RailPro > RailPro Specific Help & Discussion

Revisiting our sound handling wish list

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Alan:
Yep, you are right. Practical is a word we dare not use. ;) My detector system and your torque transfer mechanics are not practical for the masses. It is interesting however to give thought to the different approaches to the problem and possibly their synergies.

If someone had dared stating RP's capabilities the day DCC was launched they too would have been considered nuts. But look at where we are now.

The root problem as I see it is one of coupling. The coupling of sound and movement is not right today although we are fortunate to have at least some coupling. I question if manually controlling each half of the equation is the best approach to solving the problem. If the intent is to create an illusion, isn't that illusion seriously undermined when the user is mentally calculating "what adjustment should I make to increase the realism?" Shouldn't the mental work be "do I need more or less throttle?" Seems like a problem that can be solved given today's technology.

PS. the breaker IC is of the generic class "hot swap controller". There are many on the market. I dialed in on the LTC1153 only because the datasheet presented as an example the exact circuit I needed. I didn't design anything. I used their schematic and then tweaked it's trip point and reaction speed to suit my needs. How to make these two adjustments were also clearly explained in the datasheet.

G8B4Life:
Hello all,

Long post. Please bear with me.

ESU released their updated sound handling features a week ago so I've done some serious studying of it to see how it all worked to see what ideas we could take away for improved sound handling in RailPro. I also studied RailPro's sound as well, which is at the bottom of the post. There is a document on ESU's new Full Throttle features on their website (http://www.esu.eu/en/downloads/instruction-manuals/digital-decoders/) if anyone wants to read further but I've summarised it below.

Drive Hold:

The key to it all. When this button is pressed, the motor will remain at a constant speed, while the sound can be controlled independently from the motion with the throttle knob.

Run 8:

The Run 8 function will increase RPMs from wherever you are, all the way up to Notch 8 and hold. Once the function button is pressed, the sound is disengaged from the speed. Using the throttle knob you can now speed up or slow down with the sound remaining constant, at full throttle.

Coast:

Opposite of Run 8. Prime mover drops to idle and sound is disengaged from speed. The throttle can now speed up or slow down the train with the prime mover at constant idle.

Brake (independent):

Supposed to work like an independent brake, Uses a function to slow the train down and play the sound file of the independent brake.

Dynamic brake:

Mimics a dynamic brake. This was actually a part of the ESU's decoders before but has been upgraded to better consist and play sounds with dynamic braked and non dynamic braked loco's. The dynamic brake actually gradually slows the train down and plays sounds the proper way for a dynamic brake being used (unlike RailPro where you can activate the dynamic brake no matter what notch your in and stay in that notch).


Sound handling: This is just for a bit of background info, to show what we're missing on the creation of sound in RailPro. I've always been impressed by how sounds are made up in LokSound.

Everything is flow chart based, one simply places sounds in a container and connects them with logic. It is much more free than the ridged way in RailPro, eg, in Loksound a loop can have as many files as needed, not just three (as per user created loops in RailPro).


Horn flowchart sample

The above images shows a horn and gives a good example of more than 3 files being used to control the horn sound. The logic shouldn't be hard to follow. Each tan coloured container contains a sound to play. The container that says Loop could also be a container that loops say 4 files to make one "loop". All the prime mover notch's are like this, 4 separate files as played to create one loop of the notch sound.


567C flowchart sample

This is the greatly zoomed out flowchart for the 567 prime mover (from the Full Throttle video I posted in an earlier post).It looks complicated but it's really just simple logic (as mentioned above, each notch-loop is comprised of 4 files. This makes reacting to notch changes much more dynamic and realistic).  I really wish I could post a video of how well this works in controlling sound but I don't want to waste Bill's server diskspace and I don't do YouTube.

Of note, there are 120 separate sound files (99.81 seconds worth) to make up this prime mover compared to RailPro's 31 files (unknown seconds) to make up the 567. Actually, the RailPro prime mover file appears to contain the random compressor, spitter and hiss sounds so it is probably 24 sound files for the prime mover.

RailPro sound: I also spent a fair bit of time studying this. I now know the structure of the sound files and how they are created, though I don't yet understand what the end result of this creation achieves. Basically it appears that when creating a sound file a lot of the sound information is lost/thrown away to turn that CD quality sound (16 bit 44.1Khz PCM) into something that the LM can play. My guess at this time is 8 bit PWM though I don't know for sure. I do wonder about that claim of "HD" in "Rail Sonic HD" now.

I'm still studying RailPro and may have more to report later.

Don't think that I'm bashing RailPro here, I love it but we can have better and the more info I can provide everyone here in comparison to the best (in this case Loksound, and yes they are the best in sound) and how RailPro does the same the more we have to take away to RE for improving RailPro.

