Adding Speakers to Buildings

GRJ has a new board that will play from a remote. It's a neat kit that you just have to supply power to and a speaker.

He started with a small amount available and you may be too late for the first ones?

Finally, the Universal MP3 Sound Board Has Arrived | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

Stan has also posted several ideas on playing audio clips thru BT speakers and such.

MP3 Sound for Crossing Gate | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

Portable Micro SD TF USB Mini Stereo Speaker Music Player MP3 on Lionel series 6000 gondola | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

Layout Sound Idea | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

@gunrunnerjohn has a MP3 Module that would probably work for you.

The Lionel Bluetooth radio station tower works really well. Links to music on my iPhone instantly. I would be tempted to remove that and use it...maybe.

Thank you Joe and Jack. Great ideas and really narrows my search field down. Appreciate your info!

@Engineer-Joe posted:

GRJ has a new board that will play from a remote. It's a neat kit that you just have to supply power to and a speaker.

He started with a small amount available and you may be too late for the first ones?

Finally, the Universal MP3 Sound Board Has Arrived | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

Still have a couple available.   Then I have to wait until the shipment of micro-SD cards come in, they're captives of the USPS right now.

@jb10 posted:

Can anyone suggest a good method to add custom speakers to a building? What I am looking to do is place a speaker inside a replica of a church (my wife and I got married in) and play the sound of the church's bells throught the speaker. I'd like to activate the sound with MTH's AIU under the accessories function. There is so much information on speakers and I don't know where to start or what would even be compatible. I'd just like to be able to customize the sound files (only need 10 seconds or so) and activate them with the DCS system . Any guidance greatly appreciated!

The board I have will allow you to play up to five sound clips activated by individual discrete inputs.  They can be from any source, the AIU will work fine.  You can alternatively configure it to play one to four of the clips from a 4-button RF key fob remote.  If you configure a couple of inputs from the RF Remote, the rest can still be played using the discrete inputs.  The clips can be of any length from seconds to days.

When I see audio applications that "only" need 10 seconds of audio, I think of recordable greeting cards. 

For a just a few bucks which includes shipping to your door (albeit from eBay-Asia), these modules include a microphone to record the custom sound, a speaker to play back the sound (in this case 40mm diameter), and batteries are included!  They have two buttons.  One button starts the recording.  One button plays it back.  In this case the 2-wires to the "playback" button would go to the AIU ACC port and you'd use the "ACT" icon/button on the DCS remote to play the 10 second church bell sound which you would have previously recorded.

The point is there are dozens of potential solutions from all over the map.

What I find interesting is that you have a model of the church you were married in.  If this was custom-built my thought is you might consider more than "just" a 10 sec recording module that you recycled from a Hallmark sound greeting card.  If the model has bells in the tower why not actually swing the bells when the sound plays...this would be like the swinging bell on some higher-end Lionel/MTH steam engines.  What about playing the wedding march song or whatever song was the "first dance" at the reception, or if the ceremony was videotaped then the actual wedding vows with your voices, endless possibilities!  These days the technology is such that the incremental cost of adding more playback time is negligible.

I've used those Stan, but they audio is anemic at best, the little amp doesn't have the drive, even with a good speaker.  I actually used on in my Wienermobile, and even with a baffle, it's disappointing in volume.  That's one thing I'm going to upgrade.