P.S. I will say that my VL-BB is the loudest locomotive I have, so whatever they're using works really well! 
gunrunnerjohn posted:GGG posted:Actually, I thought it was the opposite. The PS board does the amplification and there for had more to do with sound quality than the RS board. Certainly the quality of the audio clip matters too. G
Not unless something has changed. The amplifier chip is on the RS audio board, the LM486 next to the connector. The speaker connects to the audio board as well. I'm not sure where the idea that the amplifier is on the power supply comes from. When I look at a RS4 motherboard, I don't see anything that suggests the audio comes from the P/S board. Are we looking at the same parts?
Edit: I see Jon Z. beat me to it, and if he doesn't know, the earth has fallen off it's axis!
I take Jon Z word for it. Got it. Those diagrams aren't really proof though. All those pins can be connected via the MB. My assumption (incorrect), was that with far more components on the Power Supply board had a greater effect on the sound generation and amplification. I did know the audio amp is on the RS board, just thought the PS was doing more. Stand corrected. G
Norton posted:John, its not just subjectively louder. I have a db meter app I have used to compare volumes. My K-line Hudson with the original RS4 boards and thin speaker is 3db louder than my Lionel Vision Hudson.
Pete
This will be more due to the enclosures the speaker is in than the boards. My time at Rockford Fosgate taught me that.
GGG posted:I take Jon Z word for it. Got it. Those diagrams aren't really proof though. All those pins can be connected via the MB. My assumption (incorrect), was that with far more components on the Power Supply board had a greater effect on the sound generation and amplification. I did know the audio amp is on the RS board, just thought the PS was doing more. Stand corrected. G
Truthfully, I was surprised when I found out the P/S board was just a P/S board. It has a lot of components for the job, I wonder what they all do?
sinclair posted:Norton posted:John, its not just subjectively louder. I have a db meter app I have used to compare volumes. My K-line Hudson with the original RS4 boards and thin speaker is 3db louder than my Lionel Vision Hudson.
Pete
This will be more due to the enclosures the speaker is in than the boards. My time at Rockford Fosgate taught me that.
Back in the mid '70s, I had a new van that I added a new sound system to, using a Fosgate amp for power. I was thinking it was just Fosgate beck then, but that was a long time ago so maybe it was RF? Anyway, that was a pretty powerful system, very impressive sound back in the day. 
I can only imagine what they have now, I'm sure it's even more impressive today. I have fallen way behind the times in my old age...now back to the regular scheduled program...
sinclair posted:Norton posted:John, its not just subjectively louder. I have a db meter app I have used to compare volumes. My K-line Hudson with the original RS4 boards and thin speaker is 3db louder than my Lionel Vision Hudson.
Pete
This will be more due to the enclosures the speaker is in than the boards. My time at Rockford Fosgate taught me that.
That's for sure, a simple experiment will prove that. Take a bare speaker and check the sound volume (and quality). Now simply add a proper baffle and the sound is a lot louder and the bass is much better.
The only way to compare the two environments is to change only the electronics and not any of the other stuff. I measured the power coming from the powered motherboard and the two-card RS configuration. Both put out almost exactly 5V, the variance was less than .1 volts, and the powered MB was actually marginally higher voltage at 5.04 volts. Under load with audio, neither varied enough to see on the meter.
I say again, I can't imagine how the powered MB would be the cause of lower volume, it's doing it's job of supplying power.
rtr12 posted:sinclair posted:Norton posted:John, its not just subjectively louder. I have a db meter app I have used to compare volumes. My K-line Hudson with the original RS4 boards and thin speaker is 3db louder than my Lionel Vision Hudson.
Pete
This will be more due to the enclosures the speaker is in than the boards. My time at Rockford Fosgate taught me that.
Back in the mid '70s, I had a new van that I added a new sound system to, using a Fosgate amp for power. I was thinking it was just Fosgate beck then, but that was a long time ago so maybe it was RF? Anyway, that was a pretty powerful system, very impressive sound back in the day.
I can only imagine what they have now, I'm sure it's even more impressive today. I have fallen way behind the times in my old age...now back to the regular scheduled program...
Jim Fosgate started Rockford Fosgate, but at the beginning I believe it was just Fosgate when he just started making automotive amps. While there I worked on the PBR family of amps.
sinclair posted:rtr12 posted:sinclair posted:Norton posted:John, its not just subjectively louder. I have a db meter app I have used to compare volumes. My K-line Hudson with the original RS4 boards and thin speaker is 3db louder than my Lionel Vision Hudson.
Pete
This will be more due to the enclosures the speaker is in than the boards. My time at Rockford Fosgate taught me that.
