Yes, you will need to install a speaker and baffle (enclosure).
I have installed sound decoders and speakers in Bachmann diesels, Proto 2000 diesels and Athearn diesels. The Bachmann needs to have some of the weight removed (either up top or on the fuel tank area) to make room for the speaker. The Athearn was relatively easy since they have MORE space under the shell.
I have not yet ventured into installing sound in steam, but I would imagine the decoder and speaker would go in the tender.
I have 3 videos on my youtube account which show the installs.
Sorry in a hurry, on my way out the door for work…[swg]
Rich, some models come ready for a sound decoder. They have room carved out for a speaker in the fuel tank, as an example, which doubles as the enclosure, or which needs some small compartment added to be an enclosure. My Walther’s Proto 2000 SW-8 has it’s speaker in the fuel tank, facing down, and so does my Atlas Fairbanks-Morse Trainmaster.
Some people resort to N-scale decoders when space is really tight. They work pretty much just as well.
For steamers, yes, in the tender for both the decoder and the speaker. Think seriously about dual speakers because they really improve the sound. You can talk to the guys at Tony’s who are very knowledgeable and helpful. When I went shopping for two sound decoders, and placed an order with them, they emailed back suggesting a correction because I let them know which engines I was going to modify.
BTW, in both cases I had wanted to try the new QSI Titan. Am I ever glad I did. I have enough Tsunamis with their somewhat generic sounds, as good as those sounds are in quality, that I wanted something a bit more tailored for a given steamer. The Titans can do that, and at least as well as the Tusnamis.
Soundtraxx has a lot of good info on installing them on their website documents. Try there first. Also the users group on yahoo has a lot of good info.
Depending on how the loco was designed, I may use the sides of the shell for part of the enclosure to use the biggest speaker I can, install them in a sideways angle, in the fuel tanks or use a bass reflex speaker. In most installs I use 2 speakers in an HO diesel.
I’ve installed 3 Soundtraxx decoders, 2 diesel and 1 steam. The diesels took some cutting and filing.
This is the Proto 2K GP9:
The speaker baffle is the homemade white styrene box on the left.
A Tsunami is pretty thick as decoders go. You can see the purple thing in the top picture. Soundtraxx lists the physical dimensions of all the decoders on their web site.
I put the decoder and speaker for the steamer, an IHC Mikado, in the tender. There is plenty of space, but you need to do some planning for the wires. You need 2 for power, two for the motor and two for the headlight.
It can be a lot of work, but installing a Tsunami turns a nice engine into a great engine.
Take you loco in question and measure the current at 12 vdc. I usually put a slight load on the drivers with a finger. Some like to stop the drivers with their fingers. That can be hard on the gears. My way.
Open the shell and do some measuring. Some diesels will be a challenge.
ALL decoder and speaker specs are at the various decoder manufactures web site.
There are a wide variety of speakers. Many HO can use the 28 MM round. some two 28 mm. I have Atlas loco like that. Some a 16 mm x 35 mm oval. I have some diesels with those. A baffle is usually recommended. Some diesel shells make a good baffle. Remember, sound depends on the person, many times.
SoundTraxx has the Standard, 1 amp and Micro Tsunami, 750 ma. I use both.
The below fellow favors SoundTraxx and use to run an on line DCC supplier. He has a lot of info there. Take you time reading.
I almost forgot. Tsunamis can get HOT. I haven’t had one melt a shell, but you do need to provide some ventilation to it. Mounting it solidly on the metal frame will help dissipate the heat.
Yes, the 750 especially has heat issues. It happened to me also.
Some have had to attach a piece of aluminum or brass about the size of the 750 to the bottom of the decoder with a layer of Radio Shack heat sink compound.
I have seen quite a lot of discussion on the Yahoo SoundTraxx Group.
There are some really detailed step by step sound deocder installs in the Yahoo group RPM-Rick Bell. Message discussions are limited to the current project underway, but the file section contains PDFs of all the previous installs, in a variety of locos. Not all Tsunami, but the concepts are the same regardless. For tight spaces especially I’d use a Loksound Micro, they sound just as good, are smaller, adn do not have the heat issues of the TSU-750. They really need to fix that.
F units generally have more space than geeps. As someone else posted, Athearns have a lot more space than say, Atlas or Proto units. In some cases it is easier to just remove the weight, than do a lot of grinding on it. If I recall, the Protos required a lot of grinding on the weight. I usually run two or more locos in a consist, so removing the weight in one unit isn’t a problem. It might be, if you are running a single unit with a bunch of cars, or if you have grades on the layout. I have done around 50 sound installs, and they are all slightly different, with different dimensions and problems. I have installed sound decoders in F units, with a second speaker in the B unit. Works well, and I have never burned out a decoder.
Well, as always, tons of good information and advice, and I appreciate it all.
I have spent considerable time trying to absorb the replies, and here are some of my conclusions.
Steam should be no problem since there is plenty of space in the tender. I do have one question though in that regard. Someone mentioned that wiring can be a problem. You need 2 for power, two for the motor and two for the headlight. I need to study that more, but am I correct in assuming that all of that wiring is currently available in the tender?
Diesels pose somewhat of a problem due to the tight space considerations. I have to say, I am not thrilled about cutting into the metal, so I have reservations about converting my diesels to sound.
It seems that two speakers are better than one. I will keep that in mind.
I initially was focusing on Tsunami, but there seems to be a preference for QSI and I will keep that in mind.
Thanks for the tips on sources like Tony’s and Yahoo groups. That is good to know.
I am not planning to convert all of my non-sound locos to sound, but here is a list of my non-sound locos by manufacturer and type.
