I recently attended the local model railroads open house and one of the members was running a Tsunami equipped Bachmann Spectrum 2-10-2 engine. I was very impressed with the quality of sound that emanated from that small steam engine.
This was the first time I had heard the Tsunami sound, I was most impressed with the quality of sound, plus the running characteristics of the engine was excellent. Especially the slow speed control aspect.
All I had in the past to judge the quality of sound was a couple of BLI engines from a few years ago.
The quality of sound in the HO engines certainly has improved immensely in the last couple of years, I may even take the plunge a buy a couple of the Tsunami equipped Spectrums.
My recent experience with Tsunami is similar to yours. I recently purchased some Athearn Genisis F units with the new factory installed Tsunami sound and the improvement over the MRC sound is very noticiable. I have a couple of older Athearn Genisis F units that are a year or two old with factory installed MRC sound and the Tsunamis are much better sounding IMHO. I haven’t had enough time to form and opinion on operational charactaristics yet, but I so far, so good in that department considering both of my older MRC units with MRC sound had board failures early on in life. I’m seriously considering replacing the MRC boards with Tsunamis after I recover from the financial hit from my most recent purchase. I also purchased one of the Athearn Gas Turbine engines and the folks at my LHS told me that the upcoming Tsunami sound for it will be a big improvement over the current QSI option. They did not know when the Tsunami would be available but told me it would be well worth the wait.