Steam sound glossary

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

Hello friends,

I have a few HO steam locos with Tsunami and Quantum DCC sound decoders. I have noted that the random idle sounds are often louder than the sounds when the loco is moving. If I turn down the master volume too far I lose the sounds I want to hear when the loco is moving.

I see that DecoderPro has level settings for many of the individual sounds on each decoder. However, being a child of the 60’s (Beatles, Stones, Deep Purple) I don’t know what these settings are (I hear glug, hiss, blow, squash, flop and toss).

Is anyone aware of an audio glossary that gives names to the sounds I am hearing on these decoders?

Thanks for your help.
Dwayne A

2

I am not aware of such a glossary.

However, the manufacturers of the decoder would have had a working group, or individual, whose job it was to actually generate digital sound files for all those sounds, and they were presumably identifiable and typical of both idling and moving steam locomotives. So they are not there for nothing. Meaning, each of them is specific and has a meaning in real life.

I still reduce my master volume by close to 50% in most cases, but not all. For the Tsunamis, F4 gets you a loud steam hiss which I like to use now and then…but not when it is that loud. So, looking in the table listing which CV’s account for ‘steam hiss’, I enter that CV and reduce it to about 4/10 for that sound file’s range of values. I can always fiddle with it as I go, but if you don’t set the master volume down a good chunk, it means you must deal with every single sound the decoder puts out!!! No way, Jose.

The Tsnami has fireman wrench tapping, firedoor opening and closing, wrench ratchet sounds, steam turbo generator sounds, and so on…it should be available somewhere in the manual.

Some sounds I hear:

Rod clank, particularly when the throttle is closed and the decoder has a fair bit of CV4 deceleration/momentum set to it so that the engine coasts to a stop over time. This sounds like a rhythmic “lunk lunk, lunk lunk…”

When F0 is pressed in order to get the lighting going, you’ll hear the turbo generator spool up, and then you get the bearing and turbine blade grinding sound.

You’ll hear a perioding 'click click" or " thump thump" as the engine idles. That is the air pump sensing low pressure in its lines and reservoire, so it does a couple of compressions using its vertically mounted steam pistons to recharge the reservoire. It may also sound like a medium pitched “taah, taah”.

You may hear injector noise. That will be a rushing water sound that is not the same