What kind of Speaker to get more BASS out of MTH GEVO engine?

I have swapped several PS-2 garbage speakers to the Peerless 830970 full range 4 ohm speaker, with great results. I have not done any PS-3's as yet, so I don't know if they use a 4 ohm speaker. Maybe check the current speaker; it may be stamped on the back, or unplug it and measure it. If you need 8 ohms, and the tender has room, you can use two of the above speakers wired in series. Or the standard Lionel Fatboy speaker is 8 ohm, so you can use it directly. And they work really well, especially if baffled with a baffle also from Lionel.

Rod

I use one of thesewired into a host GP35 ps3 engine which broadcasts to a sony fm radio which outputs toto a powered subwoofer...complete game changer

Give Dallee Electronics a call. They are a new OGR sponsor. They have all sizes.

Rod Miller

You won't know what speaker you can put in there until you open it up and find out how much room you have. Most diesels have small speakers because they don't have the room for the larger speakers found in steam engines.

Pete

I think one needs to ask these questions:

1.  What is quality sound?

2.  How loud is loud enough?  I guess one could do a calculation and figure out what 1/48 sound volume would be.  My guess is most of the residents of Lionelville or Wolf Town are deaf from blown out ear drums from the sound systems on the rails nearby.

Rod Stewart posted:

I have not done any PS-3's as yet, so I don't know if they use a 4 ohm speaker. Maybe check the current speaker; it may be stamped on the back, or unplug it and measure it.

PS/3 uses a 4 ohm speaker.

MTH Does not use a lot of different speakers.  The basic speaker for PS-2 and PS-3 is a 4 ohm 3W Speaker.  The standard in the upgrade kits is the BF-0000034 50mm Diameter Round about 17mm tall with fat magnet.  The other speaker used is the BF-0000043 which is the VECO 50mm Dia Round and this tends to be in diesels.  Small magnet protrusion, but still 17mm tall.

Now some production diesels did use the 40 and or 45mm dia speaker and sometimes you can go to the BF-43 to improve sounds.  You will not fit any of Lionel's Fatboy speakers in a diesel, they are too tall, plus they are 8 and or 16 ohms and that will reduce volume by several db.   G

upgrading the speaker and adding an enclosure can and usually makes a huge difference in sound quality and volume

That's kind of in the "wow" category.   I think you should cross out the "5022" on the side and put "11"  ... and I mean that not in a snarky way but in a "wow that is cool" way.

(11, from the movie "this is spinal tap" but apparently a real train tie in if you believe the internet:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven)

WillyGee -- how does the FM transmitter getup work -- how is it wired into the engine?  I notice the intended use for most of these products, use the head phone jack.  I assume the speaker wires then, maybe?

show 'em the video Willy! Show 'em!

I think this is it:

https://ogrforum.com/t...d-at-loco-is-working

When i get a chance i will draw a diagram of the sound system. Half way through the following video there is a 5 engine MU. The 4th engine has a 2 wire speaker extension which tethers into the unpowered 5th engine which hosts the fm board and batteries.

It is a modified board with the frequency set to around 87mhz. It broadcasts to my Sony analog radio tuned to 87mhz. Out of the sony headphone jack a mono audio cable connects to the octave shaper to the powered subwoofer.

Prior to installing the octave shaper i was not satisfied with the low frequency diesel sounds. A spectrum analysis showed around 300hz from the gp35 sound at its lowest frequency. Then i went to my favorite music store "Guitar Center" explained i wanted to convert 300hz down to 60hz and below.They said try this the "Pure Octave"..if it doesnt work bring it back..the rest is history..works fantastic.

In the end the ps3 gp35 still has its oem sounds and volume for the broadcasted sounds can be operated by my DCS remotes from wow them with volume to mute if the phone rings.

This one sound conversion blends in nicely with the rest of my engines (15 various ps2 an 3) running there normal oem sounds.

BTW ...the batteries in the fm transmitter (2aa nimh rechargeables) seem to last forever...i found no need for a charging circuit.

Has anyone tried the Broadway Ltd 'Rolling Thunder' sub woofer system? There was a thread afterthe first of teh year when it was first announced and I asked about it there. Bob Grubba (importer) posted that they were working on an O gauge set-up that could be adapted to our needs but I've not heard anything since...

