# QSI's latest and greatest...



## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! 

http://www.qsisolutions.com/news/11...30811.html

Look for May/June '11 release. 

Of interesting note - they plan to make it compatible with Aristo's Revolution controller. (Due September '11ish.) I'd imagine you're going to lose a fair deal of functionality (similar to Phoenix on the Revolution vs. DCC control) but it's great news for those invested in the Revolution who want QSI sound. 

Later,

K


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

A manufacturer that makes an announcement with SPECS! Wiring diagrams! I'm liking QSI more and more every day! 

Robert


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## 6323 (Jan 17, 2008)

Could be interesting! Might have to look into 
converting my GP40's and maybe the K27 to 
the new boards when available!


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

I must say, the features listed don't get me all excited and neither do the few specs they posted. 
Can anyone hazard a guess who the Brand A and Brand B systems are they compare the Titan against? 

Knut


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

If you look at the current specs, it says they are HO decoders, I'd guess Tsunami and another brand. 

Remember QSI makes decoders for all scales pretty much... HO is the biggest market. 

Greg


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## Axel Tillmann (Jan 10, 2008)

Definately can't be ZIMO







neither HO or G-scale.


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

We shall see if indeed they do show up in June for the G-scale locos. I sure hope so as I'm 4 decoders short for my latest loco additions. Later RJD


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## dieseldude (Apr 21, 2009)

Awesome! But, why stereo? Stereo creates an audio image between 2 points (left and right speakers). The train engine is in its own environment and moves left and right on its own. I hear it in stereo (so to speak), as it moves around my yard. Maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, looks like a great unit.


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By dieseldude on 09 Mar 2011 09:23 AM 
Awesome! But, why stereo?


Because it's twice as good as mono of course..............

That wirite-up didn't do very much for the credibility of QSI.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

I never understood the stereo thing. 

I'm disappointed that the USAT unit is TBD... one of the major hangups cited was figuring out how to make it work in both the Aristo socket, and yet have all the lighting functionality for USAT. 

Sigh, more waiting. 

Greg


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## RIrail (May 5, 2008)

I noticed there was no mention of synchronized chuff/smoke.










Steve


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

Let me take a stab at the stereo thing, although this isn't a "definitive" answer. A friend of mine who was really into musical recording explained it to me: 

We all know a speaker makes sound by moving air, and moving its diaphram up and down. It's a given. What happens if you have two sounds at the same time, say a guitar and a piano (or a chuff and a bell) and for each sound to be faithfully reproduced, the speaker has to be in different positions. She also explained why you can't reproduce "square wave" sounds with one speaker for exactly the same reason. 

So, the best solution is to send one channel to one speaker (chuff) and send the other channel to the second speaker (bell). Then each speaker produces the sounds precisely, instead of the "blending" that occurs with one speaker, giving you two distinct sounds, that in reality come from two distinct sources. 

Greg explained to me the whole "monophonic" vs "polyphonic" thing, and I asked my friend for more detail and she explained that most music is recorded in 32 tracks, or channels, and then blended together electronically, but for demo purposes she played a typical stereo DVD and then an electronic file that played 32 channels to 32 seperate speakers. 

If you closed your eyes, you'd think you were in the room with a live band, and the stereo recording sound absolutely bland. 

Like she explained, we're "monophonic" so we can't sing at two seperate octaves and harmonize with ourselves, which is why duets and quartets sound so much better. 

Hmmm, wonder where I could put 32 speakers in a K-27 tender... J/K! 

So, you'll hear an improvement, especially when multiple sounds are playing, especially if it sends low sounds to one speaker and high ones to another. 

Comments and thoughts on this? I'm no expert on this, and honestly, I'm kind of paraphrasing and simplifying what she explained, she kind of took a cognitive dump on me... 

