CT Elektronik sound chips

[Chrisr40]

Good Morning all

 

Are there any users of CT Elektronik SL-51 sound chips about who dont mind giving their thoughts and opinions on the kit ?

 

I was wandering through ebay and found the item below for sale that is fitted with a ct sl-51

 

As the chips retail at about ??60 I was quite tempted to try one - any thoughts folks

 

Many thanks

 

Chris - btw I have no link or affiliation to the seller of the item linked below

 

 

 

http://s489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/jgymer/ModelRailway/?action=view&current=NRM2-SoundsLights.flv

 

[Etched Pixels]

Good Morning all

 

Are there any users of CT Elektronik SL-51 sound chip

 

I use the SL75s for a fair bit of N gauge stuff and I've done some fairly basic UK sound sets using it. The supplied sounds are German but for the steam would probably pass as adequate and you can switch 2/3/4 cylinders. The programming software is a bit basic to say the least and the interface is quite sensitive to what hardware you use. There is no provision for manual notching or fancy scripting of sounds.

 

In the N world they are invaluable because the SL75 is so tiny and Loksound micro is just too thick. In the larger scales they have less to offer beyond the lower pricing. If I was really worried about price and had the space as in OO I think I'd wire a Digitrax soundbug across the back of a Hornby decoder instead. The bug has better programming tools can do notching and can be scripted.

[Nigelcliffe]

Adding to Etched Pixel's comments.

 

The SL51 in the video doesn't sound like any of the factory ones I have heard. The whistle has changed. The other elements sound similar to the stock current SL75, but not spent long enough listening to be sure.

 

The SL51/74/75 do have nice over-run and coasting behaviour, and the chuff can be related to the BEMF load (so heavy chuffs up-hill and light chuffs downhill). The frequencies of the sound can be altered with CVs, so the default sounds can be tweaked to sound like a different size of loco.

 

Programming of new sounds is a bit cryptic and poorly documented. There is a little bit of user-contributed documentation around, see the files area of the DCCUK Yahoo group.

 

 

I have seen two very nice larger locos with SL51's which sounded superb, a 7mm scale 0-4-0 + 0-4-0 Garrett (Welsh Highland Railway style) and a HOn3 2-8-0 (typical US NG heavy loco).

[Chrisr40]

Thanks chaps - I was assuming that no jiggery pokery ad gone on by the vendor with the sound chip in the clip but now Im nervous of splashing the cash on a chip and finding its nothing like that

 

I did make enquiries about digitrax but was warned off it - very politely I will add by a shop / vendor over the phone who to his credit was not trying to sell me something more expensive - amateurish was the description for digitrax which was quite surprising to me.

 

I still havent been able to see a digitrax steamer to make up an opinion but I did quite like the scotsman with CT chip in the ebay sales pitch - oh well....

 

thanks again

 

Chris

[Nigelcliffe]

Thanks chaps - I was assuming that no jiggery pokery ad gone on by the vendor with the sound chip in the clip but now Im nervous of splashing the cash on a chip and finding its nothing like that

 

I think that is a little unfair. It would be possible for someone with the CT programmer to take the "stock" steam sound project and substitute a new whistle. If they are advertising a loco with chip, and have adjusted the sounds, then that is what they have done. This is no different to Bachmann/Hornby who take factory LokSounds, adjust the sounds, and sell them as DCC-Sound RTR locos.

 

I did make enquiries about digitrax but was warned off it - very politely I will add by a shop / vendor over the phone who to his credit was not trying to sell me something more expensive - amateurish was the description for digitrax which was quite surprising to me.

 

The chip is OK, but the tools to support it are not that good. There are some user-developed tools around via the DigitraxSound Yahoo group which make the sound programming more capable.

 

The chip with the best tools is the LokSound, which is why its popular with sound development companies.

 

I still havent been able to see a digitrax steamer to make up an opinion but I did quite like the scotsman with CT chip in the ebay sales pitch - oh well....

 

I think the CT steam sound is OK, once you have fine tuned it with CV's (there are a lot to fiddle with!). But, the underlying recording is a German standard steam type, not the Flying Scotsman. If you want proper A3 whistles then you either need a recording and a CT sound programmer (and the time to learn to use it, and the risk you give up as its too complicated), or buy a pre-recorded chip with the correct sounds on it.

 

These days, a pre-recorded chip will almost certainly be a LokSound in the UK market.

