I may have been unlucky but have never been happy with the sound quality of some British steam locomotive files purchased with decoders. I now only buy blank decoders and download sound file from the ESU web site. At present, they have very few British steam files but I have found other files that are near to what I want. I have Just blown a German 2 cylinder.2,10,0 added British announcement file and more prototypical whistle to a 9F. I have also done a City class and large parrie, both are not fully correct but they sound much better than the original sound.
I can tell the difference of 2 ,3, and 4 cylinder locomotives and some whistles but would not be able to identify by ear a LMS pacific from a LNER pacific.
The only drawback is that backup files are not supplied with a preloaded decoder I cannot restore the original sound file.
I know a lot of work can go into recording and writing sound file, but how much of a problem would piracy be if not locked to a decoder’s serial number.
I now only buy sound file if I can listen to it on line. I have fitted a sugar cube speaker in an old tender that can be plug it into my pc
Just interested to have your thoughts
Lester