Advice on a none Hornby Valenta HST sound decoder

[125_driver]

Looking to fit valenta sound chips to my Hornby tts power cars due to disatisfaction with the performance of the Hornby ones.

Can anyone recommend such a decoder that is affordableish and provides some decent valenta thrash??? Thanks

..

[Philou]

Hi,

 

I got some Zimo chips for my blue/grey Hornby HSTs, one for the power car and the other for the dummy end. The sounds are quite good and the Valenta does scream. I sourced them from YouChoos - but I don't know who's sound files they were - might have been John's of YouChoos. The two ends had slightly different sounds on them AND the horn only worked in the direction of travel from the 'front' end. However, neither Zimo nor ESU are particularly cheap.

 

Obligatory no connection with YouChoos - just a happy customer.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[Dungrange]

3 hours ago, 125_driver said:

Looking to fit valenta sound chips to my Hornby tts power cars due to dissatisfaction with the performance of the Hornby ones.

 

Did you just use the default Hornby speaker, or did you upgrade it to something better.  From my limited experience, the speaker seems to be as important as the choice of sound chip / project.  The issue is really that the alternatives aren't what everyone thinks of as affordable.

[Philou]

Unless I'm mistaken, if you want a really big sound, you may have to do a bit of work on the chassis to fit a big speaker. I didn't have to as the speaker suggested that came with the decoder (wasn't a bog-standard one) fitted perfectly - however, EMs weren't on the market at that time and it's something I shall need to investigate once I have something to run upon.

 

From what I see on various threads, Biffo's sound files ARE the ones to have. I didn't have the option at the time as there was a glitch in ESU chip supplies from Austria - all been resolved since .

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

[bart2day]

On 17/12/2019 at 19:35, 125_driver said:

Looking to fit valenta sound chips to my Hornby tts power cars due to disatisfaction with the performance of the Hornby ones.

Can anyone recommend such a decoder that is affordableish and provides some decent valenta thrash??? Thanks

..

 

When you say performance, do you mean sound quality or running quality. If the former then fitting Megabass speakers from Richard at Roads and Rails does hugely improve the sound for a nominal cost when compared with buying ESU or Zimo chips.