Good morning all:
I am curious if anyone has upgraded the speakers in their MTH locomotives. Is it worth the effort? If so, what suppliers have been used? I run AEM7s, E44s and E33s. The sound certainly isn't bad, but if there is more bass and realistic audio to be had, I'd be interested at least.
NOTE: I have looked over numerous threads on the topic up here, but the latest one I found was June of 2018. Is there any more current information? Thanks.
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One major improvement you can make is install a decent baffle on your speaker. That will frequently improve the bass more than simply swapping speakers. For your mix of engines, I suspect you'll have to be content with trying to seal the speaker chamber.
For really optimum sound reproduction, you actually have to actually tune the enclosure, something that's not likely to happen in our world.
Hi John:
Thanks for getting back to me. Can you make any general recommendations as far as baffles go? I can (and will) do my own research andspadework, but if you have any ideas that could help get me going, I would appreciate it. You are right though, there is limited room in the electrics for extra structure, except for an upgraded speaker. If that is a better option though, I would at least give it a try. Thanks again.
I've come to the conclusion with most diesels that sealing the speaker cavity is about as good as it gets. For steamers, sometimes there is room for a nice baffle, and even dual speakers.
If you want to see how sound should be done, you can check out some of the Lionel products, they've spent a lot more time with the engineering of the sound system, including the speaker and baffle.
In a couple of projects, I've use a small laptop speaker enclosure, they have done some impressive engineering. They manage to get some amazing full range sounds out of speakers that rarely exceed 1" in diameter. I bought a bunch of laptop speakers on eBay to tinker with, I'm suitably impressed with the sound I can get from them. Many are ported for optimum sound quality, you can see that someone spent the time to actually analyze and design the enclosure for maximum sound quality.
I have some laptop carcasses in the parts bin, so I will give it a shot. Thanks for the tips.
some info here
Another possible option, the DCC folks have some pretty impressive speakers these days as well. Many quite small for the HO folks. Lots of sizes and lots of enclosures, baffles, accessories, etc. as well. Some of these could even be the ones used in some laptops that GRJ mentioned above? Some look similar. Anyway, the sizes and enclosure/baffle selection is worth a look.
Tang Band was one brand of small speakers I remember being discussed here a few years ago (can't find my link). Anyway they were a bit expensive as I recall, but the sound was quite impressive for such small speakers.
rtr12 posted:Another possible option, the DCC folks have some pretty impressive speakers these days as well. Many quite small for the HO folks. Lots of sizes and lots of enclosures, baffles, accessories, etc. as well. Some of these could even be the ones used in some laptops that GRJ mentioned above? Some look similar. Anyway, the sizes and enclosure/baffle selection is worth a look.
Tang Band was one brand of small speakers I remember being discussed here a few years ago (can't find my link). Anyway they were a bit expensive as I recall, but the sound was quite impressive for such small speakers.
Thanks Joe, the first one is the link I had saved.
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