Steam
Proto 2000 Heritage 2-8-4
Spectrum 2-10-2 2-6-6-2 4-6-2
Diesel
Athearn Genesis f7
Atlas gp38 sdp35 dash 8-40bw
Proto 2000 gp9 s1 s3 rs-1
Intermountain f3
Most of these locos were acquired between 2004 and 2008, so they are somewhat older runs.
Yes, if you already have a decoder in the tender and a headlight in the engine, and the unit picks up power from the engine as well, then you should have all 6 wires already there. That should greatly simplify the installation. The steamer I put sound in was DC.
Ahhh, thanks for that additional info, Mister Beasley. Sorry that I referred to you as “someone”. I thought that it was you when I replied but once I started my reply, I could not go back to double check.
I’ve installed over 30 sound decoders from different mfgrs. Digitrax, QSI, and Soundtraxx. 4 or 5 QSI and 1 Digitrax. I pulled all of these out and replaced with Soundtraxx due to the much better sound(IMO). That’s about $450 worth of decoders sitting in a box, but a lesson learned. Rick Bell and his sites are great as mentioned above. Here is his website, he taught me some things several years ago that are important.
So here’s the deal. If you use Tsunami, you are limited to 8 ohms resistance in your speaker. That generally means 1 speaker, or 4 speakers (hooked a combination of parallel and series)
QSI can drive two 8 ohm loads with no issues. But finding that much space in a tender is tricky. QSI recommends a speaker in the tender and another inside the boiler (for bells and whistle sounds) That being said, I do NOT recommend this approach. The P2K Berk, and Bachmann 2-6-6-2 are already very light weight. Putting a speaker in the boiler would necessitate drilling the stack and removing weights in the boiler.
QSI does have one more advantage, they have an open cylinder cock sound when starting the engine which automatically kicks in if the engine is sitting still too long (just like the prototype) There’s also startup and shutdown sounds.
The QSI’s also have a better back emf in my opinion.
QSI has two disadvantages:
Slightly more expensive then soundtraxx
Considerably more complicated to program.
Now onto speakers:
With the Standard tender (as found on the back of the 2-8-4, you’ll get a Soundtraxx medium oval to fit (1.1" wide) It’s a good speaker. The 1.1" mega bass speaker is another excellent choice and will give some “deep-chest” to your steam whistle.
With SD/GP/RS diesels (narrow hood) the biggest speaker you can put in there is the soundtraxx small oval speaker (.78" wide x 1.56") you may have to file down the sides a little to get it to fit. But in a way, this is a good thing. I’ll explain why in baffles in a minute…
People will often recommend a baffle. The baffles purpose is to absorb the rear soundwaves so they don’t cancel out the front sound waves. Here’s the deal I can tell you as someone who used to tinker with speaker designs…The best baffle is the infinite
The Atlas locos will probably have A Frame speaker mounts. That means you get two speakers for sides automatically and the enclosure is built in. I used two 1.25" (32mm i think, not sure… definately 1.25" though) for my Dash 8-40CW and they sound great. If you are looking for diesel speakers I recommend you consider bass enhanced speakers. (note that high bass speakers will not fit in the atlas A frame) Railmaster hobbies DSM-8 is a direct fit for intermountain gevos and is sized to fit in diesel locomotives. I am using one of those with a leftover QSI speaker in my athearn c44-9W (technically C40-9W… NS loco). I personally prefer Loksound Decoders… they are set up to start with the prime mover off unlike tsunamis that power on as soon as power hits the locomotive. Loksound can also be custom programmed. However, you won’t go wrong with tsunami.
I could not resist not joining this discussion after I read Digitalgriffin’s post. I have relatively short experience in sound installations, therefore I am interested to read such informative explanation - and usually read other posts. I mostly have European models, but have sound only in US models. Until today I installed sound in Athearn Big Boy, Proto 2K 2-8-8-2 and Trix Mikado (in all three I installed Tsunami decoder).
I do not know why many modelers omit to mention CAM as part of sound installation (I installed it in all three above – small magnet and miniature reed switch). I find CAM extremely important, especially if layout has grades. Of course, that applies on Tsunami decoder installations, because they change chuff volume and timbre in relation to locomotive load. I think QSI also offers such feature. I like very much when chuff changes as locomotive goes up or down the grade, or when I release throttle. It creates more dramatic loco sound.
I would like to ask Digitalgriffin, if you can give us more light on sound installation in your H8 (I intend to buy it in a future and install sound). Any picture would be very helpful, especially how you installed diagonal baffle board and a speaker. Which speaker did you use (round, square)?
For sound installations I used square 32 mm VISATON speaker (German manufacturer of Hi-Fi speakers). This is direct link to this speaker:
This speaker has excellent frequency response - it is a true Hi-Fi quality speaker.
Tsunami decoders have one very useful feature - equalizer. It can make wonders, and considerably improve sound performance. Of course, you must be careful not to “over do it” – because then sound becomes unrealistic.
Furthermore, I am not sure that any other sound decoder can offer 44 kHz sampling rate as Tsunami do. High
For a first time sound install I’d start with either of your F units. Both will easily accomodate a large 28x28mm high bass speaker in the rear and a smaller 1" round speaker in the front. Yes, you will need to disasemble the drive train and remove some of the frame to fit the speakers. Yes, it is easy to do with a good bimetal hack saw. work slowly and measure carefully.
As mentioned, if any of your Atlas locos are Silver series versions of the Gold series that came with sound, they will have the speaker A frames so there is no frame milling or any of that required. They will be as easy to convert to sound as they are to just as a motor decoder (ok, there are two extra wires for the speakers). In Diesels, Atlas is one of the few that does that - wish more did - make the DC version using the exact same chassis as the factory sound version. With steam locos, many more recent ones come with the speaker mouting in the tender, ready to drop in a speaker and wire a decoder - also really not any more complex than installing a motor only decoder.
