Factory Sound Locos Too Loud?

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Some loco manufacturers are releasing their factory sound equipped locos with maximum volume. This may be done to impress the listener but the results produce a highly distorted garbled sound that is too loud and unrealistic. Furthermore the sound decoders are running much hotter - not desirable!

The QSI equipped Proto 2000 0-8-0 Heritage and the MRC Sound used in the new Athearn Genesis F Series are good examples. In both cases reducing the volume by 25% produced reasonable volume and much less distortion.

The QSI units produce much better fidelity and clarity when the volume is lowered and in general perform noticeably better that the MRC Sound equipped Athearn Genesis.

Also, many users have reported that the Genesis F units would not program? We tried and determined that the decoder does not read back by design ... the small print ...
You can write to program by ignoring the readback, this worked for NCE and Digitrax, Lenz required the Register Mode.

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