LokSound V4 in Railroad Mallard (Howes Sound)

[Pete22]

Hi All,

I am dissatisfied with my Hornby Railroad Mallard fitted with LokSound V4 / Howes A4 Sound decoder.

The loco is extremely slow & at maximum speed covers only 6 feet in 9 seconds.

The Loco takes forever to reach full speed (acceleration) and is very slow to stop.

I tried adjustments to CV5 by writing new value of 60 (was 19),, this gave a decent max speed, but the sound blended to a blur at about 50% of maximum speed , and then disappeared completely at full speed.

I also tried using Function 12, which overrides acceleration & deceleration, but the speed steps seemed very abrupt.

I have now returned the max speed CV5 to 19 and don't use Function 12.

 

I also notice that the loco sounds 7 chuffs per full revolution of the driving wheel, it doesn't need to be going very fast before the chuff becomes just a blur ).

 

The readings from the decoder as supplied with the Howes A4 sounds are :

CV2 = 003

CV3 = 121

CV4 = 039

CV5 = 019

CV6 = 010

 

I can't help thinking that I need to try adjusting some other CV's to achieve higher max speed, and much faster acceleration & deceleration, and only adjusting CV3,4 &5 is not the correct way to resolve this.

All help & advice gladly received...

 

Peter...

[Andrew F]

Adjusting CV2 up a little may decrease the chuff rate to 6 chuffs per revolution. 

 

Also adjusting CV6 to 0 will give a linear acceleration through the speed steps. The value 10 suggests bias to low speed acceleration.

 

Now try upping CV5 to increase top speed to where you want it.

[big jim]

A reply from bryan.....

 

 

Firstly. Did you speak to Howes regarding your dissatisfaction before posting your comments on RM Web!!.

 

Secondly did Howes fit the loco, I am guessing the answer to that is No as I set all fitted locos correctly before they go to a customer otherwise it is a pointless exercise .

 

Now to answer your queries.

 

The decoder, like those from other UK sound suppliers are usually set up on a loco to get as near a match to the motor so when the customer receives it it does what it says on the box. However there are various versions of A4 produced and as such the decoder you received may not fit the setup of your loco correctly, I do actually do 2 versions to cater for motor speeds on the Hornby and Bachmann models, there are other models ie Railroad which may not have the same settings from the normal Hornby A4, it is impossible to have a decoder for every A4 model so it is left for the customer to tailor /fine tune his/her model to suit.

 

As for the speed curve, it is not just on CV2 5 and 6 , it is a logarithmic curve involving many steps, you can set CV2 start and CV5 max speeds, I dont know where you got a value of 019 from unless it is a typo, it should be 190, and if required increased to 255 top speed, if you want the loco to get up to higher speed more quickly reduce the value of CV3 from 120 to say 60.

 

As far as the chuff rate is concerned a quick answer is to increase the value of CV58 1 at a time until it is running at 6 chuffs per rev.

All this info is available if you download the Loksound 4 Handbook in English from the ESU website.

 

Lastly a mathematical explaination

 

Let us say the A4 Driving wheel is 6'6'', it's circumference would be 22' rough maths, so one turn of the driver , as you correctly point out is 6 chuffs.

60MPH is 88 feet per second. 22 into 88 = 4 revs. 4 revs times 6 chuffs = 24 chuffs per second and 36 per second at 90 mph.

If you could replicate that sound it is the equivalent rate of a machine gun and that is why at speed the model sounds just like a blur, as does the real thing!!. If it was a Lord nelson, it has 8 chuffs to the rev which is 16 chuffs at 30mph!!

I hope this clears up some if not all of your queries and maybe enlighten other readers of this thread in certain matters, that is not me being sarcastic, just trying to be helpful.

 

Lastly, I am sure there are people on RM web who would happily testify that Howes/ I do everything possible to resolve an issue and even do bespoke things for customers that others may not in order to make the customer experience one they would recommend to others in the hobby.

 

If you or any reader have a problem with their decoder please contact Howes or whoever supplied it to sort it rather than posting on threads, I am sure I speak for the other suppliers as well, I dont read threads, I dont have the time, in fact I have just wasted 15 minutes reponding to this post alone, if you had rung Howes in the first place it would have been dealt with in 2 minutes and saved you time too!!. the only reason I have responded is because Jim brought it to my attention.

If you are truly stuck , send the loco to the shop and I will set it up for you FOC, it will just cost you postage each way.

 

Bryan

[ColinK]

Bryan is right. I have many locos fitted with DCC sound by Howes. The latest being a class 05 shunter which is excellent. I did have a problem with one, the interior lights on a Blue Pullman. Although the fault turned out to be nothing to do with the decoder, Bryan did everything he could to try and fix the problem. As Bryan says, if you are very unlucky and have a problem with one of his sound decoders, contact him first.

[Pete22]

Hi all,

Thanks for your quick replies.

 

Just to clarify, I did not state above that Howes did the installation, only that I had a Mallard/ Loksound with Howes sounds on the decoder,, there was no intention to criticise Howes at all, so I'm very sorry for any misunderstanding caused.

