what British sound chips are you using

I have 23 South West Digital Sound chips

I have 2 Howes sound chips

I have 3 Bachman sound chips

I have 0 dc Kits sound chips

I have 2 Olivia's trains sound chips

I haxe 0 Home produced sound chips

I have 0 Mr.Soundguy (dcc supplies) sound chips

I have 1 Hornby sound chip (included this as they are to be released this week)

I have 0 other sound chips (please state)

I had a Mr.Soundguy class 33 but sold it on as it was poor.
The Dc kits class 37 i had turned out to be the same project on the whole as the Olivia's class 37, the project I was told coming from the sharing that goes on in the dccsound yahoo group. Its now a swd mk 4 class 37.

Dear Piemanlarger,

Both ESU and ZIMO have lists of available sound projects on their respective website :-

ESU Sound Table

ZIMO Sound Table

I had a quick look at the ESU list and did not find many UK sounds there. it seems that you have to go to UK suppliers for these (SWD, Howes, Mr Soundguy, Olivia's Trains etc.). Similarly, only Olivia's Trains are advertising UK Sounds on ZIMO at the moment, but hopefully that will improve in the near future.

To answer the original questions, I have 2 ZIMO Sound Chips.

I have 2 South West Digital Sound chips

I have 0 Howes sound chips

I have 2 Bachman sound chips

I have 0 dc Kits sound chips

I have 0 Olivia's trains sound chips

I haxe 0 Home produced sound chips

I have 0 Mr.Soundguy (dcc supplies) sound chips

I have 1 Hornby sound chip (included this as they are to be released this week)

I have 17 other sound chips (please state)

2 from Richard Johnson DCC Concepts

the rest are not UK sound

1 Australian QSI

4 US outline; 3 loksound, 1 QSI

11 German outline.

2 of the above are QSI which ain't great; the rest are Loksound.

John (Woodal),

Howes and SWD use Loksound. Olivias use Loksound and Zimo. They just record UK loco sound onto them.

I have to say there are still some huge gaps in the UK sound market. It is still really focussed on diesel. Modern DMU and EMU's are also lacking. A Voyager sound decoder would be good. Steam is largely untapped. Obviously it's harder to do steam sound but the demand is definately there.

Just to qualify the record, Using ESU we can actually do almost ANY UK steam locomotive with correct sound file content and some electrics/diesels. We also do specific sound files for Australian and US loco's.... Anything we can find enough data on / original recordings of can be done well.

We create custom sound files to order, with over 90% of our sound decoders going out with special set-up, and loco's we install are also tuned properly before they leave. We charge no more than for a standard loksound decoder, and in reality our price for this bespoke service is no higher than from a local UK retailer.

For example, if Ebaykal wanted a specific Turkish Loco and had some recordings, we could recreate it well for him and supply it on an ESU decoder.

We don't advertise other than by referral really as we are always busy with this sort of business and we only have so many hours in the day! We do many of our sound files to add to locomotives which we have customised for clients with correct prototypical lighting and other special detail work too...

The cost is generally in time for us - it may be a month or two to properly research, create and deliver for special orders, as we research each in detail to get it right as it can be. We don't ever create "generic" sound files - we like to know the when as well as the loco type, and preferably the specific loco number we are working on, in case the loco concerned was a special case, as many are.

(for example, 8f's were make by LNER and GWR during the war and had difference... and WD loco's were also made in several workshops/regions, and in some cases whistles were different, In general, LMS Loco's may have retained LMS hooters or have a BR whistle added later... etc etc...)

Our new Duchess sound file includes multiple options within the Stanier whistle and many other options including wheel slip ....and like our LNER 3 cylinder sound it sounds right at speed, something others do not usually achieve with anything over 2 cylinders...

regards

Richard