Back in the mid '70s, I had a new van that I added a new sound system to, using a Fosgate amp for power. I was thinking it was just Fosgate beck then, but that was a long time ago so maybe it was RF? Anyway, that was a pretty powerful system, very impressive sound back in the day.
I can only imagine what they have now, I'm sure it's even more impressive today. I have fallen way behind the times in my old age...now back to the regular scheduled program...
Jim Fosgate started Rockford Fosgate, but at the beginning I believe it was just Fosgate when he just started making automotive amps. While there I worked on the PBR family of amps.
FWIW, and if you are interested, here's a link to a page showing something similar. Thinking I had the 50 amp model? I thought it was a 100 amp, but the price the guy showed for it was way above my pay grade back then so I doubt that it was. I am pretty sure mine was also a year or two earlier. According to this link it was just Fosgate for a while and then Rockford bought them becoming Rockford Fosgate. Now, back to regular programming...
FWIW your theory that my K-Line engine is louder than my Lionel engine doesn't hold water. The K-Line engine has no speaker baffle other than the tender shell. The Lionel engine has an engineered enclosure. The K-Line engine is louder.
Enclosures can enhance the low frequencies but they don't make the driver more efficient. Its possible the K-Line driver has a higher sensitivity (db/watt Sound Pressure Level) than the Lionel Fatboy. I am not going to try and determine that right now.
Pete
The fact that they are different speakers means you're comparing apples and oranges. The baffle does indeed increase volume, at least for most of us. I just tested it with the ERR speaker and baffle. I tested with the speaker bare and then in the baffle. The feed is 1khz from a function generator. The phone with the sound meter was on a small box next to the speaker for both tests. I placed the speaker on top of the back of the baffle for the bare test and in the baffle for the baffled test. The box was the height of the baffle to keep the speaker at the same height relative to the phone (sound meter). The foam sheet was to deaden any reflected sound. Needless to say, the baffled speaker not only produced 20dB higher sound, but it was much louder to my ears as well.
The results convinced me, but who knows, maybe not you. 
This has always been my experience with speaker baffles, so I'm at a loss as to how you can argue against it.
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First off John we were talking apples and oranges. This started out comparing New ERR with RS4. Then it was clear I was comparing fatboys with 25 cent paper speakers. Some stated the difference in volume was due to the enclosure or lack of it. That was wrong plain and simple. It didn't apply to my example.
20 db gain? Think about it.
Pete
I guess I don't get it. So, you are telling me that my results are wrong, and the baffle doesn't help? OK, you're free to believe that.
Baffles help for sure but the not 20 dbs worth. 3db is half power. Were you measuring power or voltage?
Pete
Interesting to know that what I always called Lionel sound ROMs do have a 1.1W audio amp on it. All the ones in my collection have the same one, LM4861m. Is this a pre amp maybe?
Reason I ask is in my poking around my 1st version ERRCo sound commander, I only see a regulator on it. The Lionel power supply has a switching regulator ( I think based on the tech sheets I found) and a darlington on it.
Oh and the Lionel power supply has another op amp on it, an LM324m..
I believe the LM324 triggers bell and whistle, at least that is what it does for MTH board. I believe Jon Z, but there sure is a lot of stuff on that Power Supply board to do nothing more than power the Audio board. G
Never mind my question on the LM4861, it occurred to me soon after posting that it can drive a 1W speaker directly. Interesting stuff..
Norton posted:Baffles help for sure but the not 20 dbs worth. 3db is half power. Were you measuring power or voltage?
Pete
Pete, did you look at the pictures. I used the dB meter on my phone and a fixed power drive at 1khz to the speaker. Then I measured the sound volume in and out of the baffle.
Here's the latest test and the setup. The block is to prop the speaker in the exact same orientation as it is in the baffle. So, other than the baffle, nothing else changes, the speaker signal is the same, the distance to the speaker is the same, and the environment is the same. With this more accurate test, I get a 14dB difference, very significant but not quite what my "quickie" test got. As I said, it's VERY significant when you're listening to it, a 14dB difference is huge! In each case, the movement of taking the screen shot increased the dB reading 3db, so the difference is valid, it's just that I had 45db and 59db before doing the screen swipe.
Bottom line? The baffle certainly increases the sound intensity by any measure I can see, both measurement wise and listening to the results.
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GGG posted:I believe the LM324 triggers bell and whistle, at least that is what it does for MTH board. I believe Jon Z, but there sure is a lot of stuff on that Power Supply board to do nothing more than power the Audio board. G
I agree there's a lot on the board, but if they triggered the whistle and bell, they'd have to have that communicated to the audio board. Since it's very easy to detect the DC bias, and the audio board already knows if it's in command mode because of the serial data stream (or lack of serial data), I doubt the P/S board is involved.
