Ok this post might stir the pot a little bit this week, as there appear to be some strong opinions when it comes to DCC sound decoders. This is a topic I have wanted to discuss for a while and with ESU Loksound releasing their new sound files recently I felt the topic was timely. That topic is the two schools of thought in regards to sound decoders.
The first school of thought is control the sounds with locomotive control second. The example of this school of thought is ESU Loksound with their drive hold where the operator effectively puts the train on cruise control while they manually manipulate the sounds. The operator can then take the train off drive hold and the motor will go to where the sound is set. In essesnce the operator is controlling the sound and the decoder is reacting to the sound settings. This makes sense for this company as they have put realistic sound as one of the halmarks of their decoder line.
The second school of thought is control the motor and let the electronics figure out the appropriate sounds. This is demonstrated by several manufacturers but I will use Soundtraxx and their Dynamic Digital Exhaust as the example for comparison. I'm not even going to try and delve into the sorcery that Soundtraxx uses to create Dynamic Digital Exhaust but some how the decoder detects grade, load etc.... and attempts to replicate the appropriate sounds.
Differing schools of thought on how a product should operate is not unique to our hobby. The aerospace industry is a prime example of this as Boeing and Airbus have two differing views of who should be the primary controller of the aircraft, the pilot (Boeing) or the computer (Airbus). I am not going to sit here and advocate which airplane I find superior even though growing up in the Seattle area may have made me a bit biased. I bring this up to point out a problem of having two differing schools of thought when it comes to control. The NTSB even listed it as a contributing factor In the 2013 Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport.
In that accident the captain at the controls was an Airbus pilot transitioning to the Boeing 777. During the final approach he set the autothrottle but did not engage it, an extra step required on Boeing planes following Boeing's school of thought that the pilot should have more control over all phases of flight. By my understanding on an Airbus fully automated landing is the preferred method.
Bringing it back to the world of trains in 1978 Southern Pacific had a runaway on the Cuesta Grade, on the Coast Line. One of the contributing factors was lack of a standardized control stand. As I understand it, unlike airline pilots, locomotive engineers are not required to qualify on each model of locomotive they will be operating. Long story short when the engineer thought he was engaging the dynamic brakes he was actually putting the throttle wide open. This wreck led to the development and mandate of a standardized control stand in future locomotives.
Like the examples above the differing schools of thought can lead to incidents on our layouts. An operator unfamiliar with drive hold could forget to take the neccessary steps to regain control of the locomotive before a derailment or collision occured. I know that an unfamiliar throttle caused me to run through a switch and hit another train while I was swapping mainline trains during our clubs operations at the county fair last spring. Thankfully all the equipment involved was mine and the only irreparable damage was to my pride.
The other issue with differing schools of thought on control is exacerbating the problem of different decoders not playing well with others. If some decoders have drive hold and others do not then, unless there is some sorcery I am unaware of, they can't exactly be consisted with each other and expected to perform flawlessly. This means that we either have to group locomotives not only by like manufacturer but by like decoder as well or standardize your decoders.
So if you havent figured it out yet I am in the control the motor camp. I am not saying that Loksound has a bad product, their product is excellent if thats what you are looking for. I especially like the idea of software upgrades versus hardware upgrades and the end user being able to upload sounds. The problem is the more I think about it, drive hold is a deal breaker for me, I do not want to give up motor control even for a nano second. Based on facebook comments it seems like most people or atleast a vocal minority have decided Loksound is the superior product, however I feel that as far as train control goes it violates the KISS principle.
So rather than have to check operators out on the various decoders and keep track of which loconotives have which decoders I will end up standardizing with another product. I might even decide (and my buddy Shane is probably going to crucify me for this) that running silent makes more sense. I have been doing that for about 30 years why change now? I remember the days of Onboard and PFM when sound was a novelty. I even had an MRC Sound and Power pack and eventually I just turned the sound off.
Another advantage of running silent is the locomotives are about $100 cheaper and considering other than what I run at the club most of this stuff will sit in its box for a few years and who knows what two competing products with differing schools of thought will be around then?
