Loksound Select Direct Micro 73100 availability?

[EL3632]

If this is true, it is great news! I have a large amount of engines (over 350!) I would like to convert to Loksound and just being able to buy the decoders without having to buy a whole new engine (or learning how to use a dremel or milling machine) will help me out a lot financially. I also like installing decoders, so it will give me an opportunity to do so with quality sound products.
I will keep on with other, non-board replacement sound projects for now, such as putting sound in a(nother) LL/Proto 0-8-0 and replacing the paragon decoders in the BLI PA-1s I have, as well as the rest of the F units...

[Maletrain]

Sounds like a German manufacturer of really good decoders (ESU) finally acknowledged that there is a untapped market in USA, and is doing something about it.  I have feeling that Kato's USA Kobo installs of hundreds of ESU decoders played a big role in this.

Lots of US modelers are not happy just using Digitrax, TCS, Soundtraxx, MRC, or NCE decoders.  The European stuff is so much more advanced, with better motor control, and sound/lighting effects.  And in most cases the prices of European-made decoders have become quite competitive wit most Amercan brands.

Which raises the question: Why are we not getting similarly advanced decoders from the "American" manufacturers?

The usual canard that "It costs too much to deal with all the environmental laws, tax laws, retirement mandates, health care mandates, etc. in the U.S. to make anything here, so we have everything made in China, where they can make a mess with low cost labor," seems as if it would also apply to European vendors, as much as to those in the U.S.

[Mark5]

I was under the impression that the major US decoder manufacturers make em in the USA ... (I know Soundtraxx is made in Durango)

[reinhardtjh]

TCS used to advertise that theirs were Made in the USA. I think that's still true.  The WOW decoder instructions state "Made by TCS in the USA."

Digtrax used to make a lot if not all of it's products in house but since the hurricane took out one of their building a couple years ago I'm not sure any more.  A random sampling of their decoder instruction sheets still shows "Made in the U.S.A." so possibly.

I don't know about MRC or NCE.

[conrad]

Sounds like a German manufacturer of really good decoders (ESU) finally acknowledged that there is a untapped market in USA, and is doing something about it.  I have feeling that Kato's USA Kobo installs of hundreds of ESU decoders played a big role in this.

Lots of US modelers are not happy just using Digitrax, TCS, Soundtraxx, MRC, or NCE decoders.  The European stuff is so much more advanced, with better motor control, and sound/lighting effects.  And in most cases the prices of European-made decoders have become quite competitive wit most Amercan brands.

Which raises the question: Why are we not getting similarly advanced decoders from the "American" manufacturers?

The usual canard that "It costs too much to deal with all the environmental laws, tax laws, retirement mandates, health care mandates, etc. in the U.S. to make anything here, so we have everything made in China, where they can make a mess with low cost labor," seems as if it would also apply to European vendors, as much as to those in the U.S.

I was under the impression that the major US decoder manufacturers make em in the USA ... (I know Soundtraxx is made in Durango)

Up until 3 years ago when I found this site all my decoders were from American manufacturers.  In March 2018 I purchased 5 ESU LokPilot Nanos and 2 Digitrax DZ126's.  The cost difference was significant, $32 vs. $18.  Am I happy, yes.  The ESU's perform better and are smaller.  Do both brands work satisfactorily, yes.  In fact, even all my American sound decoders (Digitrax, Soundtraxx & MRC) perform ok.  Not great but ok.

I think we Americans are fixated on cost and this is what the American manufacturers respond to.

The internet gives us the freedom to choose from a wide range of value and price.

Conrad

[Maletrain]

I still don't think we have an answer to why a European vendor has decided to make higher function/cost decoders for the U.S. market than the U.S. vendors have chosen to make.

Even if price is the driving issue, why would Europeans be able to sell higher priced decoders here than Americans can sell here?

[tehachapifan]

I still don't think we have an answer to why a European vendor has decided to make higher function/cost decoders for the U.S. market than the U.S. vendors have chosen to make.

Even if price is the driving issue, why would Europeans be able to sell higher priced decoders here than Americans can sell here?

If an American mfr. made a sound decoder that fit into N scale narrow-hood diesels, was similarly-priced, of the same level of quality and functionality and had a similarly-vast catalog of (quality) sound files, my guess is they would sell just as good. For me, this would have to include the ability to change the prime mover sound speed so you can have MU'd units that aren't "phasing" (AFAIK, ESU is the only sound decoder that has this feature).

[conrad]

I still don't think we have an answer to why a European vendor has decided to make higher function/cost decoders for the U.S. market than the U.S. vendors have chosen to make.