So I don't really know anything about this kind of stuff -- so this is guess work on my part.  But wouldn't ideally there by a line out to connect to -- because I'm guessing mth filters out the low stuff to keep the engines from rattling?   You are "shaping" it so speak by taking some higher frequency sounds and moving them down in the lower ranges ... but that's because you are on speaker out which is after they've filtered it & amplified it to drive the speakers. ... maybe.

GGG posted:

MTH Does not use a lot of different speakers.  The basic speaker for PS-2 and PS-3 is a 4 ohm 3W Speaker.  The standard in the upgrade kits is the BF-0000034 50mm Diameter Round about 17mm tall with fat magnet.  The other speaker used is the BF-0000043 which is the VECO 50mm Dia Round and this tends to be in diesels.  Small magnet protrusion, but still 17mm tall.

Now some production diesels did use the 40 and or 45mm dia speaker and sometimes you can go to the BF-43 to improve sounds.  You will not fit any of Lionel's Fatboy speakers in a diesel, they are too tall, plus they are 8 and or 16 ohms and that will reduce volume by several db.   G

Hello Guys,lots of great ideas.I guess it will be a challenge to get some bass out of speakers that small.With today's tech,there's probably something out there.  

My question to the MTH techs (GGG and Gunrunner)Where is the amplifier,and how many watts of power does it put out? Can the amplifier be tapped into to add more "PUSH"???Does it even have an amp?My guess is that it has to.

I remember back in the day,I had these Car speakers called"MIND BLOWERS"and they had amplifiers built into them. You could listen to them with or without the amps turned on.You did not have to do anything but run the speaker wires to them I believe.And when you hit the switch to turn the built in amp on,IT WAS MIND BLOWING.These of course were 6x9 auto speakers.

Maybe someone still has a smaller 4 ohm speaker,with something like this. If I want increased volume,I'm going to have to find a way to add more watts,if I get insane with it.

 I would probably do that on The 3volt Big Boy from 2004!!That tender is huge,so there should be some room in there to make something  MIND BLOWING happen.But for the GEVO,I guess I'll just look for a quality speaker.YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR,like most things in life.   

Severn posted:

So I don't really know anything about this kind of stuff -- so this is guess work on my part.  But wouldn't ideally there by a line out to connect to -- because I'm guessing mth filters out the low stuff to keep the engines from rattling?   You are "shaping" it so speak by taking some higher frequency sounds and moving them down in the lower ranges ... but that's because you are on speaker out which is after they've filtered it & amplified it to drive the speakers. ... maybe.

 

The ps3 sound out has the full sound to the wireless fm transmitter. I rely on the the powered sub woofer to clip anything above 300hz. I was going to experiment with some low pass filter circuits (simple resistor capacitor or inductor) off the the ps3 speaker leads but found the sub woofer does the job. This host ps3 engine i zero volume all sounds except engine sounds. My lead engine has all the other sounds..bell horn couplers etc. That's the beauty of DCS, individual member engine settings. I would love to try 900mhz or blue tooth protocols but my system has been performing amazingly well for well over 2 years.

I'm going to give this a try myself.   Having said that I have the following ideas that you may find not terribly realistic or useful:

1 - both lionel & mth could provide a pre-filtered/pre-amp sound output line on those boards, and that's probably what "we" really want ... then anyone could take that output and do whatever they wanted with it...  like broadcast it to their own set up and filter out everything but the 300 hz and below & send it through their stereo system to the subwoofer.  Or marshall amp stack!

2 - Probably neither of those is going to happen from either provider but one might have more luck with the DCC sound decoder folks -- and while that may be true -- I under that's it's a whole 'nother ball of "control" wax & various issues there... but might be interesting to look at

3 - alternatively given that you just want the engine sounds & the low end ones at that -- i think one could get the PS3 sound file, "edit" out the sounds of interest to a separate file (engine sound clips), put them together in a reasonable sequential way (they are fragments),   do some kind of "filtering" on this to get it down to the 300 hz and below stuff... And stick it on a "loop" on the old stereo.   Use a remote to turn the volume up/down in relation to the engine(s) on the track you are controlling. Extra credit awarded for automatically legacy/dcs remote commands to the sound system somehow ... 

