Does a hornby locomotive decoder make a train have sound

[jed_porter]

I was wondering if an ordinary hornby locomotive decoder makes my trains have sound in them.

Thanks

[St1ngr4y]

Hello Jed,

Welcome to the Forum. The short answer to your question is no, I'm afraid. For sound, you need a much more expensive decoder, such as the Loksound, and a small loudspeaker to go with it. Hornby are introducing to the marketplace their own TTS sound locos, but the TTS decoder and loudspeaker are only available in new locos - you can't yet buy the TTS decoder and speaker as seperate items. Lots of people are hoping they will become available seperately because they will probably be much cheaper to buy than the Loksound. There is another thread in this Forum entitled "TTS sound locos released" if you are interested.

Ray

[2e0dtoeric]

Or, of course, you can buy a DCC SOUND loco! They have the sound chip and speaker ready-installed. The new TTS sound chips put about £25 on the top of the DCC loco, and another make's sound chips put about £100 on the top, but do a lot more than the TTS ones.

You pays yer money . . . .

Although the Select controller will work a sound chip, if you have the Elite controller, they give you access to a lot more functions.

[Fishmanoz]

And to add the obvious, sounds are accessed via functions so more functions means more sounds.  

And the big problem with Select seems to be the high function number for changing the background chuff/idle track which means it can't be accessed by Select.  Which explains why I am now asking for the third time if Hornby might enlighten us about the best way to run TTS with Select. Admin?

[96RAF]

@Admin

I think the question on peoples' minds was can you tweak the Select so it accesses the preferred range of sound functions you want rather than sequential F1-Fnn then out of F-scope.

[Fishmanoz]

@Admin,

I asked my question in full knowledge of Select's limitations. My question was really, given those limitations, is there a way to get maximum until it's from a TTS loco with Select, rather than just accepting that the higher F numbers are inaccessible. It would seem that doing so gives a big limitation - inability to switch the background channel from chuff to idle. maybe a function mapping service could be offered to ensure most used functions fall within the Select range?  Or is there another way?

In this I'm not sure that RAf has asked the right question as the Select is a particularly untweakable controller, if I can put it that way. Seems to me the tweaking needs to be in the TTS decoder?

[Fishmanoz]

Thanks Admin. In that case, I'm not sure the developers got the allocation of function numbers to sounds quite right, particularly the chuff/idle track.  While forum users who recommend Select are few and far between, many will still be using them via a first DCC set and I would have thought they should have been considered in the design  

And I'd point out the choice is not just to go Elite, the most expensive Hornby option now. RM/eLink should also figure in there. You may have noted there has been quite lively debate in here on which of these is now the way to go, including Elite/RM for that matter. 

[Graskie]

Elite/RM has it for me every time for sheer versatility in working your layout. I bought my Elite before RM was available but would never consider swapping it for eLink. It cost me a bit of my gold but was well worth it on retrospect.

[jed_porter]

Thank you.