Legacy whistle problem

Try the tender on a different engine, let's isolate it to either the tender audio or the locomotive.  Any similar vintage wireless tether locomotive should work with the tender.

I just sold my one other legacy steam engine, but have another in the mail that should be here any day now.  I will definitely try your suggestion when it gets here.

IMO most from time to time legacy steamers make that sound between levels." Maybe" not as pronounced, or maybe not as noticable as its drowned out by the whistle tone or other sounds. I know if I "listen" for it, I can catch it on a few of mine.

I'm not sure if raising or lowering volume levels would help in any way.

I'd email Lionel and see if it is indeed a problem that can be fixed.

Heres a video of MR 261 member MICHRR714 did showcasing the different whistles and horn. The "pop" can be heard most noticably on the first whistle and the horn at the end.

I can also here it at 15:05 on this Lionel CS video for the mallet.

You can hear it on the new 0-6-0 here at 1:22 and 1:55

I don't hear that at all, right now my VL-BB is running, no pops of any kind in the quilling. 

I could hear it when you blew just the horn but not on the whistle.  I could hear it on the lionel video too, but man mine sure pops a lot and its really distracting.  My other steam engines have never had that pop before.  I will try emailing Lionel to see if they have anything to say, but I'm guessing after seeing the video you posted, they will say its normal.

Check the 0-6-0 video I just posted above, its fairly obvious.

As far as my K4 goes, I just stopped listening for it and either its gone away/or gotten better, or possibly I changed a volume level along the way making it less noticable.

I think it depend on the whistle tone as to how noticable it is, its less obvious with deeper raspier tones like Johns bigboy.

 IMO the whistlle on those mallets is not the most dynamic and tone variances are not as seamless as they could be.

That loud a pop sure isn't normal to me, I tried a couple additional samples, my Legacy LionMaster T1 Duplex and my new Legacy B6sb switcher, no pops like that there either.

I can't believe this is normal, that is NOT Legacy sound.

Pops on the 0-6-0 video I posted above John. In my observations on video and my own items it doesn't do it all the time or every time, just on occassion. Often its lost in the rest of the sounds. its a split second interruption when the tone changes, since the sound "jumps" through three tones as opposed to a single tone changing notes on a real whistle

Like any "little noise" you might hear, on your automobile or whatever, if you focus on it it seems worse.

It would be interesting to see what the OP hears from Lionel. Additionally, I can only hear it on the second gen legacy stuff. It doesn't seem to occur on the first legacy berks, m1b, and FEF to name a few.

You can hear it on my new 10 wheeler , not all the time, or every time but its there:

Here is a longer video of mine.  I can very slightly hear it on your 0-6-0 but it isn't so distracting.  Maybe you're right that it is more noticeable with certain tones, but mine is very noticeable and like John said I wouldn't consider it normal, only distracting.

Some do this yours is alot worse then others but try lowering  the volume down a touch and it seems to be not so bad.. I had a few s3s do it and my visionline hudson does it just not as bad as yours..

I could possibly lower the volume and it may help but the interesting problem with this engine is that although the whistle volume, crew talk, and sound effects can be turned up fairly loud, the chuffing of the engine is very quiet.  If I don't turn the volume all the way up, the chuffing is easily drowned out by other noises.  It is definitely the quietest engine I've had (that's not saying much though as I don't have much of a collection, ha ha)  The 3 or 4 other engines I've owned have all had a much higher volume capacity for the chuff.  I have a Legacy Berkshire coming in the mail ( 6-11391) any day now and it will be interesting to compare the two.  From the video's I've seen on the berk, it has a very thunderous chuffing sound compared to this mallet.  

I presume your aware of the  seperate volume level for the chuff/ background sounds, AUX1- vol^ , AUX1 -vol^, AUX1- vol^....

I was just using the master volume in the tender and then the volume control found on the aux1 menu.  If I press aux1 and then the volume each time does it control the chuff volume separately?  If so, I feel a little sheepish now 

Correct, its not your fault because the Lionel manuals are not clear on this, vol^ consecutively raises the master volume.

Aux1 pressed each time before vol^ raises the "background sounds which includes the chuff.

Fullness of chuff tends to vary from loco to loco. Lowering the brake slider a bit will increase the intensisty, but certain locos have a deeper chuff all around depending on what Lionel chose.

You may have a bum speaker. Can you swap another one in to see if you notice a difference?

I don't have another speaker to try this out with.  I guess I could somehow attach wires over to another engine tender, but then i would probably just screw up something else if I did.  I'll have to think more on that one.  Maybe I can take apart an old radio or something.

WOW, most of my stuff is not that new, but I haven't noticed it before, must be deaf!   Here's the newer Lionel 6-11297 Two Truck Shay, this has the new RCMC board with integrated audio, I don't hear it with this one either. 

