Hi everyone, just a quick question, are the Thumper sounds in LSE different to those in IE? I saw a video on YouTube of a Class 201 on LSE and it's sounds are more realistic than the 80/450 Class ones in IE. Can someone on the MT Team please send me these sounds or will i have to wait to get LSE for xmas? I just want to try them out on the NIR Thumpers. Reply soon, James

The Thumper sounds came from the same person, so should be virtually identical, although the IE ones might be updated.

Due to our publishing contract no one from MT will be sending any items from within any MT product.

Ok, thanks for your help.

The sounds are from the same recording of a former Connex Hampshire Class 205 and so were correct for the LSE Thumpers. The 80/450 class sounds in IE use the same basic sounds but may sound slightly different because the sound files have additional rail-wheel sounds in the background, and the additional background noise does affect the overall mix and volume.

However, the engine sounds were recorded live between Hastings and Ashford.

So the sounds in both IE and LSE are from the same source?

From the same live recording but the sms files have different "mixes" of background sounds like brakes, horns and wheel/rail hiss and at different levels which is possibly why they sound slightly different.

There are four things that affect how sounds work in MSTS, the original wav sound clips, the sms file (the short program which tells MSTS what sounds to use, at what frequency, and at what volume, and also tells MSTS which sounds to drop when you move your sliders down to lower sound levels), the way MSTS delivers sound and the hardware on the computer. When MSTS was produced sound cards were not as advanced as they are now, so it compromised heavily on the quality of sound it could handle. Even when we produced LSE and IE, we had to devise the SMS so that it wouldn't cause older, less well equipped computers to crash, which hampered the size, complexity and number of sounds that could be used. We know that some of the sms files I devised for Enterprise did cause some computers to crash unless the quantity of sounds was minimised because I was using multiple sound events running in parallel to try and overcome some of MSTS's limits, so ultimately the biggest barrier to getting sounds to work in MSTS is the rather old fashioned way MSTS deals with sound, which isn't on a par with modern games (but there again modern computers are much better than when NSTS was launched seven years ago). You could have brilliant, 192bit stereo, crystal clear source sound samples to work with, but MSTS will only produce external sounds that are 16 bit mono at 11025mHz and as such will always sound a bit Eartha Kitt by the time you've edited them to be capable of use in MSTS.

At the time LSE was relased it got reviewed in "Model Rail" magazine and they praised the "Thumper" sounds, advising people to turn off the li9ghts, turn up the sounds and go for a drive, so they seemed to be impressed!

Ok... Thanks for that info. Your add-ons are great products. I'm a basic soundset maker which is a big accomplishment at 14. I'm nearly finished my Electrostar soundset. If you want you can use them in your Electrostar Stockpack. But as i only live in Ireland they may not be completely realistic but they seem to be realistic from what i can hear.