There were some ZTC chips at one stage which were based on the SoundTraxx Tsunami "light steam" with various sounds swapped for UK (including whistles), which included some LNER whistle types. No idea if any still on sale. (I've spent some time recently building the JMRI/DecoderPro file for these chips).

 

 

 

 

- Nigel

[JohninAustria]

Dear All,

 

Don't forget that Arnold Huebsch (Vienna, Austria) offers a lot of documentation for CT Elektronik decoders. He also has this handy Sound Configurator that will generate a sound project.

[Etched Pixels]

Dear All,

 

Don't forget that Arnold Huebsch (Vienna, Austria) offers a lot of documentation for CT Elektronik decoders. He also has this handy Sound Configurator that will generate a sound project.

 

His configurator won't generate a project for the newer decoders and unless its changed recently the documentation is now somewhat out of date. A lot of the other information on the site is also a bit out of date - especially the sound programmer stuff. It's a great resource but treat it with caution.

[Lady_Ava_Hay]

I have two of my original four SL74's which are now superseded by the SL75. I bow to Etched Pixels better knowledge of these decoders. I was never able to master the complexities of the programme sound file which has to spot on in all areas to the byte or it won't load. I think if you load another whistle that is exactly the same size as the original it might work but you need to possess the original sounds to compile the sound project file.

 

The transition between one sound and another is very abrupt. one can actually get the sound changing as the loco goes round a curve towing a light load, the sound changing from chuff to silence (overrun silence is CV selectable) several times on one curve.

 

Digitrax is OK but all the ones that will fit in British outline plus be programmable for other sounds are piggy back decoders. All piggy back decoders suffer from synchronisation problems. One can spend hours changing CV's to get the chuffs to synch with the wheels. My N class still has a tendency to start chuffing before the loco moves and it is worse when cold.

 

One could get away with this on a diesel.

[Etched Pixels]

I have two of my original four SL74's which are now superseded by the SL75. I bow to Etched Pixels better knowledge of these decoders. I was never able to master the complexities of the programme sound file which has to spot on in all areas to the byte or it won't load. I think if you load another whistle that is exactly the same size as the original it might work but you need to possess the original sounds to compile the sound project file.

 

You can change the sizes quite happily, although the default sounds on a 4MB decoder (eg older SL74) are so tight to the memory limit you'd have to go smaller or delete stuff.

 

Digitrax is OK but all the ones that will fit in British outline plus be programmable for other sounds are piggy back decoders. All piggy back decoders suffer from synchronisation problems. One can spend hours changing CV's to get the chuffs to synch with the wheels. My N class still has a tendency to start chuffing before the loco moves and it is worse when cold.

 

One could get away with this on a diesel.

 

For diesel it works very well. In fact one of the tricks people do is to load the Digitrax decoder with no speed curve and the loco decoder with the right speed curve. Slamming the power to the desired speed then causes the engine to leap up to the high notches while the loco decoder catches up. Not so good with steam !

[Chrisr40]

I think that is a little unfair. It would be possible for someone with the CT programmer to take the "stock" steam sound project and substitute a new whistle. If they are advertising a loco with chip, and have adjusted the sounds, then that is what they have done. This is no different to Bachmann/Hornby who take factory LokSounds, adjust the sounds, and sell them as DCC-Sound RTR locos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Nigel

 

Hello Nigel - Im making no suggestion that the vendors doing anything underhand - just that the project on the chip may have been changed from standard profiles - which is not something I can do or would ever attempt.

 

Chris

[Lady_Ava_Hay]

Dear All,

 

Don't forget that Arnold Huebsch (Vienna, Austria) offers a lot of documentation for CT Elektronik decoders. He also has this handy Sound Configurator that will generate a sound project.

 

Arnold is a cracking guy and speaks perfect English to boot. I spent hours talking to him at Dortmund in 2007(?) and, not to put words in his mouth, he was/is more interested in Zimo than CT in the longer term. I got the impression that he was supporting CT purely because it is Austrian. Tran, the MD of CT is, by repute, a really good engineer in a country that rates its engineers very highly indeed. Tran is Vietnamese by birth and seems a bit anglo(US)phobic.

 

There is the unsubstantiated suggestion that Zimo have imported some or all of Tran's knowledge base to use in their own sound decoders, which might explain the slightly impenetrable software as this is or has been the weakest bit of CT sound decoders thus far.

 

So far, in real terms, ESU remains the market leader in programmable sound chips as all the hard work has been done for you in the software and the chip structure. Digitrax is up and coming but might end up similar to the JMRI principle, more open source.