[neil_s_wood]

There has been a lot of discussion about the new Hornby DCC sound Duchess. In order that interested parties can come to a more informed conclusion I have done a series of short clips which cover the functions and various speed settings. We found that it was not at its best at around thirty speed steps however at low and high speed it was good. The short whistle sound clipped at the end, however this was less noticable when the loco was moving. Overall I found it to be a good product and was happy with it. See what you think.

The first two clips cover the functions.





The remaining ones cover various speed settings.











Apologies in advance for the rubbish editing however given the hassle it is to upload these, I'm not going to spend more time uploading revised versions. It took six hours for each of these clips to upload!

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE Was that you doing the comentary? I was expecting adifferent accent.
Have a great Christmas mate and I'll catch you later, I'm sure you'll be here at midnight.

Yes Andii it was. Melbourne is my current address not where I'm from.

You have a good one too mate. I will be here at midnight but it will be 11:00 am on Christmas morning for me. I'm already well into the Christmas spirit at the moment!

Good to see that no-one has noticed the Duchess smacking into the stationary Pendolino just off screen that I forgot to edit out yet.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (dwb @ 25 Dec 2008, 09:51) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I did wonder why the Duchess stopped making progress as she exited stage right

I thought maybe it was you not wanting her to escape before the clip had finished.

One of the features of DCC which we tend not to mention is the ease with which we can simulate real one on one train crashes! I've got some Parkside vans to reassemble after one of mine

David

That's for sure David (DWB), it happens to me all the time. I had moved all the coaches from that track to the outer track and then forgot to put the Duchess on the inner track. By the time I had the camera all set up round the front the last thing I had on my mind was checking to see if there was anything there. That's the difficulty of operating and filming at the same time.

Other David I couldn't manage to sign up for you tube. I had all sosrts of problems so I gave up and went back to Photobucket.

This cost me 130 quid but as I am overseas I get the VAT off. I think it's 149 quid top of the line. This is compared with around 200 quid for a comprable German outline sound loco.

cheers

Neil

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (SRman @ 25 Dec 2008, 14:32) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>If you do edit (or re-edit) the clips, Neil, burn them to CD or DVD and bring them over here and I'll upload them for you. I have found that uploads to photobucket generally don't take that long on my set up. I personally prefer photobucket because the sounds seem to be preserved better than YouTube, although there are many other factors at work here that affect video and sound quality.

The locomotive was very smooth in operation when I saw it; the apparent jerkiness in the clips would be caused by the conversion of video formats to suit the Intenet.
Cheers Jeff, that will be off the agenda for the rest of the day as I've had a fair bit to drink now.

 

[neil_s_wood]

Hi Gary,
good to hear that it works fine on analogue DC, that means I can take it round to friends layouts who do not have DCC. Nice to hear from you by the way.

Unfortunately I could not cover all sounds. One notable effect which I did not discover until after taking these clips was that when you have a reduction of power by about a third you get a nice clanking sound as it coasts. However I think the main purpose has been achieved in that interested parties can now make a realistic assessment of the sound themselves rather than basing a choice on the word of someone else. It's all too easy to get caught up in the wave of hearsay.

Glad it was of use to you Thunder.

cheers

Neil