First - I have been on an “Upgrade” kit with regard to my older Blue Box Athearn Locomotives. With the help of Northwest Shortline, I have been very happy with my older collection and I’ve got a lot of old STUFF.
I’ve been able to put in Loco sounds by way of the Digitrax DH165A0 model decoder and the SPX006 Soundbugs. Now, it time to play with sounds. I have a downloaded version of Digitrax’s “Sound Downloader” application running on my Window 7. The setup is simple. I have my USB connected to my computer; the PR3 has power applied; a short section of track with the loco is connected.
I select the sound project I want to load; click the load button and a small progress bar tell me i’m load the locomotive’s soundbug indicated by a clicking sound at the loco.
but I’m never quite sure as to what I am doing is correct or not. There seems to be no messaging telling me that my download was successful or not. My “sound test” menu item open with a form that can’t identify the decoder. I’m not sure if there is a conflict between the DH165A0 and the SPX006
Any Thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
I might be wrong, but I don’t think Soundbugs can have new sound projects loaded with the PR3 or PR4. I think it’s just the SDX and older SDH series of sound decoders.
Some of the sound projects are 8 bit, and some 16 bit. You may not be able to use 16 but sound projects in the 8 bit sound decoders…that said, it appears that this model of the Soundbug supports both 8 and 16 but sound projects. When I have had it fail to complete a download, it has been due to the size of sound project. What sound project are you working with?
Randy is correct. I was able to load one sound progect to two locomotives, and everything seem to work like I thought it would. This included the “sound test” form. The only way I knew that it worked, I’m guessing, as designed was all of the “Stound Test” controls where not “Greyed Out” and I was able to use the function buttons and the engine noise “Run-Up” control and the locomotive responsed.
Here’s something else I remember. There is a grey control just above the progress bar. The text reads “Waiting for a Decoder”. I have seen this with a green back color only once. This is the control I click on when I want to load the sound project into my SPX006. I’m not sure if this is part of my problem or not. When I click on it, I can hear the model’s speaker clicking and the progress bar starts to move.
Again, I wish I could get a message either informing me of a successful sound loading or an error message indicating where I may have made a mistake.
The projects I have been using are dn0_4chnl_x6_dash9_16bit which have been loaded successfully to two models. The 2nd one is dn0_4chnl_x6_sd45_16bit. This one took several tries. Both models use the SPX006 sound bug decoder. I first tried to load the dash9 Sounds into my SD45-2. This time I saw a green decoder button and I was able to read “Detail” information from the decoder. I then followed up with the sd45 (my intended sound project) and It worked where It hadn’t worked before. In this case I made sure I had clean wheels and I took a bright boy cleaner to my PR3 Program track. I’m starting to think I’m having some problems with minute electrical connection within the models. Still no sure of what’s happening. – Thanks for your reply – Mike