A lot of complaints that MTH trains have inferior sounds to the Lionel trains. Supposedly, MTH is coming out with a new version of Protosounds because the current one doesn’t have enough memory for the type of variable whistle sounds that Lionel has. I dunno…to me both makes have their good and bad points. [%-)]
Dep
I don’t own any MTH engines, but the ones I have heard, mostly at Tom’s basement, sound pretty good. The other day, I heard MTH’s new Ohio State Train and the sounds were unbelievable and clear.
The best sounding loco I have heard, is my K-Line Mikado where the whistle can rattle the house. Second best, is my Lionel CSX SD-80. The worst is my Lionel GG1…it doesn’t have any sound but has TMCC. They say there is not enough room in the cab for the speaker.
Hi Dep,
Like you say, neither is perfect, but they sure are not bad either. Just brought home an MTH T-1 (4-8-4) and it has a very nice whistle. Don’t think I ever heard a real one, as when they were still running, I was at that age when trains lose your interest in favor of other things. Still sorry I didn’t ride some of the ‘Rambles’ when I had the chance. I am not much for the station sounds and crew talk, but I like the other sound effects that both have. MTH smoke is hard to beat & I like the way the engines program themselves into the remote.
More to the point, I just hope they keep everything compatable with the existing equipment.
I agree with John that fidelity seems to be all over the map, particularly on the lower end steamers. I was given a Lionel 4-4-2 starter with railsounds and its whistle sounds like someone choking a Hudson – sort of like my Hudson but with a much less robust tone. Plenty loud, however.
I was at my LHS a few days ago and he was running a MTH steamer (2-6-0, I believe) on his store layout. The whistle sounded like a factory whistle blowing for noon. Very high pitched with a single tone. Lots of volume, though. In the real world I would have said that only the high chime was working. We both just laughed about it.
Poppyl
When you consider that the engine sounds are being played thru a 2" speaker, I am surprized any of them sound as good as they do.
Also remember to most people, train sounds is noise and many people wish they wouldn’t have to hear it.
Now to the disapointment to Chief, when the museum has it’s open houses, Operation Lifesaver is there and the real train engineer that is there is overwhemed with the sounds of my MTH engines. (Oh by the way, he is an engineer for NS).
The best sound system for model trains is from Phoenix (sound systems, not Arizona). At $300/unit it should be.
Adding memory won’t help MTH improve whistle sounds. The main reason Lionel’s sound more like real whistles are that the sound is not a simple recording. The whistle sound has been broken down into elements that are combined on the fly by the RailSounds processor. All of this is covered under a number of patents.
The Lionel locomotives/tenders also include baffles and tuned ports to improve the quality of the sounds. MTH started adding some resonnance material on the PS-2 units.
As Spankybird points out, the little 2" inch speakers and 1 to 1.5 watt amps in out trains don’t do much for sound quality. If you have access to a small bookshelf speaker that matches the impedence of the one in the train, try playing back the sounds through it. You’ll be suppprised at the quality, irregardless of who made the train[:D]
My basic K-line(Marx 333) with railsounds tender has a great whistle. My MTH are O.K. To get a real blast, the horn on the first railsounds GP-7 is pretty darn good. And after you hear them for a while dont you turn down the sounds anyway. All my sound locos are turned down low. I think I’d rather hear the clickity clack, clickity clack…
From what I read on the other forum, some guys had actually brought the whistle situation to Mike (of MTH) at one of the major shows. He was WELL AWARE of it from what they said his reaction was. The new Protosounds will have more memory in order to give the variations that Lionel gets when blowing their whistles. He stated that with all the OTHER sounds on the Protosound system, there simply wasn’t enough memory to have the Lionel variable sound system. The new Protosounds system will have either an additional chip, or a bigger one, to allow the variations in sound. There were many complaints about the accuracy of some sounds and many guys wanted to have a choice of sounds when they bought the loco. Downloading different sounds from other MTH locos doesn’t seem to be the solution either because it is a “package deal” where you get inappropriate sounds with the fixes.