I phoned Howes at the time, they were helpful and said they only put the sounds on the decoder and sent it back to my retailer, who would then have fitted it into the new loco. Being new to DCC & Sound, I had thought that Howes would have done the whole sound and fitting job start to finish, but it looks as if my retailer fitted the decoder into my loco but did not check how well it was running in my particular loco before handing it back to me. I did go back to the retailer to discuss this, but unfortunately they had ceased trading. Howes had offered to test / amend the settings for me if I post it to them, but they would (rightly) treat it as a new job, but I really didn't want to spend any more on a Railroad loco at the time and hoped that the loco just needed running in, but things have not changed since then.

 

Bryan -many thanks for your kind offer to set the decoder up for me, but I will try again using your suggestions to alter the CV's above. Is it as simple as that - just alter CV's 2/5 & 6 and then adjust CV 3&4 ? N>B> I have the LokSound manual 2nd edition - a lot of brain damage to understand it all !!

 

Because the retailer fitted the speaker inside the front section of the Mallard boiler it sounds very tinny, and on investigation I find there is no room in the tender (it's a Railroad model with the large metal housing inside for a Ringfield motor), so I recon I will be hard pushed to mount a speaker in any other position, therefore the sound can't realistically be improved - so i'm not getting the full potential from the LokSound decoder.

 

So, I'm now thinking of Plan B, which is to remove the LokSound decoder from my Railroad Mallard and attempt a fit it into a new Super Detail -Hornby Britannia R2835 DCC Ready loco that I haven't used yet. I opened the Brit tender today, but it does not have a specific fitting for a speaker inside, so a bit of surgery is required to allow a speaker to fit inside facing upwards, a 20mm X 40mm speaker is about the largest it will take---how will this sound ?

Also, can I alter CV58 to achieve 4 chuffs/ rev (Britannia ??)...I could leave all the other sound settings alone as they would do as they are for me ! not being a true loco buff.

Any thoughts on the above are most welcome..

 

Kind regards,

Peter...

[Pete22]

Bryan, sorry I forgot to ask :

 

Is it advantageous to alter CV's using Programming On the Main (POM) ? instead of constantly having to check results by moving the loco from the Programming track on to the main track ...

 

Many thanks,

Peter...

[Nigelcliffe]

Because the retailer fitted the speaker inside the front section of the Mallard boiler it sounds very tinny, and on investigation I find there is no room in the tender (it's a Railroad model with the large metal housing inside for a Ringfield motor), so I recon I will be hard pushed to mount a speaker in any other position, therefore the sound can't realistically be improved - so i'm not getting the full potential from the LokSound decoder.

The most common reason for "tinny sound" is the lack of an enclosure around the speaker.   If all you have is a speaker cone put inside the boiler then it will sound tinny.

 

The speaker needs an enclosure around half of the speaker for it to resonate within.  A box/cylinder of plasticard can do the job.  Edges need sealing, including where the speaker joins.  Good sealing materials include kitchen sealant, "blackTac", "blueTac", "Sugru" and several others. 

 

 

Tenders can make good speaker enclosures, but work on sealing is still needed. 

 

- Nigel

[Andrew F]

It may be easier to use an A4 "sound on board" or TTS tender chassis that can be picked up relatively cheaply that already has the necessary modifications for sound. It's worth checking if there is room in the boiler for the speaker with an enclosure(there is room in the super-detail A4 boiler for the chip and 23mm round speaker with enclosure mounted under the chimmneys but I don't know if the Railroad loco has less room in there)

 

You'll come up with similar problems transplanting your chip into the Brit and trying to match a 3 cylinder sound chip to a 2 cylinder loco is far from ideal, plus the hooters are totally different.

[HLT 0109]

Peter

 

I have a Railroad A4 to which I had sound fitted by a retailer (not Howes sounds) and the sound was very quiet.  The reason was, as Nigel says, that the speaker had no enclosure.  However, if (with care) you stick the rim of the speaker under the chimney the whole of the boiler becomes the enclosure and the sound is greatly enhanced without having to create a separate enclosure.  You may need quite a wad of sticky stuff but I recommend you try it - be careful not to get the sticky stuff on the inside of the speaker cone.

 

Harold.

[Pete22]

Thanks all, for your help & advice on speaker enclosures. I will investigate again to see if i can remove the ringfield motor housing in the A4 tender, as this would be a good place for the speaker, I think because I have a Hornby Schools class with RTR sound which sounds extremely good with a deep exhaust /chuff sound coming from the tender -- 10 x better than I currently get from my A4 with speaker in boiler (stuck in with blue tak).

However, I need to first get the model running correctly by playing about with CV's, but I am totally new to DCC/CV adjustments.....what can possibly go wrong !

 

I'll let you know what happens..

Peter..

[HLT 0109]

Peter,

 

If your A4 has pickups on the tender wheels, (as I expect it does) please be sure you do not remove them in removing the motor housing.  My supplier did that originally and the loco ran very erratically.  I got him to reinstate them and all was well.