4 - finally ever thought about sending the subwoofer output into one of those "gamer chairs"?  (just google it)

Severn posted:

I'm going to give this a try myself.   Having said that I have the following ideas that you may find not terribly realistic or useful:

1 - both lionel & mth could provide a pre-filtered/pre-amp sound output line on those boards, and that's probably what "we" really want ... then anyone could take that output and do whatever they wanted with it...  like broadcast it to their own set up and filter out everything but the 300 hz and below & send it through their stereo system to the subwoofer.  Or marshall amp stack!

2 - Probably neither of those is going to happen from either provider but one might have more luck with the DCC sound decoder folks -- and while that may be true -- I under that's it's a whole 'nother ball of "control" wax & various issues there... but might be interesting to look at

3 - alternatively given that you just want the engine sounds & the low end ones at that -- i think one could get the PS3 sound file, "edit" out the sounds of interest to a separate file (engine sound clips), put them together in a reasonable sequential way (they are fragments),   do some kind of "filtering" on this to get it down to the 300 hz and below stuff... And stick it on a "loop" on the old stereo.   Use a remote to turn the volume up/down in relation to the engine(s) on the track you are controlling. Extra credit awarded for automatically legacy/dcs remote commands to the sound system somehow ... 

4 - finally ever thought about sending the subwoofer output into one of those "gamer chairs"?  (just google it)

 

I like your approach and looking forward to your build..if you like email me and i can provide you with my phone # for more details.

I just want to make sure I've the right engine, it's one of these?  http://mthtrains.com/20-20200-1

I've a SD70ace PS2 - and I've been experimenting with its sound file.   I may have been able to isolate all the frequencies below 300 hz using Audacity.  It looks like this -- quite rumbley.

I'd like to do the same for GP35 but want to ensure I'm using the correct file -- I want to know what is has below 300 hz.   Ideally maybe I can produce an "engine only" sound clip... something to play back through a subwoofer by hand -- a place to start.

The engine clips are at least these: start up,  there's also a rev up, rev down section.   I can probably figure out the "sustain" part within the main engine sound portion.  

Here is the ps3 engine that i used. Same but 2 rail..should be the same sound file.

http://mthtrains.com/20-20200-2

Looking forward to your SD70 results as i have several...here is my latest

http://mthtrains.com/20-20085-1

kennyb posted:

Maybe someone still has a smaller 4 ohm speaker,with something like this. If I want increased volume,I'm going to have to find a way to add more watts,if I get insane with it.

 

I believe the largest diameter speaker you can fit in an O scale car or tender is about 2" or 50mm. I have tested a few of them and the lowest free air resonance I have come across is about 180 hz. Below that it rolls off rapidly. Increasing the power to it is limited by power handling and excursion. You can add more drivers so each driver moves a shorter distance for the same amount of air moved (volume). You can also play tricks with the enclosure so the sound exiting a tube from the back of the speaker comes out in phase with the front ( base reflex, ducted port, transmission line). Which is what Bose and others do to get lower base with small drivers. The problem is you need a large chamber, larger than any tender, more like the 86' boxcars.

As far as transmitting the sound to a remote amplifier and larger speaker, when this subject came up a few years ago, it was claimed that MTH purposely eliminates the very low frequencies from its sound file to save memory. I don't know if thats true then or now with PS3 but it could be tested. If that is true no amount of equalizing will amplify those frequencies. 

Maybe when I get caught up on my scores of other projects I might try that. If anyone has a calibrated microphone and spectrum analyzer they could do it. There is data acquistion hardware and software now available that would allow anyone try this with ther computer. There are also apps for smart devices that will do it though I am not sure how well it compensates for the limited bandwidth of the built in microphones.

Pete

Norton posted:

kennyb posted:

Maybe someone still has a smaller 4 ohm speaker,with something like this. If I want increased volume,I'm going to have to find a way to add more watts,if I get insane with it.

 

I believe the largest diameter speaker you can fit in an O scale car or tender is about 2" or 50mm. I have tested a few of them and the lowest free air resonance I have come across is about 180 hz. Below that it rolls off rapidly. Increasing the power to it is limited by power handling and excursion. You can add more drivers so each driver moves a shorter distance for the same amount of air moved (volume). You can also play tricks with the enclosure so the sound exiting a tube from the back of the speaker comes out in phase with the front ( base reflex, ducted port, transmission line). Which is what Bose and others do to get lower base with small drivers. The problem is you need a large chamber, larger than any tender, more like the 86' boxcars.