Robert


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Robert, 
I realize you're only paraphrasing what you have been told, but a lot of it doesn't make any sense. 
If one needs a separate speaker for the chuff sound and bell sound because one speaker can't faithfully reproduce both at the same time, I wonder how a speaker is ever capable of producing an orchestral passage where the sound is far more complex than any combination of chuff and bell. 
Even the comment that if one speaker only reproduces the bell it can do so more precisely doesn't make sense. The speaker doesn't know this is a bell sound - it just gets electrical signals from the amplifier and translates that into movements of the speaker cone. If you kake a look at a bell waveform on a scope you will see that this in itself is a very complex wave aqnd if you had never seen that waveform on a scopr before or had an audible indication what it was, you would have no clue that this was a bell sound. 
Monophonic and polyphonic has nothing to do with the number of speakers used, it's related to the number of separate audio channels that can be played by the device, here the sound card, simultaneously. 
So yeah, in a sense one can argue humans are "monophonic" generating sound because we have one mouth and one set of vocal cords and we are "tereophonic" because we have two ears. But that gives us spacial perception of sound, it's nit that one ear hears the chuff and the other the bell. 
Raw audio recordings are made using a multitude of microphones each one typically recorded on a separate channel, that's true. But the prime purpose is that the volume and maybe the audio envelope of each channel can be individually controlled. 
If one really wanted to use more speakers, what would have made more sense to improve the sound quality of model train sounds is to use a separate woofer and tweeter. That will increase the quality since each speaker would be designed to handle a specific frequency band. 
I was a bit surprised that the frequency band quoted with the new QSI unit is only 4 - 8 KHz. That frequency limit will cut off some harmonics that gices a bell for instance its distinct characteristic. Playing the bell through one speaker and the chuff through another isn't going to make any difference if the limitation is the frequency range itself. 

Knut


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

In just a fewer words: monophonic is used a couple of ways, to mean a single speaker for making sounds as opposed to stereo (with 2 speakers). 

Polyphonic does not mean more speakers in most usages, it means that more than one sound can exist at one time, usually meaning there are several sources and then they are "mixed" to fewer outputs, but the key is that more than one sound can exist at one time. So when you hear the chuffs quit on a loco when the whistle is blown, you do not have a polyphonic system. Most people say "not polyphonic" instead of "being monophonic" to avoid confusion with the other use of the word. 

Stereo normally is done to locate sound "images" and to give a 3 dimensional effect, as we hear stereophonically. It's not used as a crossover, lows to the right speaker, highs to the left. 

Greg


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## Cougar Rock Rail (Jan 2, 2008)

Does Aristocraft own shares in QSI? Because there sure seems to be a lot of 'Polkspeak' going on here! 

Keith


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By Greg Elmassian on 09 Mar 2011 02:04 PM 
Stereo normally is done to locate sound "images" and to give a 3 dimensional effect, as we hear stereophonically. *It's not used as a crossover, lows to the right speaker,* highs to the left. 


Greg,

If you're referring to my post...
I'm not suggesting that "stereo" means sending highs to one speaker and lows to the other.
What I'm saying is that if QSI wants to improve the sound quality and use two speakers, then adding an active crossover in the sound module and driving a woofer and tweeter separately would make more sense.
Nothing to do with "stereo", that arrangement would still be a mono set up.

"Stereo" is the wrong terminology for what QSI is describing anyway as you pointed out; I find that concept of sending say the chuff to one speaker and the bell to the second speaker rather strange, maybe it helps to reduce IM distortion but I doubt it.


Knut


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By Cougar Rock Rail on 09 Mar 2011 02:21 PM 
Does Aristocraft own shares in QSI? Because there sure seems to be a lot of 'Polkspeak' going on here! 


Keith,

You do have a good point there.

