UK n gauge sound models a ripoff??!!

[EtchedPixels]

The hardware may be fairly cheap(*) and getting cheaper but the actual sound file work is not trivial.

It's really hard to get good clean sounds to mix, and if they are of heritage equipment you've got to work with the owner of the locomotive to have any chance of getting good samples. Worse yet in many cases you can't do that for higher speeds except on railtour events because the locomotives live on light railway style lines with a 25mph limit. If you licence old recordings you've got licensing fees to pay - and a model railway at a show is a public performance so you need public performance rights for the recordings in decoders. All this takes a stupid amount of work because copyright clearing and copyright law in the UK is basically broken by design.

Sound is (pardon the pun) largely about volume. You've got to split those up front costs across the fraction of OO modellers that care about sound, and the almost irrelevant number of N gauge people who do.

In terms of quality I tend to agree that speakers under the layout work better for a lot of railway sound, especially on  a smaller layout. Bass is very hard in OO, tricky in N and really you have to go to O Gauge to get good sound (at which point you also get buffers, coupling clang and other stuff for real).

Doing stereo isn't that difficult either. and JMRI supports a lot of audio functionality including mixing in stationary sources based on position, and the virtual sound decoder function, so you can pair your loco DCC with an imaginary sound decoder that is actually in the PC or PI running the layout. It also supports moving the sound around using digitrax transponding or generic occupancy sensors if you have a bigger layout and want the sound to track around.

You can also turn it the other way up where trains are driven to the recordings of the real thing rather than try and mix new sound to match the movement.

Alan
(*) unless the chip shortage starts to bite the components in decoders anyway, then good luck getting anything for 18 months

[east anglian]

Thanks   Railgun   for   the   transferring  my   post

[njee20]

I don't think he did, just pointed out two places it would be better placed.

[east anglian]

Well   someone   did   and   I   thank   them

[LASteve]

Here's an example of re-tooling, limited production runs, potential demand, taxes, fees and potentially trade tariffs affecting product prices - nothing to do with model railways, but I think illustrates the point nicely.

When I moved to the USA I was astonished how much cheaper cars were relative to their UK counterparts; I'm talking about globally available brands like Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan and European manufacturers. The sheer volume of car sales in the US allows dealers to cut margins and still run a sound business. Government-imposed fees and taxes are also much lower.

One example, and I picked this because it's as close to apples-to-apples as you can get. GM, under the Chevy brand, launched the 2020 Corvette in the UK with available right-hand drive. The price of exactly the same car - same trim package, same add-ons has an MSRP in the USA of $76,000 and a list price in the UK of £81,700 which translates to $115,600 at current exchange rates. Pretty much exactly the same car other than where the driver sits, but almost $60,000 more expensive than in the USA. At that price, it would not sell here. The smaller production run for RHD sets price. Corvette buyers aren't being ripped off in the UK; they're paying market price for an in-demand product.

On the real railway, RC&W went out of business because of the Hastings Line CL33's which were ordered. The cost of retooling for a tiny production run didn't make economic sense and the company went under because of that decision.

[Railwaygun]

Well   someone   did   and   I   thank   them

We aim to please

[jpendle]

On the flip side to @LASteve 's comments.
When we moved here from the UK we bought a new house from a developer, so we got to choose everything.
At the carpet shop we were happy to see that US prices for good quality Axminster carpet was roughly the same as in the UK so we asked for a quote, that's when we realised that the prices quoted in the US were per square foot not per square yard!!!!!
Imported wool carpets are 10 times the price because of tariffs.

John P

[N_GaugeModeller]

One thing that has always puzzled me with the cost of sound decoders is, I can buy a Zimo with sounds produced by a UK sound producer for £99 but if I want the same decoder blank, it still costs £99.

If I blow up my decoder I could get it replaced for £15, am sure they will not be replacing it at a loss.

Some things don't add up in the sound world.

Still prices will always be high because model rail is such a small market, when it comes to mass production, if they were able to sell millions of them prices would tumble, because the Chinese would then make and sell the decoders.

Bye

[Ontrack]

This Atlas including sound is well priced @ approx £140, hmm tempting
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303996617951?hash=item46c79c44df:g:~IQAAOSwgm5eB-mD
UK import vat at 20% applies unless you are lucky, so far my German imports since Brexit have been tariff free.

Sound is a great reason to upgrade to dcc apart from the independent loco control on the same track.

Quite like Broadway Ltd's enabled driver English chat banter or station announcements on F19 but I'm not sure if Atlas support this?

[njee20]

It's not about what is "enabled" it's about what is configured as part of the sound file, which will not be about the manufacturer unless they're comissioning the sound project and look for homogeny across their stock, which I'd not really expect.

I personally don't like gimicks around 'banter', toilet announcements, birdsong or anything like that. I want start up, engine sounds, horn, brakes, maybe some door/station noise and that's it!

[emjaybee]

On the flip side to @LASteve 's comments.
When we moved here from the UK we bought a new house from a developer, so we got to choose everything.
At the carpet shop we were happy to see that US prices for good quality Axminster carpet was roughly the same as in the UK so we asked for a quote, that's when we realised that the prices quoted in the US were per square foot not per square yard!!!!!
Imported wool carpets are 10 times the price because of tariffs.

John P

That explains the absence of shag pile under the railway in the 'shed'.

[Newportnobby]

On the flip side to @LASteve 's comments.
When we moved here from the UK we bought a new house from a developer, so we got to choose everything.
At the carpet shop we were happy to see that US prices for good quality Axminster carpet was roughly the same as in the UK so we asked for a quote, that's when we realised that the prices quoted in the US were per square foot not per square yard!!!!!
Imported wool carpets are 10 times the price because of tariffs.

John P

That explains the absence of shag pile under the railway in the 'shed'.

Too easy to lose stuff to the Carpet Monster then