# Tsunami playable whistle help needed



## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

Dear friends,

I have a Tsumani heavy steam sound decoder on my 2-8-8-2.

I tried setting my CV 47 to 127 and setting activating playable wheel on the NCE powercab.

The resulting whistle is certainly playable but sounds really like...out of breath and weak/funny sounding whistle.

What can I do to the CV settings to make it sound better? Or is playable whistle generally not realistic with current decoder tecnology?

Cheers
Musicwerks


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## Brakeman Jake (Mar 8, 2009)

Forum members probably could be of better help if we knew what you're trying to achieve.

Tsunami's CV47 is a whistle setting for analog operation and,that I know of,you're running DCC.With DCC,it's recommended to have analog operation settings turned off (CV47=0 in this case) so that they don't interfere.

If what you want is an alternate whistle,then CV115 lets you choose up to eight different ones.

Sound realism and quality is another problem decoder designers have to handle.Most steam sounds are recordings of the prototype's sounds.Since most steamers have disappeared for quite a while,having fresh recordings is impossible in most cases,so they have to rely on archive recordings of sometimes doubtful quality at best,assuming they can find them.The other solution is to create new sounds from nothing.I'm no sound tech,but I can see the problem facing the decoder designer trying to synthesize a sound that he probably never heard by himself.


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## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

Thanks Jake.

I think I will try setting the CV value less than 127, I wonder what will happen? (less modulation of the whistle/horn?)


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## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

I wanna to make the whistle sound to modulate a little so it sounds more realistic and not only with a single pitch. (Old school music synthesizer players will know what I mean)


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## Brakeman Jake (Mar 8, 2009)

If you haven't already,I suggest you download Soundtraxx's Steam Technical Reference manual from their website.Tsunami decoders have many sound fine tuning CVs allowing to modify mixings,equalizer and reverb (CV119 & onward).Personally,with no accoustics knowledge,I haven't tinkered with them and left them at default settings.However,I suspect someone with such knowledge can achieve surprising results.


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## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

With regards to playable whistle, I had a pleasant surprise.

My Loksound Select decoder fared better in playable whistle. It sounds better than Tsunami in terms of playable whistle (with the wheel), volume of the whistle is not affected. However, like the Tsunami, the short whistle is deactivated when playable whistle is programmed.


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## Patrick1544 (Apr 27, 2013)

musicwerks said:


> I wanna to make the whistle sound to modulate a little so it sounds more realistic and not only with a single pitch. (Old school music synthesizer players will know what I mean)


How about adding some Pitch bend?


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## musicwerks (Jan 4, 2012)

Loksound decoder sounds good in NCE with pitch bending, better than Tusnami


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