Knut


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

Ha AC could care less about QSI. As seen by the the problems with the PCC car to do a QSI install. They are out to sell the revco. Later RJD


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

Knut, perhaps I wasn't clear on the concept of using seperate channels for bell and chuff, and that was really just an example. If you listen to most stereo recordings, you'll find the music on one channel, and the voice on the other. Because accoustically, they're far different. If you send orchestra sound to a speaker, it's blended. All of the sounds are reproduced by a single speaker, and it cannot reproduce the sound precisely, because the speaker can really only reproduce one sound. 

An entire orchestra is different, because there are dozens of sources of sound. 

One of the things Greg has pointed out is that it makes far more sense to put the speaker in the smokebox instead of the tender - because that's where the sound comes from. If you use the stereo effect the way I described, with one speaker providing steam sounds, and one providing bell sounds, since they're so different, you will logically get better reproduction of each sound than you would if both sounds were coming through the same speaker. 

Seems pretty straightforward to me, but like I said, I was paraphrasing. I'm sure volumes have been written on the subject... 

But from a musical standpoint, a stereo recording is far superior to a mono one. 

Thanks, Robert


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

That's not actually right--"stereo" requires two speakers at a minimum. In a stereo recording you can "pan" an instrument or a voice to one side or the other. But it would be very rare to have the voice in one speaker and the music in another. It'd sound weird and un-natural.

The idea behind stereo originally was to capture a band/singer as they would have sounded, if you were sitting in the middle of the room facing them. Sinatra is in the center, and the violins are on one side and the brass is on another, but it's usually a pretty subtle effect--you hear the brass in both speakers, but it's a bit louder in one. You hear Sinatra in both, which is why it sound like he's in the middle. Just like in real life--your left ear hears the instruments on the left as louder, but it still hears the instrument son the right. 


With a rock band, you generally have the bass dead center, and the drums spread a little, and other instruments to the side a bit, with the singer also in the middle. This is part of what's called "mixing." It cna make a huge difference to, say, take the keyboards and pan them left or right--it "opens up" the sound


I had a very hard time understand what QSI is talking about with stereo. You would need two speakers, and it would be hard to get enough physical separation between them to hear the stereo effect. If you has a really long loco, with one speak in the boiler and another in the tender, yes, you could get some stereo effect. But to make it work, you'd have to have control over the mix. But if you had, say, an aristo pacific, you could have one speaker in the front of the boiler and one in the tender, and then you could mix the sounds so that the whistle was in the back speaker and the chuff was in the front. But it's not clear to me if that's what they mean or not. 


I'm a big QSI fan, and I'm looking forward to hearing this, but I wish it was more clear.


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Here's an example--this is a dumb little loop I recorded with three instruments. In the first example, all three instruments are panned the middle of the stereo spectrum

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/samples/allflat.mp3 

It might work better if you just cut and paste the link

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/samples/allflat.mp3 


In the second link, they have been panned to the left and right a lot more--they've been "spread" as if they are on a big stage. 


http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/samples/spread.mp3

You won't really hear the difference that well unless the speakers you hear it on are far apart. If you try it with headphones, you'll hear it right away. This kind of wide "spread" is really popular in pop tunes today, and QSI may have mixed in a lot of "spread," which means if you use two speakers, you'll get an effect like you hear in those two clips


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

I have 5.1 speakers, so yes, definitely, it sounds different. Reading through the information on the QSI website, it seems maybe they're saying the sounds are recorded in quad, and even two speakers close together wouldn't sound so bad. 

Personally, I'd like someone to make a little tiny sound system that would play the bumps, creaks, growns and sounds of a freight car. Of course, it would have to be cheap enough to put in every freight car, and probably controlled by a mercury switch, or something like that. Maybe even include cattle, sheep, pig and passenger sounds. 

Hmmm, do I detect a market here? 

Thanks, Robert


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## RailCat (Apr 10, 2009)

Darn! It looks like they left out manual diesel throttle notching again. Or did I overlook it somewhere? I would be willing to try QSI again if they had it just for their Nathan 3-chime horn. Soundtraxx and Phoenix have manual notching. 


