In last week’s post I shared with you a simple method of changing generic sounds on a Digitrax sound decoder and how to adjust effects like volumes.  You can find the post here.  This week I’m going to show you step by step how to completely change the sounds so you can make them match the locomotive you’ve installed your chip into.

To do this you will need an extra bit of DCC equipment supplied by Digitax; their PR3 or PR3EXTRA as pictured below.

This device is designed to connect your computer to your layout to allow computer control or to simply allow you to communicate with your other Digitrax DCC products via their LocoNet system.  It can also be used, along with your computer, as a stand alone programmer and that’s what we’re going to do.

Depending on what computer you have and what operating system you’re using, your PR3 may need to have a driver installed, which can be downloaded from the Digitrax site here.  Once installed the PR3 is connected to the computer with a USB lead and requires its own power supply, which comes with the PR3.  There’s a small twin screw terminal block on the front of the PR3 which is where you connect wires for your programming track.  As I’m often doing this at shows I simply have a strip of track with two wires soldered to the end.

The next step is to download and install the software to your computer.  Again this is supplied by Digitrax and is called Soundloader and can be downloaded here.

The current version, at time of writing, is v2.2.  When you first open the software you get a window that looks like this.

At the bottom of the screen it says ‘Could Not Open COM Port’.  This is because it doesn’t know how your PR3 is connected. At the top of the screen on the drop down menu is ‘COM Port’.  Select this and it will open a window with a drop down menu.  Providing your PR3 in installed and plugged in it will list the com port which you can select.  Then the screen should look like this.

The software is now ready to use.  When you place a locomotive on the programming track the software will automatically pick up the DCC decoder and interrogate it, as you can see below.  The software is finding out what sort of decoder it is; this is important as different decoders are capable of different things.

Once complete the software will display the information in the bottom left of the screen.  This decoder is a 16bit Series 6.  It also tells me the size of the flash. This is the amount of flash memory, just like a flash drive or SD card you use to store photos in a camera.

The next step is to get your sounds or sound project for your locomotive.  There are a few places where you can get them from but the main place is Digitrax’s website here.  Sound Projects or SPJ files are not official files, that is to say they are not produced by Digitrax, rather they are created by the Digitrax user community and shared though the site.  Another place to get sound files and support is the Digitraxsound Yahoo Group.  This is a great site to ask advice and help solve any issues.

Once you have downloaded the file you want you can load it into the software by selecting file and open.  The screen will then look similar to this.

The big green button tells us that it’s ready to download the Sound Project to the decoder.  If this button is not green then there’s an issue. This could be because the SPJ file is for a different decoder or there’s not enough room on the decoder for your file.  For this example you can see the ‘Flash Download size’ is 341248 Bytes and the ‘Decoder Free Flash’ size is 1769472 Bytes, so we have plenty of room. By pushing the green button three things will happen.  First, the software will erase the current flash on the decoder; normally the speaker makes a squealing sound when this happens, so don’t panic.  Second, the software will download the SDF files; these are the command files which tell the decoder what the sounds are.  And third, it will download the Wav files; these are the actual sound bytes and this process takes the longest.  Below you can see a screen shot of this happening.

Once complete, that’s it.  If you put the loco on the tracks it should play the new sounds.  However there are a few traps which you can fall into which may prevent it from working, so I like to use the Sound Test tool first.  This can found on the drop down menu and when opened looks like this.

In the image above the Sound Test tool is still reading the decoder.  Once complete you should be able to push the relevant buttons and the sound decoder will respond.  Another nice feature is you can engage the forward and backward motion to hear the steam chuffs or engine sounds, but the loco won’t actually move.  In the screen shot below you can see I’m testing the forward motion with F4 & F7 switched on.

If however you find you get to this stage and you still don’t getting any sounds there are a few things to check. In last week’s post we discussed CV60 which changes between the different sound sets.  If, for example, you had previously set the decoder to set 3 and then flashed in a new SPJ file, set 3 will be empty as the new SPJ will load into set 0.

