BBC sound effects for free.

[The Johnster]

My view FWIW is that speakers of any sort are not the way to go with this; headphones are.  And I mean proper hi-fi headphones, not earphones or 'in ear/on ear headphones' as they are mendaciously called these days.  You can tailor the sound to your own requirements and not annoy everybody else in the neighbourhood , even if you are playing the sound loud enough to squeeze your brains out your nostrils.

 

Proper hi-fi speakers are far too loud to produce sound levels appropriate to models, and the silly little speakers one puts in DCC locos or buys to be fed by smartphones or laptops are incapable of low frequency sound of any realism.  Steam always seems to be rendered as white noise, and real steam locos do not emit white noise.  I am happier to imaginate the sounds of my trains, despite the squeeze's mocking of my chuff chuff noises, and to mentally provide the visual effects of steam or smoke; smoke units cannot do this because the speed at which steam clouds develop from a chimney cannot be scaled down by 76 times, and hence looks 76 times too fast, which of course to scale it is.  As Scotty says, 'ye canna change the lawza fezzics, Jim'.  

[Jonboy]

You can get portable Bluetooth speakers with micro sd-card slots such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-Anker-SoundCore-Portable-Playtime-Black/dp/B01HTH3C8S/ref=asc_df_B01HTH3C8S/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310879851560&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10768101093779054431&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006457&hvtargid=pla-366883658870&th=1 .

 

I haven’t used them myself so cannot comment on the quality or level of bass etc.

 

(For me personally sound doesn’t add much appeal to a layout and isn’t something I pay any attention to at an exhibition)

[Dave John]

Ruston,  I based my ambient sound unit around this;

 

http://www.icstation.com/voice-playback-module-sound-module-music-player-voice-broadcast-device-development-board-arduino-p-6148.html

 

The amplifier in it is fine for a bit of background sound. 

[Nile_Griffith]

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

My view FWIW is that speakers of any sort are not the way to go with this; headphones are.  And I mean proper hi-fi headphones, not earphones or 'in ear/on ear headphones' as they are mendaciously called these days.  You can tailor the sound to your own requirements and not annoy everybody else in the neighbourhood , even if you are playing the sound loud enough to squeeze your brains out your nostrils.

 

  As Scotty says, 'ye canna change the lawza fezzics, Jim'.  

 

 

I'd kind of disagree that proper HiFi headphones are the way to do things......  Oh and by the way there are a lot of very high quality in ear monitoring products out there that when set up correctly provide very good and credible results. The main advantage of headphones (sealed ear cup types especially) is that they contain extraneous sound emanating from the speaker drivers and depending on the product, eliminate to varying degrees the ingress of sound outside of the headphones to the listener. What they won't compensate for is a change in viewing direction. So if you are not looking at the layout from your God like position above it and say then start looking behind you, then the soundscape doesn't change in your ears. If you are looking at a reasonably sized layout that has some kind of multi-speaker arrangement accurately spaced around the layout and those speakers are fed with either a stereo mixed audio source or even a multichannel audio recording as in something like Dolby surround, RSS, etc. Then as your focus moves around the layout and the physical changes in the position of your head and body occur. With a well constructed soundscape a viewer/listener should perceive audible differences in the mix. In the past I've worked with companies providing large dioramas for museums where a soundscape has been created for viewers and replayed through an array of speakers. Wether they just be a stereo pair or a multi-channel, multi-speaker rig.

 

Things that are nigh on impossible to do when it comes to the idea of a layout, is to re-create Doppler shift (think ambulance with sirens sounding coming towards you and then moving away from you). But as I alluded to in a previous post, much of the trick with audio post production is adding the sounds and dynamic that re-enforce the scene and not necessarily adding the sound for each source within that scene.

 

The question of sound levels is always a bit of a thorny one. It's something professionally I have found myself banging my head up against a brick wall with over the years. I've seen (and heard) everything from hyper directional speakers to the use of large and small parabolic reflectors over an audience or individual. From a layout point of view I have two streams of thought. If it's your own layout in your own space...... Then knock yourself out!! if it's an exhibition layout, then I don't see why not, but just so long as as much thought goes into how you achieve creating that soundscape as the modeller or modellers did in researching how many rivets are down the side of a tank engine!!

 

Keep the over enthusiasm out of the mix and there is no reason why any reasonably sized layout couldn't benefit from a well equipped and well produces soundscape. There is certainly no reason why a well composed audio track can't be played at a level low enough to keep the layout viewer intrigued and distant attendee's blissfully unaware by considerate use of the right kit and a bit of careful thought.

[MarkSG]

Several of the layouts at Stafford this weekend had sound; none of them were overdoing it to the point where it became intrusive and, on most of them, it was a useful addition. The real key, as I've said before, is that it should be just above the threshold of audibility, so that if you listen you will notice it but it doesn't demand your attention.

[Ruston]

6 hours ago, Dave John said:

Ruston,  I based my ambient sound unit around this;

 

http://www.icstation.com/voice-playback-module-sound-module-music-player-voice-broadcast-device-development-board-arduino-p-6148.html

 

The amplifier in it is fine for a bit of background sound. 

Thanks for that. It looks like it's possibly too complex for me. Electronics certainly isn't a strong point of mine, but it would be much easier to hide in a building and speakers can be chosen for the same reason. I looked at those bluetooth speakers and they appear to be much simpler to set up but they are too bulky to fit on the layout and would have to go under the baseboard.

 

 

[MarkSG]

59 minutes ago, Ruston said:

I looked at those bluetooth speakers and they appear to be much simpler to set up but they are too bulky to fit on the layout and would have to go under the baseboard.

 

Something like this would fit in a fair number of buildings. It would certainly fit in the Bachmann Scenecraft Industrial Gate House - I've just measured the interior of mine and there's plenty of space in there for a small speaker!

https://amzn.to/31ntL31