By the way, There used to be a small sound unit for large scale stock cars. I think you could get it with cow, sheep, or chicken sounds. It had an inertia switch that would vary the sounds from gentle and contented ones to agitated ones depending on how the car was handled. I don't remember who made it or if it is still available.

Scott


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By rdamurphy on 09 Mar 2011 06:29 PM 
Knut, perhaps I wasn't clear on the concept of using seperate channels for bell and chuff, and that was really just an example. If you listen to most stereo recordings, you'll find the music on one channel, and the voice on the other. Because accoustically, they're far different. If you send orchestra sound to a speaker, it's blended. All of the sounds are reproduced by a single speaker, and it cannot reproduce the sound precisely, because the speaker can really only reproduce one sound. 


Robert,

Where do you get the idea from that a speaker can only produce one sound?

For some reason you think a "sound" is some unique identity and if a second "sound" is played through the same speaker the sound can't be reproduced precisely.

That's what I read out of your comment.

A sound is made up of a collection of many frequencies at different intensities. You can see that visually with a spectrum analyser. So even with a single "sound", a chuff, whistle, vocal whatever, a speaker has to reproduce many different frequencies at the same time. If you add a second "sound" to play at the same time as the first sound over the same speaker, all you do is change the frequency and intensity distribution that the speaker has to produce.

Maybe to put it a bit more simply - aspeaker has no knowledge of the sound it's supposed to reproduce, it doesn't care if it's a single bell or a bell, chuff, whistle and someone talking at the same time.

Now if the idea behind the two speakers is to localize the sound so that the coal shoveling sound comes out of the speaker under the tender and the whistle comes from the speaker locted near the whistle and the chuff sound comes from a speaker at the front of the engine, that would, at least theoretically, make just a teeny, tiny bit of sense.
But in practice you would only notice that if you're really close to the engine where your ears can distinguish which part of the engine the sound comes from.

However, that's not what QSI is descibing.

Knut


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## dieseldude (Apr 21, 2009)

Robert- Check out ittproducts.com. They make animal sounds for your cars. -Kevin.


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By rdamurphy on 09 Mar 2011 08:39 PM 
I have 5.1 speakers, so yes, definitely, it sounds different.


Well, yes.

But that is because a 5.1 system tries to duplicate the whole spacial sound of the original recording.
You have speakers all around you, they need to be located in the appropriate places and you need to separate them a minimum distance to get the proper effect.

Two speakers, say two feet apart in an engine, won't even give you a basic stereo effect unless you're quite close.


But "stereo" isn't what QSI is describing even though they call it that. The comment was that the chuff and bell (their examples) need to be reproduced by different speakers so that they...................
well I don't really know what. 

Knut


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

I think what it really comes down to is they're recording stereo sounds, and they need a stereo unit to reproduce them. We're probably trying to make it more complicated than it is. 

Bottom line, will they sound better than the last generation?

Robert


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

According to Lee Wheelbarger on the QSI discussion forum, they will sound several orders of magnitude better than anything out there. I have no idea if this is true, but he has made some pretty big claims!


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## Axel Tillmann (Jan 10, 2008)

or















Genius or Hype

Oh my God. Give me a break. So let's say our engine is 2' long, then you have to lower your self down to squirrel level and remain 2 feet away from the center of the engine to have a stereo experience (and that asssumes that you actually have space right in the two ends of the engine), and let us even say there would be something that comes from the front of the engine, versus the back of the engine, then you have to walk on squirrel level with the engine to hear that effect (other then on your test bench of course or in a diorama on rollers). But the 2' rule only applies under most perfect acoustic conditions. Our engines hardly provide room for decent sized speakers as is it (one of the most amazing things in G-scale, there there is often not enough room, e.g. a steam engine, so people go over and put the speaker in the tender away from the chuff sound generating engine, and they don't care because at >10 feet away you can't locate this anyhow. Now fitting two larger speakers to make it worth my while for the "stereo" experience I have to fit two speakers into the engine.