All this is all kinda amusing to me since in the old days you had a D-Cell battery and a horn that sounded like a bicycle horn [:D]
Dep
Speaking of chips, I can’t wait to see the day that you put an SD Memory Chip into your engine and the crew says what you want them to say. For example: “Now leaving on Track 15, the National Limited with stops at Huntington, Parkersburg, Clarksburg, Harper’s Ferry and Washington.”
I’d like to talk into a microphone & hear it come out the train !! [(-D][(-D]
Thanks, John
John, You can do that with DCS, it has a mike built into the remote. You can also use a separate microphone for better sound.
Thanks John !! I never knew that !! This stuff does everything now days !! [:D][:D]
Thanks, John
As I have stated over and over. MTH diesel horns are CRAP!!! Their engine sounds are not much better. I sold two spanking brand new MTH diesels because of their poor quality horns and sound as compared to Railsounds. I own one MTH steamer. That one sounds and the whistle is pretty good. Now I do not own any Lionel steamers with sounds. When the new Big Boy comes, I will let you know. I hope MTH will correct this problem as they make a quality running product.
John…once you have the microphone in your hands…what are you going to say?? Reuben
On my layout there are only 2 MTH diesels with sound. These are the only ones with sound, so I have no compare to Lionel’s. In regard of the price I paid for them, they have a nice sound and a realistic horn, but what annoys me is that there is a delay between pressing the horn button and the actual horn blow. That elliminates the possibility to manually have different horn blasts. (short short long takes a whole round around the layout to perform and the time between the seperate blows is too long)
Also, having the loco’s at full sound volume makes me deaf. My small train room echo’s a bit and the reverb of the sound amplifies the volume a lot. A horn blow can be heard 4 houses away from my train shed… and all of that with a very tiny speaker!!
To me, I rather have a simple machine, without 24 different hornblows, because I can run them on conventional power with only a horn and a bell button and even have the possibility to open the couplers with that. It’s a shame that new locomotives with sound need a seperate (and expensive) device to operate a locomotive completely. (you pay for everything, but in conventional control you can only acces a tiny bit of the possibilities)
With that in mind, the older protosound engines are perfect. They give a huge amount of options, are fully programmable and you can use everything you paid for with simple and inexpensive controls.
I’ve never heard an MTH steamer, but the MTH diesels do not sound bad to me. All toy train diesels can sound annoying if you run them at slow speed and just let them whine. The real test for me is - how does the horn sound?
JIm
You can use DCS as a PA system, you should note that while you are doing this almost all of the bandwidth for doing anything else is gone.
RailSounds whistle effects work as well under conventional as they do under command if you are using a modern sound activation button (nice clean DC spikes). Variations on the whistle sounds have to do with how long you hold button down, speed of loco, and a built in randomizer in the sound processor board. You can’t access the command only sounds without a TMCC set up (Crew Talk/Tower Comm/etc).
While Lionel has been ramping up the memory on the RS boards to accomodate additional effects, even the early RS 2.5 boards used the assemble on the fly method.
With the new transformers being made running a steam locomotive at a slow speed and sounding the horn should no longer be a problem, then again you may need to step up to DCS or TMCC to get better sound from your trains. The new MTH steam locomotive sounds very good to me, I have the 4-8-4 T1 Reading. On the new MTH locomotives you can uncouple on the go, NO special track required any more, now if only the rest of your rolling stock had that feature.
If running post-war & MPC era trains you will still have the same problem that you mentioned at slow speeds.
Lee F.
Daan,
To get short blows from DCS you must program the Forward horn and/or Reverse horn commands to the 5 sticky buttons across the top (by adjusting the menu order or using the scroll arrow). Then you press one of those two buttons to to get short horn blasts.
Hope this helps
Jim H
I can see it now…Railsounds with BOSE music system speakers[:)]. Then the new Christmas commercial from Lionel will be sound overdone by Paul Harvey. “Was a time, that toy train whistles were, well, a let down. Now Dr. Bose does it again, with Railsounds from Lionel. They bring to the toy train market what Neil Young brought to the concert stage…Increadible sound, that will have you nodding with approval, and looking for the real train heading down the rails” and now…the rest of the story.
Dennis