- Tim

William Brillinger:

--- Quote ---Drive Hold:
The key to it all. When this button is pressed, the motor will remain at a constant speed, while the sound can be controlled independently from the motion with the throttle knob.
--- End quote ---

I have to say, Drive Hold concerns me. I know there is a panic button, but I don't like the idea of disconnecting the motion from the knob.  In fact I've come to the conclusion that I don't even like momentum effects any more. Like Kevin, I prefer to feather the speed control to create my own effect here.

If Ring engineering would add the coast feature, and fix manual notching to do smooth transitions, I think RailPro users could easily emulate what ESU has done here.

KPack:
Tim - That is some really great information there.  I've always wondered how Loksound went about their sound files.  I like the flowchart and the fact that you can use more files than just three for a loop.  That seems to be what Railpro is missing when it comes to smooth throttling up and down.  A new software program for Railpro could allow something like this.  The problem would be could Ring Engineering get it out in a timely fashion. 

I'm curious as to how you figured out how many files were in the Railpro prime mover file?  I've always wondered that.  And I've always been curious as to whether or not the sound files actually retain their original 44.1 kHz, 16-bit PCM sound or if it is downgraded. 

Here's the issue I see....the Railpro modules only have so much space on them and I wonder how many additional recordings would be able to fit.  I'll be honest, I don't think that full 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM WAV files are completely necessary here.  Yeah, it's nice to say that it uses "full CD-quality sound", but that sound really doesn't translate through the tiny speakers we use.  Even my nicer set-ups with four speakers don't sound anywhere near as nice as desktop computer speakers.  So why spend the valuable space on a sound format that you probably aren't getting the full benefit from anyway?  Personally I'd much rather have Railpro use something like MP3 and allow a TON more sound files to be used on the module.  That means way more recordings for prime mover files so smooth transitions are a possibility, multiple coulper clank and release sounds for random playback when the button is pressed, way more variety on air release and spitter sounds, etc, etc.

I agree with Bill regarding the "drive hold" function.  I don't like the idea of taking motor control away from the knob.  But a "coast" button would be great to allow the prime mover to spool down while the train is still moving.  Or I'll just continue to use manual notching....just need the transitions through multiple notches to be better.

-Kevin

G8B4Life:
I can see the points for both types of parties; the concern being taking away movement control from the throttle knob, and the enhancement being the throttle knob being much more responsive to give more dynamic control of nothing up and down. You can easily validate the enhancement to RailPro by comparing how responsive notching sound is using the knob and then using the manual buttons. The buttons take far more time to go through all the motions.

Kevin, It was actually quite simple to work out how many files were in the prime mover file; once I had worked out the structure of the sound files (which wasn't as simple) it was just a matter of looking at the correct location that holds the value for the number of files.

The sound is downgraded as mentioned, I'm just not sure by how much and to what format. The LM-2's have 4 Megabytes of memory (which is the same as Loksound by the way), plus whatever capacity the microcontroller has built in, which would only be a few Kilobytes.

Now, as it stands the current 567 prime mover file is about 1.7 Megabytes. This leaves just over 2 Megabytes for everything else, including I believe the LM-2 program and picture. None of these are very big.

MP3's could not be used, even if the code for the microcontroller to play them could be written. MP3's have information in the header that has to be processed which causes a slight delay in playback. You are correct though "CD" quality is not needed, even if just for file size reasons (full 16 bit 44.1Khz audio would give about 47 seconds of sound for 4 Megabytes) ; It might surprise some but those beautiful Loksound sounds that you all heard in the Full Throttle video; created from 8 bit 15.6Khz wav files. Of course, the IC that processes and plays the sound is a big governing factor in sound quality. I've tried to identify that IC on the LM-2 board but I've not been successful.

Now that I've played with RP and done a bit of study I see a lot of room for improvement in the creation and handling of sound in RailPro. Hopefully RE will agree and create a more flexible and open way of doing it.

Oh, and you all might find this interesting, large (equals long download) is a relative term for RailPro. As mentioned the prime mover file for the 567 is only 1.7 Megabytes (1,738,987 bytes) so why does it take so long to download over the internet? RP files are downloaded from RE's server 401 bytes at a time, roughly two times a second. If we round that up slightly we get 1 kilobyte per second, that's right, almost 4 times slower than the maximum speed of my old dial up modem! This could be because as the files are downloading they are being copied to the HC at the same time which sounds about right for the speed, or RE is limiting the speed. Either way there is no need for this, files should be able to be downloaded at full internet speed and then loaded to the controller. Hopefully with the upcoming CI-1 this will be the case.

- Tim

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