Loksound 4, ELink & Railmaster

[BagEndJct]

My Hornby County of Flint blew its DCC chip so I sent it off to Hattons and I decided to go overboard and have them fit a Loksound 4 & speaker, and they installed Olivia's steam A4 sound file http://www.oliviastrains.com/trains/mt/olivias-trains-sound-function-sheets/olivias-steam-sound-functions/

 

I was not that happy with the way it had been set up and, to avoid having to post it back from Spain to UK again, am trying to ajust things myself. I have downloaded the Loksound 4 manual, a lot of which is impenetrable to me, along with the Olivia soundsheet.

 

The chuff and other sound volumes are out of balance, the chuff being far to quiet. I read elswhere about changing CV 31 to 16 (was already) and CV32 to 1, which I did. The separate sounds start at CV 259 but Railmaster via Elink won't read beyond CV255 despite setting CV range to read from 1 to 400. It does not get beyond 255. Is that a limitation of Railmaster? Which would mean I cannot balance the various sounds.

 

Something else I've been trying to overcome by adjusting acceration rate is the fact the it gives a long burst of steam as the brake is released and sets off quite fast with the steam still gushing; any slow chuffing can't be heard. Once the steam stops, the chuffs are then too fast for the speed. 

 

My 2 Hornby TTS locos are much more user-friendly and sounds and implementation are much better. Steam brake off, loco starts with chuffing at the correct rate. I think I have wasted quite a lot of money and, in future, will be waiting for the standalone TTS decoders etc to become available. 

 

Meanwhile, I will return the loco to Hattons unless I can get somewhere fixing it myself.

[BagEndJct]

There was another issue I forgot to mention. This loco was a beautfiul runner. Smooth and never stuttered or stalled. Now it stalls at many turnouts and elsewhere. I have checked that the tender wheels are still picking up, which they are, so not sure what's going on. All rather depressing......

[96RAF]

 If you look at the DCC sound section of RMWeb forum you will often see bad press about Olivia's sound sets.

Many people end up reblowing them with legobiffoman or other popular and accurate sound providers.

Chrissaf is a L'sound v4.0 man and he may be able to offer basic advice on your problems.

Rob

[BagEndJct]

OK thanks RAF. I'll hope to here from Chrissaf. Maybe Hattons would be able to reblow the sound. I think I will be returning it as it really is not good enough for quite a lot of money. Also given the stalling I'm now experiencing.

[Chrissaf]

Rob is right, all my locos are Loksound (and all but one are V4). Four of them are Olivia's Sounds. But I can't really offer any realistic help as I am a Diesel person, so steam chuff rates and steam sound balance are not so relevant to a Diesel. I have never found any issues as such with Olivia's Sounds, but I do openly admit and agree that Legobiffoman do far superior soundscapes for the Loksound decoder.

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I do have one single steamer, with a Loksound V4. It is a Hornby R2991XS Sparrow Hawk A4 Pacific. Having one single A4 Pacific in my fleet is a nod to having a fictitious heritage line as I just happen to like the streamlining of the A4, it pulls a rake of Hornby Pullmans with the illuminated table lamps. The XS suffix tells you that this Hornby A4 loco has a factory fitted Loksound V4 with Hornby's own soundscape files installed (thus the original sound file supplier is unknown). I can't say that I have noticed anything untoward with chuff rates and the like, but as I am not a steamer fanatic, I wouldn't necessarily notice or recognise if something was out of place or unusual. It sounds OK to my ears and expectations.

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The only adjustment I have ever found I needed to do on my Loksounds is to lower the master volume level. The suppliers do seem to set volume at MAX by default.

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The following postscripts are not necessarily relevant to your particular issue, but included just as additional information.

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PS - I have found the Loksound V4 decoders are excellent on my layout at handling the occasional transient power breaks that inevitably happen. I assume that they have a small amount of transient 'stay alive' capacity built into their circuit. Not so, my Hornby 0-6-0 XS shunter with a Loksound V3.5, this will stall at the slightest provocation.

