ESU equipment

Decoders

Made in Germany, has BEMF and sound, sounds can be downloaded, modified. 8 bit sound unit, 4 sounds at the same time.

Review: http://tonystrains.com/technews/loksound-review.htm

check out the yahoo group on this one.

ESU uses an 100 ohm speaker, a good thing is that it does not need a dc blocking capacitor. Users have reported that is seems to work ok with with 2 Loksound speakers in parallel, and even with 2 in parallel and a third in series.

Be sure to download the manual from LokSound, but it's still not straightforward. I'd recommend using DecoderPro.

Right out of the box, the sound starts out at max, and can be the reason many people report the sound is distorted. The horn volume is also set way too low.

There are 3 sound controls, overall, horn/whistle, and auxillary. The engine sounds are tied to auxillary volume control.
Try setting the aux volume someplace between 50% (dec 32) and 75% (dec 48), values allowed go from 0 - 64. Then set the horn/whistle to max, and the same for overall volume.

Do you need the Loksound programmer? There is no diesel transition in the emd decoders. Some people have used the programmer to create transition sounds. The programmer includes a free *.wav extractor and a *.wav file editor. You create a transition sound and place it the LokSound project in a position where the transistion occurs.

They have good sounds, ability to customize the sound, resistant to drop outs, good motor control.

They also have sounds that change according to load, like the SoundTraxx Tsunami.

sound files:

ESU - LokSound notes

They have CV's above 255, you set CV32 = 1, and then set CV 275 (example).

One of the features I don't like about them is the fact that I don't seem to be able to play the whistle and produce whistle signals. It only plays the sound loop in the decoder unlike the Soundtraxx decoders where one can produce a short toot or long depending on how long the function button is pressed.

Using the Lokprogramer,I put horn/whistle initial wav and exit wav into another sound slot then map that slot to function 3.I then have long whistle on F2 and short whistle on F3.

ESU Select 

Originally due in late 2009, now early 2010. It is HO only, but significantly cheaper. Will be trying it in a Berlyn rail truck.

Update March 19.

Two additional part numbers (sounds) have been released, now total of 5 different ones available

EMD 567 - 73406
EMD 645 - non turbo -73408
EMD 710 - 73410
Alco 244 - 73401
Alco 251 - 73402

Not released yet:

EMD 645 - turbo - 73409

weird behavior:

From ESU manual:

"The LokSound tries to establish the speed step setting every time it receives power (i.e.: after switching on the power on your layout or the track sector where your locomotive is located) and the lights are switched on. This process requires that you switch on the lights and turn the throttle until the lights light up continuously.
Should you change the speed step setting during operation then you must interrupt the power to the decoder for a short moment in order to activate the auto-detection.
This auto-detect feature can be turned off with bit 4 in CV 49 (also refer to the CV table in chapter 21). Then you have to set the correct speed step with bit 1 in CV 29."

There was a person who was using an NCE PowerCab system. It has a single DCC output, i.e. when in service mode, all the layout is connected. So, in and out of service mode will also power and de-power the main DCC supply to the rails.

In this case, he was programming CV29, (speed setting is there) and then exiting programming mode... so power was interrupted to the decoder... thus he interrupted the process ESU describes above... and he got weird operation... which makes sense since the procedure not only warns against interrupting the power up sequence, but tells you that you need to set the correct speed step.

So what was happening is as he programmed the decoder, it kept going back to speed step 14....