Hornby Class 08 Faulty Chip?

[mcowgill]

With the recent flood of relatively low priced sound fitted Hornby class 08s that have appeared at a number of box shifters recently, I noticed one at an even lower price than the rest and felt that at under £115 (for the last one in stock) was too good an opportunity to miss.  The intention was to swap the chassis over to one of my existing detailed bodies and probably put the non-sound chassis under the new body and cover some of the purchase costs on a well known auction site.

 

It arrived yesterday and I tried it on my SPROG & programming track.  The sound was awful, lots of breaks and crackles in the sound almost as if there was a poor electrical connection to the loco, every time there was a glitch in the sound the loco would lurch, proceeding along the track in fits and starts.  I'd heard that the whistle on the Hornby 08 wasn't particularly good, but pressing F2 just produced 5 or 6 seconds of pops, crackles and white noise while the loco immediately stopped. 

 

The loco works perfectly with sound turned off, it crawls at walking pace around the layout, coping with my notoriously poor handbuilt double slip which tests the pickups of any loco - so there's no problem with the pickups, the motor drive in the Loksound chip or mechanical problems with the chassis.

 

To see where the problem lay I decided to open up the loco and temporarily swapped the decoder for another 21 pin Loksound.   Perfect!  No problems at all, normal movement under sound, no pops and crackles, so there wasn't a problem with the speaker connections.

 

It's going back to the retailer, I suspect for a refund as it was the last one in stock at that price. 

 

I'm guessing it's a faulty chip, my first faulty sound decoder.  Do the symptoms suggest it's the decoder at fault or is it the sound project that's corrupted in some way and might a reblow have fixed it?

 

Martin

[pauliebanger]

Martin,

 

Don't be too hasty with the return.

 

This is a fairly common problem with the 08 sounds.

 

Problem is that the sound it turn up full by default. (192?) and the decoder doesn't have enough power to run the loco and sound at full blast.

 

Reduce the volume to around 120 and the problem will probably go away, but you'll not notice much difference in perceived loudness.

 

Good luck.

 

Kind regards,

 

Paul

[mcowgill]

Paul,

 

That's a nice simple thing to try - I'll give it a go this evening and see if it fixes the problem.  

 

Thanks,

Martin

[BlackRat]

I recently resprayed one for a mate, had the same ..............it was like the speaker couldn't handle the volume.

 

I also found the speaker was quite a lose fit inside the loco, and one of the wires was barely attached.

 

I sorted the last two and he twiddled the chip and now it's 100% better.

[mcowgill]

Paul,

 

Dropped the volume down and the loco is transformed, thanks for the suggestion.

 

Why do Hornby and Bachmann insist on setting the volumes of their sound locos so high?  It took me a long time to recover from turning on my class 20 a few years ago (now re-blown with something much more subtle!)

 

Martin

[charliepetty]

Paul,

 

Dropped the volume down and the loco is transformed, thanks for the suggestion.

 

Why do Hornby and Bachmann insist on setting the volumes of their sound locos so high?  It took me a long time to recover from turning on my class 20 a few years ago (now re-blown with something much more subtle!)

 

Martin

The Legomanbiffo 08 Re-Blow for the loco is good, suggest a pair of sugarcube speakers behind the front grill for MAX SOUND! but not at full volume!  Its noisy on 50%

[legomanbiffo]

Martin,

 

Hornby and Bachmann do not follow the very basic audio principle of making their loudspeaker enclosures airtight, and the result is thin, weak sound. I'm guessing that Hornby have turned the volume up to full in an attempt to compensate for this (a bit like turning the fire up instead of closing the window that's wide open and letting all the heat out...)

 

You can improve the volume (and fidelity) by sealing their speaker properly but you'll get a far better result (regardless of who's sound you use) if you fit two of the excellent Zimo sugar cube speakers instead.

 

Bif

[sandwich station]

This is a fairly common problem with the 08 sounds.

 

Problem is that the sound it turn up full by default. (192?) and the decoder doesn't have enough power to run the loco and sound at full blast.

 

Reduce the volume to around 120 and the problem will probably go away, but you'll not notice much difference in perceived loudness.

 

 

 

Thanks for that bit of information. I have viewed 2 running in different shops with the idea of buying one but both suffered from the same problem as highlighted in this thread, which obviously put me off. Knowing it would probably be just a case of turning the volume down has made me think about buying one again.

[giz]

Had exactly the same problem with mine. Have now reduced the volume and all is well.

[Pete22]

Hi all.

 

I tried my Hornby Class 08 with sound for the 1st time tonight, and noticed that the sound volume is way too loud. The model has a Locsound V4 chip.

As a starting point, I wish to reduce the volume of all the sounds. Should I just reduce master volume CV 63 down a bit ? or reduce the sounds individually. I ask this as I find the instructions a bit confusing, where it says "the resulting sound effect therefore is a mixture of the master volume control settings and the individual volume control sliders " ........(what sliders !!??) (and what does this actually mean??).

Also, the instructions refer to (for example) "Horn Volume Control" as being Slot =3 ...CV=275....Value=128. What does "Slot =3" refer to ???????

As you can guess, I am new to sound and find it very complicated so far. Any advice will be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

P.

[Alcanman]

Start by reducing the factory default  in CV 63 (which is set to maximum volume 192),  to a level you find acceptable. This may also improve running qualities.

 

You will probably not need to make any further adjustments.

 

 

Mal

[Pete22]

Many thanks for your reply. I will try reducinng the master volume....

 

P.