As far as transmitting the sound to a remote amplifier and larger speaker, when this subject came up a few years ago, it was claimed that MTH purposely eliminates the very low frequencies from its sound file to save memory. I don't know if thats true then or now with PS3 but it could be tested. If that is true no amount of equalizing will amplify those frequencies. 

Maybe when I get caught up on my scores of other projects I might try that. If anyone has a calibrated microphone and spectrum analyzer they could do it. There is data acquistion hardware and software now available that would allow anyone try this with ther computer. There are also apps for smart devices that will do it though I am not sure how well it compensates for the limited bandwidth of the built in microphones.

Pete

from above..

As far as transmitting the sound to a remote amplifier and larger speaker, when this subject came up a few years ago, it was claimed that MTH purposely eliminates the very low frequencies from its sound file to save memory. I don't know if thats true then or now with PS3 but it could be tested. If that is true no amount of equalizing will amplify those frequencies. 

I remember now..i tried briefly with a SD70ace railking ps2 and a different FM board and did not get good results..but probably wasn't thorough in my setup. I really lucked out with the GP35 file.

This is what I've come up for the GP-35 as a kind of proof concept effort.   The first .wav file is a snippet of some of the engine sounds.  The second is the result of applying a low-pass filter at 300 hz and 48 db to it.     I used the software below to help me do this and since I've been fiddling with them off and on since the late spring, I've just enough familiarity to do this in a few minutes.   (disclaimer: I'm absolutely not a "sound guy" and don't really know what I'm doing here!)

Anyway let me know if you can play these files and I'm curious if you can get the low pass filtered one through the subwoofer set up and how it sounds... ? 

If that's a success, maybe I can make some more such files of the rest of the engine sounds and maybe the horn?     Anyway the pt really is to verify the sound file has lots of low frequency sounds in it & that these are filtered inside the MTH "audio processor" not in the file itself.    And that we can extract them and play them on the stereo/subwoofer.   And after that -- not sure!

http://www.silogic.com/trains/ADPCM.html

http://www.audacityteam.org/

Yes those are the sounds... what is interesting and if you get a chance try notch 2 and up etc. when i am running scale 22mph the default notch i think is 3 or 4 and the sounds are incredibly impressive. I have the subwoofer in the center of my layout and with supplemental normal sounds from the engines as the roll around from one end to the other....very realistic with the proper sense of sound direction.

Now that i think about it..at notch 2 and above there may be some frequencies bleeding through allowing that 567 prime mover to sound more accurate through the sub woofer...i entertained low pass circuit but everything just sounds too good to mess with. When i get back to the layout i will work on more documentation. Glad you are pursuing this with this much zeal...we are all benefiting.

I'll take another pass at extracting the sounds per "notch" ( rev level right? ) -- I can do rev up, rev down.... also the start up, shut down, maybe a horn.  (For fun I suppose I could do "train wreck".)   I'm curious myself about this.  I have a subwoofer.  It's not near my trains but I could move it.  I can also save these clips into variety of formats besides .wav files if that would help anyone play them.

On a somewhat related note:  I poked around the DCC sound decoder world and found at least one that supports line-out "out of the box"... so you know this an area that others may have tread -- but isn't this what ideally MTH, Lionel would provide? :

http://www.phoenixsound.com/products/pb11.html

"Lineout for external amplificationReal-world applications can be achieved including high-volume amplification by using the low-noise lineout capability"

Note: finally the low pass filter.  It's a menu item on Audacity.  You select the freq to clip out (or above -- I set it to 300).  But you also give it a db.  I understand the general concept but don't really understand the db portion. I just set it the largest db level and this gave the most results.  this might be an area that could be improved.

Notch is rev level yes...next ? so would you use the Audacity process in place of the Mooer octave shaper? That would be interesting....btw the Mooer converter was 100 bucks and returnable from Guitar Center but its a keeper as it works so well.

Not necessarily -- the simple upshot is I don't have a plan.  