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PPS - As a matter of policy I have all my locos DC disabled in CV29. But even when they were previously DC enabled, I have never ever experienced the DC 'runaway' phenomenon so regularly reported in these pages. For information, I have electrofrog points with point frog polarity switching via Peco PL13 & PL15 switches. I have also implemented DCC Bus filters to condition the DCC signal to help eliminate voltage spikes when the odd transient short circuit does occur. After fitting the filters to the DCC Bus (two filters), I have absolutely no identifiable DCC decoder signal misread issues on the running tracks.

[BagEndJct]

OK, thanks for the input Chris. I will disable DC in my locos too. It was a runaway that resulted in my beloved County of Flint get poorly. 

[BagEndJct]

Can anyone answer my point about Railmaster with ELink reading above CV 255 in order to change the volumes of the various sounds? Mine won't even though I've set "CVs to read" up to 400.

 

Thanks.

[Chrissaf]

You are correct. RailMaster cannot write/read CVs above 255. HRMS have acknowledged this and have stated in previous threads that their intention is to correct this issue in a future RM release. There is no known timescale for this feature upgrade to happen at the present time.

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In the meantime this 'Tech Note' may offer you a 'workaround' solution for configuring Loksound V4 decoder CVs above 255. I have not used this procedure myself, but it seems quite straight forward in the tutorial documentation linked below.

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http://www.dccguy.com/?p=2886

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[KNAP]

Cannot find steam sounds with Legobiffman.

Hattons are linked to Olivias

Rails of Sheffield linked to SWD

Howells have sounds for V4

Youchoos are Zimo

[Rog RJ]

It's legomanbiffo. Try this http://www.dckits-devideos.co.uk/shop/dcc_digital_loco_sounds/

[Chrissaf]

The funny thing is, when I saw Rob's post quoting "Legobiffoman" I thought it didn't sound like the same name I remembered, so I Googled it first before I copied and used it again in my reply. I got a few hits on Google so assumed it was correct and that my memory was playing tricks. Having now just Googled "Legomanbiffo" the number of valid hits is massively increased.

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However that said, looking at the Google hits in a little more depth. Legomanbiffo does seem to be Diesel & Electric sound based.

[KNAP]

Steam sounds under "Locoman", limited range but sounds good on Demo.

I may try the 8F at some point in the future.

[BagEndJct]

In the meantime this 'Tech Note' may offer you a 'workaround' solution for configuring Loksound V4 decoder CVs above 255. I have not used this procedure myself, but it seems quite straight forward in the tutorial documentation linked below.

http://www.dccguy.com/?p=2886

 

Thanks Chrissaf as ever. What a font of knowledge! I actually read and understood that and will certainly give it a go.

 

The fact that County of Flint was stalling was down to a couple of dirty sections of track. Doh! There had been more gecko activity on the track plus dust blowing in to my Train Shed (must plug those gaps in the roof!).

 

Given I think I may be able to balance the volumes now, I am left with the issue of the loco taking off too smartly before the brake-off hiss has finished (it does go on for an inordinately long time). I have tried upping the CV for acceleration but think there must be a start delay CV but have not found it.

[96RAF]

Apologies for the confusion but in Greek it doesn't matter what order the words are in as long as they are all there, and spelling is optional.

 

Heres a live link to the lego man biffo Charlie Petty for you :

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/84971-legomanbiffo-world-tour/page-15 .

 

Been struggling all day with the hotel internet and my UK MiFi dongle can't get a signal - well done Three - dependable as ever. I may as well be on the moon.

 

Rob

[Chrissaf]

In the Loksound V4 CV124 Bit 2 is used to control 'Start Up Delay'. However, note the documented caveat regarding non prototypical result of disabling Bit 2 in CV124. See manual extracts below (note the typo error in the manual....Bit 3 should read Bit 2):

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Extract from page 71

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Extract from page 83

/media/tinymce_upload/65fd587e6892d7133d135bc276e45eaa.jpg

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Unfortunately this CV seems to be either / or, yes or no, black or white. That is to say no option for extending the delay to a longer time delay to give time for sounds to complete first.

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Doesn't mean to say that there isn't another CV available somewhere that might give finer control.

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If you are unsure how to manipulate the Bit pattern of CV124, read the CV124 value and post back here and I will tell you what bits are enabled and which are disabled.

[BagEndJct]

Thank you Chris! I'll report back.