CAUTION sugar cube speakers can get hot!

[Peachy]

Hey gang, I’m not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere on the forums,

but just a quick note of caution.

myself & Richard (R3) from This Way Works have found it’s best practice not to run your TT120 sugar cubes much over 25% volume (on the HM7000 app)

Anymore and they start getting seriously hot and can endanger the chips.

I’m guessing the compact nature of TT120 doesn’t help. Compounded of course if you’ve had your loco adapted by Rich as they are super packed in.

[Richard-358946]

Peachy rounded that up nicely,

Please Hornby maybe update the firmware to cap the global volume CV to avoid blown amps on your decoders 🫣.

From the testing i did, anything much over 25% volume and the speakers do heat up, i mean got close to melting plastic hot, I tried different enclosures too.

A symptom of this speaker overheat happening is gradually the sound will quiet down and get crackly/distort.

Potentially this could maybe damage the decoders. This is just from my experience so i dont want to scare anyone, at 25% volume most locos are blimming loud anyways.

This was the Next18 And 8TXS HM7000 sound decoders, with Hornby Speakers..

If your reading this, i personally dont go above 25% volume 👍

I set my locos at 15-20%

[LTSR_NSE]

I’m fairly sure this has been discussed before & the developers have stated that the sugar cube speakers are not supposed to get hot anywhere near this volume. If they do it suggests a fault with that particular speaker.

Several users have noted that 25-30% volume is a decent level & I believe the developers are considering whether this might be a more appropriate default in future.

Edit - I have made the developers aware of this thread - just in case I am mistaken about this only being caused by faulty speakers.

[Rallymatt]

Richard, Hornby don’t read anything in the forums so it might be worth dropping an email to George who is lead on HM DCC. I think it’s his email that’s the one in the app. I find 20% of GV easily enough sound

[RB51]

As has been said, the developers are aware and have had Richard’s post forwarded to them. R-

[ntpntpntp]

Mismatched impedance speaker .v. decoder amp?

Sounds like the speaker impedance may be too low allowing excessive current for the volume level set.

[96RAF]

It has been reported that adding a 4-ohm bass speaker in series with the provided speaker to give 12-ohm impedance saw no ill effect, coupled with the trend towards a 25% global volume and it may be the TXS amp is mismatched. A job for Hornby lab guys to look at as notified by Rog.

[Too Tall]

It appears quite common for other railway modellers to use i-phone speakers, do these avoid overheat and fit in the space allowed on our TT tenders ?