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legomanbiffo

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  1. legomanbiffo

    Mr ED

    By legomanbiffo,

    Having tiled everything tile-able on the layout in between reloads, I've now got the ED to the point where I'm happy with the diesel flowchart, the electric flowchart and all the auxiliaries (compressor, horns etc). Next comes the tricky bit; how to program the changeover from diesel to electric and visa-versa, whilst maintaining authenticity and staying within the technical constraints of the chip. I'm not anticipating this to take too long but the annual sojourn to Model Rail Scotland is going to intervene. All being well I'll be picking up a banger blue Lima 73 while I'm there. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...
  2. legomanbiffo
    Developing sounds for the Loksound v4 chip involves periods of tweaks & adjustments to the various flowcharts followed by a 15 minute wait whilst the chip loads. You then check that the loco does what you want (which invariably it doesn't without further tweaking, but I digress).
     
    Those 15 minutes are usefully spent doing real modelling, and today I've been roofing an old woollen mill with some laser-cut slate roofing tiles from York Model Making. The mill itself is a Walthers 'Background Building' but the roof looked a bit flat so I picked up some of the slates at Doncaster last week and set to work. The tiles come in self-adhesive strips. It's not a quick job to put them on but in an hour or so I've done one side whilst ascending the learning curve. I distressed the odd tile here and there with knicks out of corners and bits missing and it all looks great. Definitely easier than putting them all on individually. Life is waaay too short for that.
     
    Meantime the 73 electric sounds are coming along nicely, and doing what I want most of the time. If anyone has experience of 73's running on the juice I'd be pleased to hear from you and perhaps pick your brains so I can get things just right.
  3. legomanbiffo

    Off the juice

    By legomanbiffo,

    Well my 'shoebox' is now trundling around the layout, on diesel power only so far. The poor running was (mostly) sorted by using the CV54 trick and reading the CV's back into the program. I've got basic auxiliary sounds working (horns, compressor, air release etc). Once I've made a bit more progress on these I'll move on to the electric sounds. The last stage I suspect, apart from the usual endless tweaking, will be to program the transitions from diesel to electric and visa versa. I'm quite pleased so far anyway.
  4. legomanbiffo

    Heavy metal

    By legomanbiffo,

    I had an enjoyable day out at Doncaster yesterday and succumbed to the persuasive powers of a superbly weathered Bachmann 37/5 in Railfreight Metals livery from 'Dirty Boy' / Lord & Butler. Whilst I am reasonably skilled at weathering, this was in a different league and I was happy to pay the money.
     
    As a bonus the loco came pre-fitted with the latest SWD v4 chip so it was a good opportunity to listen to the competition. After trying it 'out of the box' it was clear that the dire speaker fit by Bachmann was seriously letting it down so as an experiment I took my v4 chip and tried it with Bachmann's speaker fit, and put SWD's chip in my loco with my tank-mounted Alan Butcher bass-reflex speaker. The improvement to the SWD sound when put through a proper speaker fit was truly astonishing. And of course the converse was true; the degradation to my chip when played through the Bachmann speaker was equally astonishing. The moral of the story is, regardless of who's chip you use, it pays to improve your speaker and speaker fit.
     
    In other news my 73 now has an Alan Butcher 28x40 speaker and v4 chip in. Early experiments served only to reveal the shortcomings of the new Hornby motor. Mind you, it's brand new and hasn't been run in yet so this may improve. When I'm finished playing with the 37's I'll put some effort into developing the 73 sound project. One aspect I'm giving some thought to is just how to give the user control of the change from diesel to electric power and visa-versa. I'd be interested to hear from any 73 drivers on what can and can't be done, and what sounds happen when etc, so I can get everything just right.
  5. legomanbiffo
    I've just had a really enjoyable weekend in the company of the Airthey Park & Warren Lane crews who were kind enough to let me join them on the other side of the 'stage' and then socially afterwards. Experience of driving my sound-fitted locos in an exhibition environment allows me to optimise the chips for exhibitor's needs as well as everyone else's, so public thanks to everyone concerned. Apologies to Alan for driving my 86's into a non-electrified road on Warren Lane - doah!
     