But as I understand it:  You are taking the sound output from the speakers ("stereo out") on the GP35 -- sending that over the air by RF (FM), and capturing it on the other side with an FM receiver.   Sending that through the stereo, and subwoofer.   As I understood it, the resulting frequencies were missing the "low end" from 300 hz down which you discovered.   You then used the Mooer to move some higher frequencies down into this range with good results. 

So I wondered if the original sound files had these lower range frequencies.   I've been guessing they are there and instead are filtered out by MTH "audio processor" for whatever set of reasons.  

I'm also guessing that "ideally" for what you would like, you'd like a "line out" off the board so that you get the "pre-filtered" right from the sound file frequency set to do with as you see fit.  My way of thinking is that ideally you don't really want "stereo out" but "line out" with all the frequencies present in the sound file.   Well, we can ask them for such...

But given all that, I thought I'd look in the sound files themselves to see if I can determine what is what.   I thought it might be interesting to capture these various sounds and also to try to extract the low frequency sounds from them as well.    There's several things to do there, one of which is to see what it all sounds like through my own stereo/subwoofer...  and I don't mind sharing the sounds clips I create in the process ...

Beyond that, I don't really have a specific plan exactly -- although I'd like to replicate your set up on my SD70ACE or maybe I need to buy a junker I don't mind burning up... (or ... ?)

I can also think of a complicated things to do with the clips but its not clear the results would be better...  (or even work)

Severn posted:

Not necessarily -- the simple upshot is I don't have a plan.  

But as I understand it:  You are taking the sound output from the speakers ("stereo out") on the GP3

Actually i believe it is mono out from the ps3 speaker leads and once this tether reaches the fm board i soldered one lead to the right/left input and the other lead to the common of the 3.5mm input jack of the FM transmitter. I wanted mono to minimize FM multipathing as the transmitter in engine rolls around the layout.

 

-- sending that over the air by RF (FM), and capturing it on the other side with an FM receiver.   Sending that through the stereo, and subwoofer.   As I understood it, the resulting frequencies were missing the "low end" from 300 hz down which you discovered.   You then used the Mooer to move some higher frequencies down into this range with good results. 

So I wondered if the original sound files had these lower range frequencies.   I've been guessing they are there and instead are filtered out by MTH "audio processor" for whatever set of reasons.  

I'm also guessing that "ideally" for what you would like, you'd like a "line out" off the board so that you get the "pre-filtered" right from the sound file frequency set to do with as you see fit.  My way of thinking is that ideally you don't really want "stereo out" but "line out" with all the frequencies present in the sound file.   Well, we can ask them for such...

But given all that, I thought I'd look in the sound files themselves to see if I can determine what is what.   I thought it might be interesting to capture these various sounds and also to try to extract the low frequency sounds from them as well.    There's several things to do there, one of which is to see what it all sounds like through my own stereo/subwoofer...  and I don't mind sharing the sounds clips I create in the process ...

Beyond that, I don't really have a specific plan exactly -- although I'd like to replicate your set up on my SD70ACE or maybe I need to buy a junker I don't mind burning up... (or ... ?)

As a precaution each speaker lead to the transmitter has a 10k resistor soldered in in case of an incident I think it was Stan 2004 or Gunrunner who suggested this.

I can also think of a complicated things to do with the clips but its not clear the results would be better...  (or even work)

I find it interesting that a type of sound and a kind of fish use THE SAME SPELLING!

Everywhere I said "stereo" I meant to say "speaker" -- ok?   Speaker out.   You're taking speaker out, which is amp output -- and dividing it down back to line level-ish for the input to the transmitter.  I get that. I just don't understand in enough detail to make my own.   I don't have an aquarium either.

(I see you can buy these kinds of things -- fish but also the stereo out to line out "dividers" pre-made, check the web.  Although, it's not clear they are an exact fit for the application.)

I think MTH should offer a diesel "super bass" engine for us new era guys! I would run one or two in every consist!!!

An older EMD SD series with turbo sounds would also be great!!  

I bought those transmitters and never took the time to hook them up.

I did try a steam one gauge Challenger file years ago and loved the results.

I've got too many projects that failed and left me in a negative state. I normally bounce right back but for some reason it's left the building.

I think our grandson finally wore me down.

I would just love the option to make engine sound go through an external source.