When I do the video, I actually do hear the transitions, but when I'm listening to it live, I can't hear any popping, I think some of it is being accentuated by the audio recording process.  There probably is a volume change that gets amplified in the recording.  When I'm here from any angle, I don't hear any popping.  I do hear the sound intensity change as it steps, and I think that is being recorded as popping in some of these videos.  I tried my Legacy B6sb, and I only hear the intensity changes for that one as well, I don't hear any popping like on the videos.

John - I could hear a slight electronic blurp in your video, but I agree that recordings can sometimes change or amplify different things.   If I wasn't listening intently and looking for it, I would have never even thought twice about your whistle though.  In my case, maybe I'm being very picky, but with all my other engines I've run I have never given a thought or paid attention to any little pop noise if there was one.  However, when I powered up this engine, I noticed it in person immediately.  It just stands out enough that you can't ignore it.  In fact I think the video doesn't do it justice.  Like rick said though, maybe its just because of the low pitch of this whistle.  My big boy had a very low whistle too, but I never noticed or paid attention to anything odd with the whistle.  It seemed like a smooth transition between whistle pitches.  Same with my challenger.  I'm curious what Lionel will say, but I'm guessing they'll say its normal.  I'll try lowering my whistle volume and it will probably make it more acceptable.

I hear a lot more in your video.  However, for all of the ones I tested locally, I didn't hear any pop.  However, I can hear a subtle pop when I record them, more with some that others.  Yours is so pronounced that I'm pretty convinced something else is happening there.  Also, you can obviously hear it locally, where I don't for any of mine.

Is your smoke on for these videos?

The smoke was on for the Shay.  Like I said, I here no popping of any kind while listening in the room with the engine, for some reason the audio recording seems to insert that artifact.

I tried mine with and without the smoke on.  It pops the same either way.

RickO posted:

I presume your aware of the  seperate volume level for the chuff/ background sounds, AUX1- vol^ , AUX1 -vol^, AUX1- vol^....

Rick, I tried the volume controls as you suggested last night and what I found is that the master volume on the controller increases and decreases both the whistle and the chuffing volume.  If I use the aux1-volume as suggested, it does increase and decrease the chuffing/background noises as you stated.  However, the master volume control trumps the aux1-volume control.  For example, if I turn the chuffing volume all the way up and then try to turn down the whistle volume using the master volume, it turns down the volume of everything.  If I turn the master volume down and then try to turn up the chuffing volume, it doesn't raise the chuff volume.  As far as I can tell, the aux1-volume control only allows you to turn down the chuffing/background volume from what the whistle volume is set at.  It doesn't allow you to turn it up higher than the whistle volume.  It will only turn up the chuffing volume to the maximum volume that the master control is set at, not any higher.  So if the master volume is set at half, the aux1-volume will only raise the chuff to half volume maximum, but does allow you to turn it down as far as you would like.  Seems kind of stupid that it really only allows you to turn down the chuff.

Also of interest, I don't have another tender yet to swap out as John suggested, but I was messing around with the engine last night and I found that if I turn the volume all the way down, the tender has a lot of static noise coming from the speakers.  If I unlatch the tender while powered up and turn the IR sensor away from the engine the static immediately goes away.  Also, if I unlatch the tender and pull it away from the engine, the static reduces as the distance increases.  As I bring it closer and the IR sensors start communicating, the static gets higher and higher as they meet.  This tells me that the engine communication is causing the tender to play back static noises.  Maybe this is normal as I've never tried this with other engines???  I have noticed on other engines though that if you turn the volume down there does tend to be a little static noise.  If do the shut down sequence which turns off the sounds, the static goes away (which makes sense as they are turned off).  It only has static if I just turn the sounds down all the way.  

So I have a slight update on this topic.  I am still waiting to hear back from Lionel on a possible diagnosis.  They did email me and say they are having their technicians look at it.  I did receive my other Legacy engine in the mail today and tried hooking up that tender to the engine.  When I blow the whistle on the other tender, it operates normally.  If I hook the offending tender up to my new engine, it still pops when I blow the whistle.  To me this seems to infer that it is the tender, not the engine causing the problem.

That seems to be a logical diagnosis from my viewpoint.

Well as I predicted, here is the response I got from Lionel: 

"Thank you for your patience regarding this matter. After consulting with multiple technicians and our engineer, we have found that the pop is caused by the code of the quilling whistle. Unfortunately, this cannot be programmed out of it or repaired. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience."

Maybe the code issue is more apparent with this engine?  I still don't understand why this one pops more than others if its simply a code issue.  

That's a bummer!

Somebody clipped a sound file, and it made it all the way to production.