I do harbor the idea that there has to be something else the P/S board does, maybe someone will enlighten us. FWIW, I powered an audio board in my test fixture with a 5V bench supply, and it functions just fine with no P/S board installed.
Ok you guys I should really be cutting foam right now but curiosity got the best of me. I went down to the shop and put my Q1 back on the bench. I used my old iPhone 5 with a sound app called decibel 10th. With the current Q1 setup, a CC with the Lionel 3 board RS4 combo running a 6100 sound set I get 91dB max when holding the whistle down with my phone roughly 3' away. If I replace the 3 board combo with the ERRCo RS Commander 1.5 running the 6100 sound set I get 89dB max while holding the whistle down.
Even more interesting, I decided to put my Fluke 87 across the speaker leads, set to measure AC volts, 4 volt range fixed. I get 3.3V with the 3 board combo and 2.87V with the RS Commander when putting a brick on the whistle button. Hmmm...
What ERR board are you using specifically? Are you using the same RS4 sound board? FWIW, a 2dB difference is far different than what is being claimed, just curious as to the exact parameters for the test.
I still maintain that a majority of sound differences previously discussed are the speaker and baffle. If you compare sound levels with different speakers and different baffle configurations, you aren't going to make a useful comparison.
Norton posted:FWIW your theory that my K-Line engine is louder than my Lionel engine doesn't hold water. The K-Line engine has no speaker baffle other than the tender shell. The Lionel engine has an engineered enclosure. The K-Line engine is louder.
Pete
I suspect that the enclosed tender shell acts as an infinite baffle. Way, way back, when there was as much argument about Hi-Fi sound as there is today about control systems, one mfgr., Bozak, used the infinite baffle to great effect without all sorts of complicated ports and such.
Bonus points if anyone remembers Bozak.
The object of the exercise is to keep the sound waves from the front of the speaker and rear of the speaker from colliding and creating interference and cancellation of some of the sound. So, Rex is correct, the tender shell does the job, and many locomotives depend on that fact. Unless someone can come up with a rational reason why, I think my tests prove that a baffle will increase the sound volume over a bare speaker.
Another factor is the efficiency of the speaker. The "thin" K-Line speaker may well be more efficient than the larger Lionel speaker. However, my guess is the quality of the sound suffers, I've used a lot of various sized speakers, and there's a huge difference in sound quality between various models.
Boy, this turned into a who's speaker is bigger, or test is more accurate quickly? I don't think anyone disagrees a baffle will help, but your 20db increase is quite a multiple of doubling of power out. How can that be? I think that is what Pete questioned. G
Norm Charbonneau posted:Ok you guys I should really be cutting foam right now but curiosity got the best of me. I went down to the shop and put my Q1 back on the bench. I used my old iPhone 5 with a sound app called decibel 10th. With the current Q1 setup, a CC with the Lionel 3 board RS4 combo running a 6100 sound set I get 91dB max when holding the whistle down with my phone roughly 3' away. If I replace the 3 board combo with the ERRCo RS Commander 1.5 running the 6100 sound set I get 89dB max while holding the whistle down.
Even more interesting, I decided to put my Fluke 87 across the speaker leads, set to measure AC volts, 4 volt range fixed. I get 3.3V with the 3 board combo and 2.87V with the RS Commander when putting a brick on the whistle button. Hmmm...
Norm, that is almost exactly the same results I got using the same Decibel 10th app on my tablet. I was measuring chuff volume using the peak hold function and was getting 2-3 db more from a RS4 setup vs the new ERR Railsounds.
Pete
Dude go back and read my little experiment again. I was pretty specific. I am trying to determine if there's a difference between the two power supplies driving the audio amp. I don't care about acoustic gain. I am looking at power in vs. power out. Pretty easy cheesy.
Pete, pretty interesting huh?
GGG posted:Boy, this turned into a who's speaker is bigger, or test is more accurate quickly? I don't think anyone disagrees a baffle will help, but your 20db increase is quite a multiple of doubling of power out. How can that be? I think that is what Pete questioned. G
It's not the power, but how the power is used. However, I agree the 20dB was inflated, I did a quickie test and didn't try to control all the variables. The 14dB, still a large increase, is really what you get with a bare speaker and one with a baffle.
Norm, look at Pete's comment, he's testing the new RS5 board against a RS4 board. Not only that, he's using different speakers and enclosures. It's not surprising there is a different result.
I confess, I can't explain your results, I measure the voltages out of the old RS4 P/S and the powered MB, and I get virtually identical results as far as voltage under load.
This thread is getting way to personal--and not particularly useful.
Why don't you guys give it a rest?
rex desilets posted:Norton posted:FWIW your theory that my K-Line engine is louder than my Lionel engine doesn't hold water. The K-Line engine has no speaker baffle other than the tender shell. The Lionel engine has an engineered enclosure. The K-Line engine is louder.
