Just had a nice conversation with Tim covering a range of topics. There were few takeaways that I wanted to share with everyone here:
1.) If you have a connection problem to the Ring servers, one of the first things you should do is call Tim. Not only may he be able to solve the problem (he may have helped someone else with the same problem), but it's also helpful for him to keep track of types of issues people are having and how often these issues are popping up.
2.) Check your firewall/antivirus to be sure that it is not blocking Ring Engineering software.
3.) New updates (sounds, etc) have been slower coming out for several reasons: the roll out of the major update didn't go quite as smoothly as hoped (several bugs were present in the release software that beta testers missed, myself included), and the G-scale module took a significant amount of development.
4.) LM-3S-G has been a huge hit so far. Tim hasn't even advertised it yet but it is already selling very well.
5.) New sounds in the pipeline: GE GEVO-12, GE FDL-16, GE GEVO-T4, EMD 645 roots. The ULT files actually take less work to make than the old files, and sound significantly better. I mentioned several times that we are all very anxious for new sound files to be released. If anyone has opportunities to record locomotives please let us know so that we can help as needed. Sounds needed include all variations of EMD 567 (including turbo), EMD 645-20E3, EMD 645-16F, and GE 7FDL-12. There are probably a few others I'm missing.
6.) Tim is surprised that there are no videos on Youtube showing the new ULT sound files. I have some stuff I need to finish and put on there, but ideally it would be best to have a variety of videos available online from many users. There are dozens of videos of Loksound and Soundtraxx demos, but none with the new Railpro sounds.
7.) Tim was expecting more of a response from DCC users buying Railpro decoders to use with their DCC fleets. Instead, most DCC users who buy Railpro modules are also buying controllers and making at least a partial switch to Railpro instead of using the DCC-compatibility. I thought this was due to a lack of advertising/education on the new functionality of Railpro. With the dual-mode capability a Railpro module can act exactly like a DCC module. So instead of getting say a Loksound decoder for ~$100, and then a Lokprogrammer for around the same price, you can get a Railpro LM-3S and CI-1 for a total cost of just over $100. That gives you the ability to program sounds functions at a fraction of the cost. Then it can be used as a full-functional DCC decoder. I let him know that more people would likely buy Railpro modules over DCC decoders if the sound library increases.
8.) Overall sales of Railpro have shot up since the new software changes and sounds came out, as well as the new LM-3S-G.
9.) Tim cryptically alluded to a project that is about 2/3rd's done that he hopes is available this year. He was extremely tight-lipped about it and wouldn't give anymore information.
Hopefully this sheds some light on where Railpro is at and what is coming. I hope that we as a community can help educate other modelers on Railpro's capabilities. For myself, I'll see if I can wrap up the video I started and get a few others in the works.
-Kevin
