MRC Background Sound Machine

[Cinnibar]

Gentlemen,

I received the new MR a couple of days ago. MRC introduced a new stand alone sound system with city and country sounds. It looks like it may be the answer to the missing outdoor sounds on our layouts. The unit is physically similar to their train sounds system. However this one will have city and country sounds. Crickets, stream, dog barking, wind, rain, car horn, etc. The add doesn’t give price or release date. I know I’m using some small tape players to create cows, waterfall and western town sounds but the tapes tend to run out in the middle of op sessions and are a pain to rewind. This unit may be an answer. I thought that if you haven’t seen it you may want to know about the possibility of ambient sounds on your layouts.

 

[Matthyro]

Sounds interesting and will look for it when it comes out. In the meantime, I go back to some of my old greenfrog tapes that have city or country sounds. My tape player has a continuous playback so side one plays then side 2 then back to side one so it lasts as long as I want. The problem today is you can't buy tape players anymore. Will have to resort to the MRC system of look for CDs and play them as a loop.

 

[SD90]

I was thinking of digitaly recording sounds in a rail yard, locomotives idling, air compressors running and stuff like that, then storing it on an old computer, and playing it back under the layout on real speakers. You could loop the sounds on the computer too. I don't know how good it will work, but I'm going to try it.

Mike.

 

[GNRail]

Another option for sounds is one of those old 286/386 computers everyone seems to have lying around, a sound card and a surf on the net. Awhile back I was looking for sounds and came across some large libraries of obscure sounds. It should be a simple matter to download various sounds and cue them up randomly with media player or something like that.

Garry

 

[SD90]

Where did you find them? I looked, but couldn't find anything good.

Mike.

 

[Ray Marinaccio]

I have a digital sound recorder that I built following an article in one of the model railroad magazines. It can be programmed to play in a loop.

 

[grumbeast]

randomised sounds

just to add to this, if you had a number of different digitised sound clips, it wouldn't be too much work to write a simple program / script that would play random sounds at random intervals.

This might make the whole experience more natural.

Graham

 

[GNRail]

I just type sounds into my favourite search engine and worked through the various hits until i found what I was looking for. Unfortuniately I didn't save any of the links.

TTFN

Garry

 

[Vic]

I've just been using a simple cassette player plugged into my Soundtraxx Sound Systems for years for background noise/sounds. The sounds are recorded on endless loop tapes up to 30 mins...no rewinding! I could add a mixer and more players to get more than one sound at a time but have never done it.

I wonder if that MRC thing will play more than one sound at a time? I like to play with sound on my railroad. It adds a whole new dimension.

 

[TR-Flyer]

Hi all:
Couple of other ideas:

You can use your computer, wherever it is, just add a switch to the speaker output and run one wire to your PC speakers and the other your train room. Program any sound you'd like and then play it. Also, if your PC has a CD player or a DVD/CD player, get some "ambient" CDs with crickets, night sounds, city sounds, etc. and play them.

Get an old am/fm radio, stick it in your model of a radio station on your layout and let ‘er rip.

They often have deals at office depot or office max where you can get FREE nonpowered PC speakers. Hook ‘em up to your old portable radio/cassette player and get better sound.
Regards,
Ted

 

[Cinnibar]

Sounds

I don't have the skills to do all that neat computer stuff you guys are talking about, but it must be pretty nice. I envy you.

Vic,

The add said the sounds like wind, stream, and others can be played continously from left or right speakers via slide switches with things like car horn and dog bark push button activated as sound on sound. Seems like a fairly versatile system