What's your preference for DCC, sound fitted by the manufacturer or after market sound and fit yourself?
Bear with me!
Manufacturers are now, generally, fitting better quality speakers as standard in their locos, whether a sound decoder is fitted or not. Clearly, sound fitted locos are not cheap. But, due to some audacious pricing by manufacturers, buying a non sound fitted loco and DIY fit a 3rd party sound decoder, Zimo, Loksound etc and, by my calculations, you will almost always end up paying more than you would if you bought the sound fitted version off the bat.
Manufacturers are also now adding independent lighting and, perhaps other functions, meaning setting the right cvs with the right values to get everything working as expected with a 3rd party sound decoder might not always be as straight forward as you'd hoped.
IMHO, getting cv info from different loco and decoder manufacturers is hardly easy and, it is easier to let google (or whatever is your favoured search engine) find the lowest price for your preferred sound fitted loco! If you bother to go beyond the first 2 or 3 search result pages, you will frequently find one or two really low discounted prices for that loco you want from other than the established 'big boys' in the market place.
With that in mind, what's your preference, sound fitted by the manufacturer or, 3rd party and fit yourself?
Im coming round to going the sound fitted route for new locos. Older ones I bought new, yeah, I'll have to go down the diy fit route and hope the cv info if needed, is easily available. LOL!
Sound fitted or 3rd Party supplied & fit yourself?
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aleopardstail
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Re: Sound fitted or 3rd Party supplied & fit yourself?
for me, I have one sounded fitted, I have zero intention of fitting sound myself.
largely because I haven't the equipment to record or to load a pre-recorded sound profile, and wouldn't know where to start
more than happy to fit soundless, if adding sound was something I could easily do I'd consider it, would prefer not to have all with a "generic" but identical sound effect set
love the G5 I have, can't see trying to retro fit sound to anything else, may buy a few more with it, can't see ever having a huge proportion of the fleet sound fitted any time soon until its a lot easier to fit sound profiles directly in a decoder that has the features I want - hopefully Hornby making stuff that can have a sound file uploaded and changed easily will nudge others to go that way then maybe I reconsider.
the HM7000 sadly doesn't cut it (far too large for one thing)
largely because I haven't the equipment to record or to load a pre-recorded sound profile, and wouldn't know where to start
more than happy to fit soundless, if adding sound was something I could easily do I'd consider it, would prefer not to have all with a "generic" but identical sound effect set
love the G5 I have, can't see trying to retro fit sound to anything else, may buy a few more with it, can't see ever having a huge proportion of the fleet sound fitted any time soon until its a lot easier to fit sound profiles directly in a decoder that has the features I want - hopefully Hornby making stuff that can have a sound file uploaded and changed easily will nudge others to go that way then maybe I reconsider.
the HM7000 sadly doesn't cut it (far too large for one thing)
Re: Sound fitted or 3rd Party supplied & fit yourself?
Totally agree I wouldnt bother with loading sound files onto blanks myself although believe you can with Loksound if you buy one of their programmers (about £130?) and probably Zimo?
I think a while ago, it did work out cheaper to buy non sound fitted then diy fit a 3rd party sound decoder with speaker. But as mentioned in my OP, manufacturer's have cottoned on that if they reduce the price differential between non sound fitted and fitted, where the end User buys and fits a 3rd party sound decoder, it will work out more expensive than buying the manufacturer's sound fitted version.
Yes, there are exceptions to this if you search the net or perhaps the local model shop for a bargain. I did start out buying non sound fitted but am now learning towards buying sound fitted where possible. It's less faff and means you're less likely to have missing or non working functionality.
It recently cost me £125 for a Losound decoder with sound file and speaker for the DP2 diesel loco. The sound is based on the Class 50 and there's about 12 active functions on the decoder compared to the normal 20+ for other locos! To be frank, I consider the purchase overpriced and disappointing. It would have been interesting to hear the actual difference between the DP2 sound file and functions compared to that for a Class 50!
I think a while ago, it did work out cheaper to buy non sound fitted then diy fit a 3rd party sound decoder with speaker. But as mentioned in my OP, manufacturer's have cottoned on that if they reduce the price differential between non sound fitted and fitted, where the end User buys and fits a 3rd party sound decoder, it will work out more expensive than buying the manufacturer's sound fitted version.
Yes, there are exceptions to this if you search the net or perhaps the local model shop for a bargain. I did start out buying non sound fitted but am now learning towards buying sound fitted where possible. It's less faff and means you're less likely to have missing or non working functionality.
It recently cost me £125 for a Losound decoder with sound file and speaker for the DP2 diesel loco. The sound is based on the Class 50 and there's about 12 active functions on the decoder compared to the normal 20+ for other locos! To be frank, I consider the purchase overpriced and disappointing. It would have been interesting to hear the actual difference between the DP2 sound file and functions compared to that for a Class 50!