    With the 20 completed, the Class 26 project is now back on the workbench. This was an early v4 beneficiary which is now being upgraded in the light of experience gained in recent weeks with other projects. The main thrust of the work is to add two more 'thrash from stationary' options, and to reduce response time if the throttle is re-opened whilst the loco is still spooling down.
     
    The 26 shouldn't take too long and I'm wondering what should replace it on the workbench. The 73 is a possibility, also the 156 which is a hot topic over on the DEMU forum just now. I've also got a steadily increasing list of minor tweaks to existing projects which need addressing and a number of recording leads to follow up from Stafford.
  6. legomanbiffo
    My Bachmann 20 is largely finished and I had hoped to make a couple of videos over the weekend but unfortunately real life intervened and no progress was made. You wouldn't believe how challenging it is to find 'quiet' time in an urban & family environment - there is always something 'noisy' going on. Not noisy so you would notice necessarily but the mic picks everything up so I like to film in an empty house where possible, and it hasn't been lately. The time hasn't been wasted though, as my double-headed rats have been upgraded from v3.5 / 100 ohm speakers to v4 / 8 ohm. They are seriously loud. There are still a few tweaks I need to make to the project before I'm completely happy but not too many. As things stand the 20 & 25's are likely to make their public debut on Airthey Park at Stafford show at the weekend (thanks guys) instead of You Tube. I'll be there both days and happy to discuss sound with anyone.
  7. legomanbiffo
    It's all gone quiet while I get my Bachmann 20 ready for its video debut. Star of the show will be the disc-fitted 20058, currently on the workbench getting the faded rail blue treatment to depict a loco in the last years of its life. I can't decide whether to team it up with the completed OTA rake or the 3 BDA's I've finished so far. This afternoon was spent hopping between the 20 itself and making steel billets for the BDA's. These are made from lead flashing sprayed first with red oxide primer and then given a dusting of track colour. I'm quite pleased with the just-starting-to-rust look that this produces.
     
    Great track from the Strangler's Black & White album don't you think?
  8. legomanbiffo

    Top & tail

    By legomanbiffo,

    Coincidentally, a pal has given me a couple of 20's to turn into a v4 sound-fitted top & tail pair (to go with his RHTT set). Work is still in progress but they sound good whistling round together, with the horns etc only coming from the front loco and reversing when you change direction. This wonderous sight might make its way onto You Tube when I've finished tweaking the 20 sound and he's finished his RHTT.
     
    Saturday saw a sojourn down to St Albans for the show followed by a bit of MML photography near Harpenden on the way back. Two hours in the freezing cold in a muddy field were richly rewarded by some great snaps and the sight of an NR 73 going full chat on diesel power!
     
    I picked up a chip at the show to go into the newly milled 20 and this was fitted on Sunday morning. The improvement gain from having the speaker in the underframe was worthwhile, but only just. There is clearly more bass there but not a huge amount more. Up to now the 20 sound project has been workshopped in my 26 which has the Alan Butcher 28x40 speaker in, so coming back down to earth with a 23mm round (the only thing that would fit into the 20) was somewhat deflating.
     
    I also picked up another BDA at St Albans making the rake up to 6 so far. The first one to be upgraded is just about finished, I'll post a photo next time if I remember. How long do you think before I gash my hand on the rigid brass stanchions? I feel a Railfreight Metals 37 coming on...
     
    Bif
  9. legomanbiffo

    Sidetracked!

