Types of Soundsystems

For model trains there are until now mainly two types of soundsystem in use, the onboard systems and the carrier systems.

OSSYNTHS has now introduced a third new type of system, Shadow Sound.

 

An onboard system is placed in the locomotive, it is mostly coupled to or even integrated in a DCC decoder. But it can often also operate without DCC.

The quality of the soundsignal is perfect, but that can only be heard in big scale trains. For scales beneath 1:32 standard gauge and 1:20 narrow gauge the speakers are too tiny benefit from this quality.

Steam systems are very good, dieselsystems often lack a full range of revolutions per minute (rpm) for the diesel. Sometimes there are only a sound for idle and one or two sounds for full power.

 

The carrier system is placed outside the loco and  sends the soundsignal, together with the d.c., via the track to the loco. The loco needs only a speaker and a little filter to play the sounds. The quality of the reproduction can be improved dramatically with the help of auxiliary speakers under the layout. This is valid for all scales.

These auxiliary speakers add the warmth that the little speakers in the loco miss. They play softly and so the effect is achieved that the sound seems to come from the train and nevertheless has a good reproduction quality.

 

OSSYNTHS has now developed a system for the scales where the trains are too little to build even a speaker in it. It consists of an array of loudspeakers under the layout and it is named OSSYNTHS Shadow Sound.