If this still doesn’t work it may be a problem with the SPJ file.  I had a similar problem to this recently and was able to get the help from the Yahoo Group.  If an SPJ line within the file is not assigned it can cause issues.

Looking again at the screen shot below you can see one of the sounds, 006 DEISEL_RUN_HI, is not assigned.  By right clicking on this you can select ‘Restore Association’.  If it had previously been assigned it will correct itself.  However, if nothing changes right-click again and select ‘Assign Silence’.  This will make it associate with a Mute file.

Once the SPJ file has been updated it can be re-flashed onto the decoder and this time all the sounds should play.

As I mentioned before the PR3 can be used to communicate with other devices via the LocoNet system and this is something I will share with you in a later post.

In October last year I showed you how I fitted a Digitrax DCC sound decoder and speaker into the tender of an N scale steam locomotive, you can read the post here.  At the end of the post I mentioned that when the locomotive was put on the track and powered up, diesel sounds played instead of steam.  In this post I’ll show you how this can be changed.

As standard, Digitrax sound decoders come with pre-installed sounds, normally for generic diesel and steam locomotives.  These are also for US outline locomotives so they may not be ideal if you model trains from other countries, but as a generic they’re not too bad.

There’s a simple way to change the generic sounds and adjust the volumes. And there is a slightly more complex method which allows you to totally change the sounds, which then enables you to use them for other countries too.

The first and simplest method is to switch between the diesel and steam sounds and, for many, this is sufficient.  This is done by altering the value of a certain Configuration Variable or CV.  CVs are the electronic switches within the DCC decoder which control all the options such as the locomotive’s address, light functions, maximum speed and sounds.  The majority of DCC controllers or command stations have the ability to read and changes these CVs.

I won’t be able to give you instructions on how to change the CVs on your particular DCC controller as there are so many different makes and models, and they’re all a bit different. However you should be able to find out how to do it from your operator’s manual; it’s normally under the decoder programming section.  The good thing is the principle is basically the same for all.

Normally this involves placing your locomotive onto a programming track.  This is a section of track which is totally isolated from the rest of the layout and only connected to the programming track output on your DCC controller or command station.  Why do this?  Well, if you programmed through the main track feed it will talk to all of your trains at the same time. Also the programming track has a much lower power output, so if something is wrong it shouldn’t damage the decoder.  There are ways to program specific locomotives on the layout by ‘programing on the main’ but I’ll discuss that at a later date.

With your locomotive on your programing track, ask your DCC controller to read CV60.  This is the switch which tells the sound processor which sound set to use. If CV60 = 0 then it will use the steam set, if CV60 = 1 then it will use the diesel set.

So if you’ve installed the sound decoder in a steam locomotive and CV60 = 1, follow the instructions for you DCC controller to write or change CV60 to 0.  Then, when you put the locomotive on to the main track, it will play the steam sound set.

Using this basic method of altering CVs you can also alter other sound related functions. CV58, for example, is the master volume.  As standard it’s set to 9 but can be increased to 15 if required.

Below is an extract from a Digitrax Sound Decoder manual showing some of the CVs which can be adjusted.  I would recommend being methodical when doing this as changing the wrong CV can cause the decoder to behave in a strange way. In the event that it all goes wrong and you don’t know what you did, don’t panic!  There is a simple way to reset the decoder back to factory settings.  This is done by setting CV8 to 8.  Please note that not only will this reset volumes and sounds to the diesel set but it will also reset your locomotive number to 03.  This is is definitely something only for the programming track.

I like to increase the master volume as well as the whistle and prime mover/steam chuff sounds but leave the bell turned down.  I find the bell a bit annoying!

One thing to consider, if you set the volumes so they’re just right for you at home, where it’s probably fairly quiet, you may find if you take your trains to exhibitions or club nights the sounds may get drowned out by the background noise.

But what if you don’t want your locomotive to sound like a generic US steam engine; what if it’s a British LNER A4 or German Ice HST?  Well, that can be changed too using the slightly more complex method I spoke about earlier and in next week’s post I will show how to do it, step by step.