Hey guys,
Whats a good speaker to use with my Tsunami 2200? I have it plugged in to a Airwire G3 board. This is my set up for my LGB Mogul.
It seems that the 2200 may be a little limited on it’s speaker draw…
Help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Matt
The 2-amp Tsu2 has a 2 watt amplifier, so it should be able to drive a “typical” speaker we use for large scale without trouble. I’ve got one in my On30 C-16, driving two 1" speakers. It can crank out the volume. (Mine’s set to around 20%). I don’t know what wattage the speakers are rated for; they were factory stock. I haven’t put the Tsu2 in a large scale loco yet, but I’ve got the 2-amp TCS in my LGB Davenport, driving a Visaton 5 watt, 2" speaker. TCS recommends a minimum 1 watt speaker for their decoders. I’d not have a moment’s hesitation hooking the Tsu2 to that same speaker. (Which, by the way, is a pretty kick-butt speaker!)
Which component is driving the mogul’s motor, the Tsu2 or the G3? The Tsu2 doesn’t have a chuff trigger, so if you’re driving the motor through the G3, how are you getting the chuffs? If you’re driving it through the Tsu2, a word of caution–the DCC booster on the G3 is less than that of the previous Airwire boards. I tried driving a Zimo decoder through mine, and it overloaded the booster output. In order to get it to work, I had to feed the output of the G3’s DCC output into a Tam Valley Depot booster, then feed the output of that to the Zimo. Fortunately, this was a workbench test set-up, not a permanent installation, but I was surprised that the DCC output wouldn’t even power up the Zimo. Previous versions did without issue.
Enjoy the Tsu2. Definitely play with the DDE settings on the exhaust. I’ve got 3% grades on my On30, and when my C-16 hits that from running on the flat, you can hear the chuff change as it starts working up the grade, or drop right off as it coasts back down.
Later,
K
Hey Kevin,
The motor is being driven through the G3 board. I am able to get the chuffs by resetting the CV 217: Motor Control Register to 0 if i remember right and then adjusting the exhaust chuff control (114) to match the locomotive. The decoder is set up for 2a w/ 8ohms. The speakers that are generally offered in this size are only about 1-1.5 inches in diameter.
I am not sure if these size speakers will be ample for large scale?
There are many speaker choices out there, depending usually on what will fit. Watch the ohms that you don’t go to a lower number than the decoder can handle.
I’ve had very good results with most of the Peerless speakers out there.
If the decoder is not reading the motor itself, then the chuffs cannot be synced to the rotation of the wheels. I think doing what you describe will–at best–give you a chuff based off of the speed step to which the throttle is set. I also wonder if you’re going to get any variation in the chuff from the DDE since that’s BEMF-dependent. A few years ago, I tried using an older Airwire board to drive my Goose #2, using a Tsunami as the sound source. Try as I might, I could never get the sound to sync up. I ended up driving the Goose with the Tsunami (it draws very little current), and it was 100 times better.
I’ll be interested in seeing/hearing how this combination works for you.
In terms of the speaker, you don’t want the audio amplifier’s capacity to exceed that of the speaker, lest you risk blowing the speaker. However, feeding speaker rated at 5 watts with an amplifier rated at 2 watts isn’t going to be problematic. It may not be “blow the doors off” loud, but in my experience, I’ve never had any troubles. I’ve tested HO-sized decoders with 3" and 4" speakers with no ill effects. Just make sure you stay around 8 ohms on the impedance. Soundtraxx told me 6 ohms will work, too. If you get 4-ohm speaker, use two of them in series.
Later,
K
Visaton speakers come in a number of sizes, and have compact speakers with exceptional bass (for their size).
You can also look at the frequency response chart, and also see the sensitivity (which tells you how loud the speaker will be).
Try here for good prices: http://www.parts-express.com/brand/visaton/502
Greg
Watch sound amp specs closely. I have a decoder that is spec’d at 10 watts but to a 4 ohm load. When using a 8 ohm speaker one will never get the 10 watts!! more like half (5 watts.)
Of course 2 8 ohm speakers in parallel will give the total power output. KISS engines actually had places for 2 speakers in the electrics I worked on.
Hey guys thanks a lot for the help. I ended up going with a three inch, 8 ohm speaker rated at 2a. The max capacity for the tsunami board. I got everything hooked up and it works beautifully. The volume setting is 35 out of the 250 and it’s still plenty loud. Here’s a quick clip in regards to running the tsunami without controlling the motor through through the board and through the airwire instead. It’s just a matter of tuning the exhaust rate to your loco and potentially the variant load as well. It’s a quick fix using cv 114 and just a quick tweak.
The unfortunate aspect of having it set up this way is that you won’t get the true full effect of the board with all of the built in features that work just off of the motor draw alone.