    By legomanbiffo,

    I got sidetracked from the usual sound-based activities this morning by a bit of railway photography at Lea Marston. I also managed to fit in some 'real' modelling, having made a start on weathering my rake of BDA's. I spent yesterday morning round at a pal's where we milled the cast lumps off the underside of a Bachmann 20 and a Hornby 56, both in readiness for underframe mounted, downward facing speakers. Tonight's task was to turn Bachmann's clip-on battery box sides for the 20 into a rectangular speaker enclosure with a 23mm round speaker. Tomorrow I shall mostly be at St Albans show and taking photos on the MML.
  10. legomanbiffo
    The Class 20's do a nice little hiss when the reverser is operated, and a slightly longer one when the driver puts his foot on the deadman. We captured these when we did the recordings at the GCR so today's 20 minute task was to add these to the project. Needless to say things didn't go quite to plan. No hiss on reversing and no deadman sound, in fact the loco just sat there idling and refused to move. I'd got this feature working fine on the 118 dmu so I knew it worked. Most of the time if you get something wrong in the flowchart it tells you but not this time. It took about two hours to get to the bottom of it, I guess that's what they call experience. Trouble is, next time it happens I will have forgotten how to fix it...
     
    Anyway, reverser and deadman hiss now working fine.
  11. legomanbiffo
    I finished creating / extracting the Class 20 engine sound clips this morning. In-between 'real' modelling I spent the rest of the day tweaking the flowchart to get the engine sounds driving how I want them. I'm probably about 90% of the way there with that, and fed up listening to just engine sounds so I added all the previously created 'auxiliary' sounds (horns, air sounds, door slams etc) to see how it all worked as a package. Probably another two or three days tweaking to go and version 1 will be ready. Not sure what to do about a target loco for the video. I've got an early Bachmann (20052) but I don't know if it's the model I want to run with. The speaker certainly won't be as good as the test-bed 26 I'm running the sound in just now.
  12. legomanbiffo
    I did more work extracting the Class 20 engine sound clips last night. For a good v4 project you have to create approximately twice as many discrete clips compared to v3.5 so it's quite time consuming, but the improved responsiveness and all-round play value is definitely worth it.
  13. legomanbiffo
    I decided that a blog of what I'm up to sound-wise at the moment might be of interest and also provide a useful forum for discussion and feedback. Here's what I've been up to in the last few weeks. Imagine a butterfly flitting from one thing to another and you won't be too far off the mark :-)
     
    Upgraded the 26, 27, 37/0 and 37/4 projects with 'multi-start' (user control of engine priming, cranking and starting (or not starting)). It's my intention to add this to all projects where appropriate and where I have the necessary recordings. 'True' warm and cold starts are another aim but they eat up a lot of memory.
     
    Changed the 37 spirax function from a single loop to set of shorter sounds that are played at random. The original loop was quite long but you could still detect when it was starting again. I plan to develop this further so that if the spirax is left on for ages, the gap between pops will steadily increase just like the real thing.
     
    Made the 37 compressor stop more quickly when the function is turned off. Again, an improvement that'll be made to all v4 projects in due course.
     
    Finally started work editing the engine sounds from the Class 20 that pauliebanger and I recorded at the GCR ages ago (20098). This will be a great project when it's finished as we captured loads of material but I keep getting sidetracked with other stuff (which I suspect will be a common theme in this thread...). The 'auxiliaries' are all done, only the engine sounds are needed to finish the project off.
     
    Had a preliminary play with the Class 73 engine sounds I recorded at the Spa Valley Railway. A completed project is a while away yet but the 73 that arrived from Hattons today might spur me on. I was surprised how deep the engine note is on a 73.
     
    Made a start upgrading the 87 to v4 standards and incorporating some new material recorded at Willesden by a pal of mine. Made changes to the neutral section which will be user-triggerable at any speed.
     
    Finally, got some great sound-related feedback from one of the fitters at the Battlefield Line today (where I'm a volunteer). Most interesting was how the engine rpm on a 33 is affected when the ETH is on. A bit more complex than you might think and definitely something that can be incorporated into the project. I'm envisioning an 'ETH on/off' function key that will invoke the various changes. Again, something that will need to be added to various projects where appropriate.
     
    Bif
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