Even if price is the driving issue, why would Europeans be able to sell higher priced decoders here than Americans can sell here?

As to why, my guess is that they were already invested in European decoder technology and thus were able to apply that technology to American pc boards.  The R&D, software development and testing were already done.  From their point of view, I think, it was just an "expanding market".

Note that they also provide decoders for Australia.

As to higher priced European decoders selling in America I'd look to BMW, Audi, Benz, et al.

Conrad

[Mark5]

Even if price is the driving issue, why would Europeans be able to sell higher priced decoders here than Americans can sell here?

For me personally, it is simple: ESU was vastly superior to any other decoder that I was fortunate enough to test at my old hobby shop job.

As to why US decoder makers have been unable to make comparable product - your guess is as good as mine.

Mark

[CRL]

Probably for the same reason that European and Japanese quality control forced the American car manufacturers to improve their product.

[wazzou]

Probably for the same reason that European and Japanese quality control forced the American car manufacturers to improve their product.

^^^ This.

[Jim Starbuck]

German engineering...yaahhh.

[mu26aeh]

If anyone is in need, my LHS has 3 73100 in stock as of this afternoon. Mainline Hobby Supply in Blue Ridge Summit, PA

[jdcolombo]

I noted in another thread that when I first decided to add sound to my N-scale LL Berks, the decoder I chose was the Soundtraxx Tsunami.  I tried ESU's V3.5 decoder at the time because of its size, but the steam sound was horrible, and it required a 100-ohm speaker, unlike the Tsunami, which was perfectly happy with normal 4/8/16 ohm speakers that were readily available from Digikey, Mouser, etc. 

But the Tsunami, and it's sibling the micro-Tsunami, were too large to fit in any N-scale hood diesel.  In 2013, I went searching for a sound decoder that I thought *might* fit in a hood diesel and found the ESU LokSound Select micro.  It was just a hair too wide for the inside of the shell of the Atlas RS11 I wanted to install it in, but I figured that I could overcome that with some judicious sanding of the shell.  And a company called Knowles made a 9mm x 16mm speaker that I could could wrap in .030 styrene and just fit inside the shell.  No US company made anything that even came close to ESU's product in terms of size.  At the time, I really didn't know anything about ESU's technology - all I knew was that they made a sound decoder that would fit (more or less) in my RS11, and that I could get it with a sound file that supposedly was recorded from an actual ALCo prime mover.

The installation worked.  The sound from the combo of the ESU LokSound Select and the Knowles Fox speaker was light-years better than I had hoped for - indeed, it sounded far better than HO-scale sound installations I had heard at friends' layouts.  After that success, I started putting the ESU Select micro in all my hood diesels - GP7/9's, SD9's, RS11's, RS3's (those were a challenge), and even a couple of VO1000 switchers.  Nothing made by US decoder manufacturers would fit and none sounded nearly as good (for diesels - the Tsunami remained my decoder of choice for my steam engines, although I have since switched all of those to LokSound as well). 

Why didn't a US manufacturer sell something like the Select Micro?  My theory is that Europeans have very modestly-sized houses (actually, most live in apartments in what we'd call a condominium arrangement here in the US) and hence were very early adopters of N scale (which was "invented" by Arnold of Germany).  The Europeans, accordingly, pushed the DCC envelope for N-scale stuff at a time when US manufacturers mostly still saw their market as HO scale.  N scale stuff didn't always run as well as HO-scale stuff, so motor control circuits had to be designed to overcome some crappy running characteristics, which the HO-centric US manufacturers didn't need to do.  Everything the Europeans did got miniaturized to the Nth degree (literally) because that is what their market demanded.

If you model in HO scale, the Soundtraxx Tsunami-2 and the TCS WOW are terrific decoders.  You just can't fit them in N-scale hood diesels.
So ESU dominated the market, having the foresight to add US-prototype sound files to their "system."  Zimo could have been a successful competitor in this market, but they never brought the breadth of US-prototype sound files that ESU did.  And by the time Zimo got more serious about the US sound decoder market, ESU already had inked contracts with multiple manufacturers for OEM sound units.

The saga of DCC sound decoders would make a good case study for a top business school, IMHO.  It wasn't (in my view) so much that US products were inferior to begin with (or even now); they simply chose to chase a different market (HO) than the Europeans did (N), and as a result of that, fell behind technologically.

John C.

[CRL]

Except I doubt that the American manufactured HO decoders are equal to the European HO decoders either. ESU & Lenz have more linear motor control than any of the American decoders based on the speed profiles I’ve seen on other sites.