water and birds, while the MRCSynchro units cover motive power, and the computer keyoard triggered samples do everything else, like whistles, wolf howls, and 30 second long recordings of diesel or steam bypasses, all the things I want precise control over.

The relative volumes of the three sources are controlled by a simple audio mixer. Eventually, I will record sounds now covered by the MRC City Country unit into the PC and control them from the keyboard.

I’m also thinking about installing a few small digital playback units, sort of like mini sound decoders, under the saloon, and perhaps a sawmill, triggered by on off switches on the control panel.

If QSI ever gets around to shipping aftermarket decoders, I will probably replace the MRC Synchro units with stationary decoders fed through the main sound system.

18

We still run video tapes that we recorded in our area (mainline and yard operations) in the background to very good effect. It’s amazing how often the vid matches up with the layout operations! I can’t wait to add the onboard sounds when we switch to DCC over the next couple of weeks.

19

It’s a bit redundant with loco sound now. When you have more than one sound loco going the sound gets a bit confusing so the background sound would not be heard.

20

I think the sound devices could be sensor driven. And using small speakers in the area of where the sounds are coming from, with only enough volume to hear them when you’re in those areas could work. That way, you only hear the sound while you’re near enough to the source. If you want the “clickety-clack” sounds of the cars, use metal wheels.