Pete
I suspect that the enclosed tender shell acts as an infinite baffle. Way, way back, when there was as much argument about Hi-Fi sound as there is today about control systems, one mfgr., Bozak, used the infinite baffle to great effect without all sorts of complicated ports and such.
Bonus points if anyone remembers Bozak.
Not sure I remember Bozak, probably should? I did a search for Bozak images (no bonus points here, I had to look). Some of the images looked somewhat like these Marantz speakers. I had a set of these many years ago with a 2270 (I think it was?) powering them, along with some other old relics. There is some similarity to these and some of the Bozak pictures. Must be some copying/cloning or ideas shared/borrowed somewhere along the line?
FWIW, I still have some other old relics down in the basement. Wonder if there are any places left that still repair this old stuff, maybe I should look around a bit?
Nick, sorry about your post!
Guys, not sure what's being missed here. All I changed was the Lionel m/b and power supply for an ERRCo RS Commander 1.5. Same rom, same speaker. I hope there is an understanding that this is the ERRCo board that you can plug sound ROMs onto. Norton mentioned the same before several forks in the thread earlier.
One further detail - volume pot all the way up on ERRCo board, volume pot jumpered on Lionel setup for max volume.
The Lionel RS4/RS5 power board does the following:
1) supplies 5v @ 1.2A
2) detects horn/bell offsets (for conventional mode only)
3) has a voltage doubler that is cut in at low track voltages
4) manages the battery switch over when AC power is lost
The current out of the ERR Powered motherboard has the same current ratings as the RS power board, about 1.2 amps. However the RS power amp on the audio board typically only needs about 0.4A to deliver the audio. The Err Powered motherboard has the same features as the RS4/5 power board.
I can't explain the difference in the observations, but the power supply is probably not the reason.
Very interesting Jon, thanks for posting that. Any difference between the RSC 1.5 (I'm assuming no longer available?) and the Lionel powered m/bs shown earlier?
Jon's observations match mine, I couldn't see any difference in the two power sources nor the sound output when powered from either source. I only tested command mode at 18V track power.
The voltage doubler, offset detection, and battery management explains some of the "extra" circuitry on the RS P/S board.
One question, what does the power supply board do with the detection of whistle/bell offsets? How is that communicated to the audio board? If not for the audio board, what is it used for?
rtr12 posted:sinclair posted:Jim Fosgate started Rockford Fosgate, but at the beginning I believe it was just Fosgate when he just started making automotive amps. While there I worked on the PBR family of amps.
FWIW, and if you are interested, here's a link to a page showing something similar. Thinking I had the 50 amp model? I thought it was a 100 amp, but the price the guy showed for it was way above my pay grade back then so I doubt that it was. I am pretty sure mine was also a year or two earlier. According to this link it was just Fosgate for a while and then Rockford bought them becoming Rockford Fosgate. Now, back to regular programming...
It was Fosgate when he was just building them on his own. Once he got big enough to really start making things and to expand, he bought a building on Rockford Drive in Tempe, AZ. (My home town.). That's when it become Rockford Fosgate. So the name of the company is the street the headquarters in on and the last name of the founder. So there is no person named Rockford involved.
As for the discussion of the enclosure, yes, an enclosure can make that big a difference. How do you think Bose can get so much sound out of little speakers in their little units.
Oh boy, there may be some conflicting information out there...someone may have put something on the internet that isn't true?
Thanks for the correct story about the street. I should have looked around a little more on that one.
Ok let's get this derailed topic back on track lol. Got the engine! She's a beauty! Took pics and then took it apart. I already removed the ps1 board out of the tender as seen, leaving the ground wire and Proto coupler wires there. Now in the last pictures you'll see inside the boiler, there two more boards. One of which is the brownish colored one attached to the smoke unit. My question is does that board stay in tact? I assume the green board comes out?
And by the way I got the GRJ super chuffer sitting at home today and I'm still waiting on the ERR board to show up. I ordered those and never received an email from ERR stating the tracking info....Nada! So it's in limbo I guess. 
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Better shot of the brown board
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When I do these, I remove the headlight connection from the green board as the Super-Chuffer is going to drive an LED headlight directly for the Rule-17 lighting. You can wire the input power of the green lighting board to the TMCC headlight output so it turns off the lights from the remote or leave it connected to track power. Obviously, the fan on the smoke unit will be connected to the Super-Chuffer, the smoke unit main power will come directly from the TMCC smoke output.
For the cab light, I replace it with a 12V bulb and run that from track power on one leg to the cab light output of the Super-Chuffer on the other leg. This gives it about 9 volts and does a nice job of cab lighting.