Considering the old rule of HIFI systems that audiophile need to consider to spend $100-1000 on speakers for every dollar spend on the amplifier, now you are looking at doing the opposite and because you need to fit smaller speakers with lesser dynamic range and lesser frequency response into the engine. - NOPE, that doesn't make sense. A nice marketing gimmick - yes, - meaningful - NO.

The reason why your 5.1 or 7.1 systems sound better then the original 2 speaker solutions is because you are in a enclosed room and have a special dimension that can deal with it including yourself sitting right in the center of your arrangement. If you wanted a true 5.1 (7.1 experience) in the layout you need to deploy Bose garden speakers record sounds (including your moving engines) have a computer program that receives feedback on your movement and you are given the spacial sound right in the middle of your layout. That power by a 6x 1000Watt system, you will be able to rock the earth and when a SD45 comes close to your position the earth is going to roar, and the windows will vibrate.

I have been in marketing all my live, while I did strive to identify customer needs and cater to them, I have also learned how they sell BS ideas and come up with the biggest arguments why you can't live without it.









When I see that, I become leary why the hype of "nonsense" versus substance.

Here is the reason - because we can - the chipset for amplifiers in stereo is hardly more expensive then the chipset for mono amplifiers (within the same quality range). However, there are huge differences in the quality of the chipsets themselves leading to up to 800% price difference between the cheapest and the most expensive. Stereo versus mono is not the issue, quality is.
Also separation bell from e.g. Diesel motor sound out to two different speakers doesn't make for a different acoustic experience. Boy if that would be the case, then we would need a different speaker for every instrument in a orchestra, but my violin still sound found even if the big base drums are coming through, and both are more challenging the Diesel and Bell sound.

I rather see the engineers fine tune motor control, lighting functions, furnish multiple different voltage outputs, have railcom implemented, offer direct servo connection in order to control e.g. decouplers ...... and so on.


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

My wife has a small boombox on the counter in the kitchen. It has stereo speakers on both ends. It isn't as big as my K-27. the speakers are about a foot apart... 

Robert


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

It could certainly work in the right situation, even though it's also true that stereo effects depend on proximity. But if the whistle came from the back of the loco, and the chguff from the front, you would hear that--the extent to which you heard it depending on things like how close you were. I have a couple steam locos with speakers in the boiler--you can definitely tell the difference between those and the locos with speakers in the tender, even from some distance away. The ears are really good and telling us where sounds are coming from.

I'm skeptical of hype, but I'll be extremely interested to hear these when they come out


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## blueregal (Jan 3, 2008)

Posted By rdamurphy on 09 Mar 2011 08:39 PM 
I have 5.1 speakers, so yes, definitely, it sounds different. Reading through the information on the QSI website, it seems maybe they're saying the sounds are recorded in quad, and even two speakers close together wouldn't sound so bad. 

Personally, I'd like someone to make a little tiny sound system that would play the bumps, creaks, growns and sounds of a freight car. Of course, it would have to be cheap enough to put in every freight car, and probably controlled by a mercury switch, or something like that. Maybe even include cattle, sheep, pig and passenger sounds. 

Hmmm, do I detect a market here? 

Thanks, Robert 

Here's a clickable link to the company that do several sounds $35 each a little pricey, but ifin ya wants it guess not. Somewhere here awhile back someone posted an electronic device that was less than this one, and you could record your own sounds for it, making it a more economical device, unless you are rich and don't care what the price is!! Regal



Sounds for Model Railroad Layout


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

The one I saw worked with a mercury switch, and I'm really more interested in wheel, track, and the usual sounds a wooden car makes when moving, rather than cattle or sheep... 

Thanks, Robert


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## Nicholas Savatgy (Dec 17, 2008)

http://www.phoenixsound.com/library/other/sfx.htm


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