I have recently gotten bitten by the DCC and Sound bug, but by only having 2 DCC Locos and a 20% ish completed trackwork I dont have enough experience to plan ahead. I have a birthday coming up this spring and i want to start making a list of locomotives to add to my fleet, so i figured i would ask this question now.
Do you have all your Locos in a consist have sound? Or just the lead loco?
Currently i have an SD70MAC and a GP40. I am working on speed matching them to mess around with consisting now but they both have sound. What i am really getting at if i get 2 more SD70’s and consist them does it really add anything if all three have sound or should i just put motor decoders in the non lead locos?
I’ll offer what admittedly little I’ve experienced consisting sound locos. I’ve run multiple steam locomotives together and loved it. Sounded very cool. The diesels? Not so much in my experience. I don’t have many diesels as I (try to) model the early transition era. I did lash together a couple F3’s both equiped with ESU Loksounds and was unimpressed. The sounds were precisely timed so as to blend together and sound like a single unit. Throttle changes, brake squeal, etc had zero variance in timing so I couldn’t even get a single effect to sound differently between them. Perhaps if you were also mixing decoder brands among the engines you are consisting it would help? Personally, my diesel A units have sound and B units don’t and typically all I run are a single A or an AB consist. Seriously, the visual difference when I tried an AA was the only difference I could tell.
What little I have done, I’d say only use the lead loco in diesel consists. Of you are running steam, often the chuffs are different, also a diesel/steam would have different sounds, so leave both on.
The other thing to consider is power draw. Sound locos draw more power. Shut it off and run another loco or two. Unless you plan to more or less permenetly make up a consist, get the sound locos and shut the sound off. From what I see, the least expensive way to buy sound locos is factory installed. I have two DCC, no sound, they aren’t nearly as fun and are noticablly quiet, unless you have enough other sound going on.
Hope your birthday bunny brings you some nice locos.
I’ve been running a pair of home brew E7s (Cary Shells on Athearn SD40-2 chassis’ with Mashima motors) that have MRC1730 decoders and 1” full range 1 watt speakers for a couple of months experimenting with the sound. They do sound like a pair of hard working diesels on my 3½% grades. If I kill the sound in one locomotive it really makes a noticeable difference. The dual sound is most noticeable when increasing the throttle, I can definitely tell more than one locomotive is working.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My steamers and diesel switchers have, or will have, sound and all run as single units. Road diesels mostly run in consists with sound only in the lead engine, or occasionally in the trailing engine. Ideally, I’d like sound in every engine, but that’s overkill to me, and I’d rather spend time and money elsewhere.
Technically they all have sound, but when in consist mode the lighting, bell and horn functions change automatically with a number of decoders. Lighting varies if it’s lead, helper, mid engine, or rear engine. Sound for horns and bells only plays on the lead loco.
Now the question is “Do you want prime mover (motor sounds) on each engine?” That is up to you. With tsunami you can add a reverb effect which makes it sound like dual prime movers. With many decoders you can set the chuff for steam to be compound which goes in and out of phase to sound like two sets of steam cylinders.
I think it is partly a function of how fast you run your trains. When you stand trackside and a long freight goes by that is really working hard (upgrade, or is starting from a standing stop) you really get that sense of excitement as each individual unit goes by, and each unit creating a fresh crescendo/decresendo effect. That would argue for sound in each unit in a consist. When you stand trackside and a really fast freight goes by, you have little or no sense of the engine noise from each locomotive - it tends to blend together.
Another factor is if you consist, say, a GE dash 7 unit or U-boat with a GP40 and the two prime movers would make very different noises. Ditto for a consist of EMD and ALCo. A consist of all GP40s - less so.
I run diesels in consist and usually have the first engine with sound, and 99% of the time I have same brand locos. My GP40 engines are Atlas one with factory sound the other non-sound. They run fine. My layout room is 20’x20’ so multiple engines with sound get drowned out. My Intermountain engines, when run in consist, sound fine as both engines have sound.
The first time I ran my four unit set of F’s pulling the Empire Builder, I was sold on having the sound on in all four units. Recently I ran three Rivarossi U boats in consist. Sounded great. Then (reference Dave Nelson’s comment above) I ran a Bowser C430 with an Athearn GP9B. Yup, they sound different. I’m waiting to add a U33B to that consist for even more aural delight.
So.
If at all possible, every unit in a consist has sound. An exception, though, was when I added a fourth U boat to my Rivarossi consist. THAT one was a full-out dummy. As the set went by, you sorta could tell it wasn’t emitting. One in four my ears can kinda forgive.
But.
No way am I going to have only one out of four units making sound. Or even one out of two.
From now on, everything I buy will have sound/DCC. And I’m adding (gradually) the same to my existing equipment.
HOWEVER.
I am extremely disappointed to have sound coming out of a steam locomotive’s tender. Except for perhaps water sloshing. My few sound equipped steam locomotives tend to be run with the sound off. It’s THAT irritating. To me.
I have a few logging tank engines to which I will consider adding sound. At least it comes out of the generally correct location. But then I’m giving up space for weight. We’ll see. It’s gonna be awhile.
When I did my brass engines, I put a forward speaker in the steam chest, right behind the stack, and another firing downward in the tender. It works out nicely. With the Titan I can ensure the steam whistle and bell only fire from the front speaker.
I have a couple of consists with only one sound loco. I set the reverb on it to simulate two locos and its ok. These are diesel consists with Tsunami decoders. One thing I did do was install Soundtraxx non sound decoders in the other diesels and they run pretty much the same.
I’ve acquired some DC diesels and when converting nearly always go with sound. I usually like to run them in consists of two or more. In some cases I have different type locos consisted; e.g, a GP30 with a GP9. So I like the fact that both have sound.
Note that for the LokSounds (at least the recent versions) one can adjust CVs to make paired similar loco prime mover sounds not run in sync. There are playback speed settings for those sound slots that can be varied very slightly (from the default 128 value) to cause the sound cycles to vary enough to matter. So for my two E6s with dual prime movers, I’ve got four motors going. Can I tell there are four (after startup), well not exactly. But the four sound much better than one E6 with the older single prime mover sound file that it had before downloading the dual prime mover update.
So, I’m all for adding the sound, though budget is impacted so it depends on one’s priorities and preferences.