Tsunami 2 VS Loksound SDF40-2 sound comparison

In this video we are using 2 athearn genesis sdf40-2's. One has the factory equipped tsunami 2 with dual 28mm speakers. The other was a dcc ready version with a esu 21 pin select sound decoder and single 28mm esu speaker. Right away there was a noticeable difference in the lighting and the prime mover sound file. We will be doing a more in-depth video on the loksound file and demonstrate the 3 different horns for atsf & the 3 different horns for the amtrak sdf40-2's. Stay tuned for the full review on the Athearn Genesis SDF40-2 with factory equipped sound as well.

[@markteague8889]

I'm a total noob, but the LokSound seemed to sound more realistic to my ears. Maybe, that's just because it was at a more realistic volume for the scale.

[@heckingaxle6618]

you can modify the sound files some how.

[@davidspring2699]

Really nice model, great job showing all the ins and outs of the model.

[@enriqueaguilar4892]

I like the DCC n Sound technology for Ho scale which I was looking for years ago until early 2000 when it was available n now it gets better everyday when you invest sound technology even in o gauge, o scale, s scale, n garden scale, n the one's that you can ride on your property they're worth the investment everyday n upgrading sound technology all the time.

[@MaxSupercars]

I like the ESU more. Notching down from 8 to idle is more smooth without relicts between notches like by Soundtraxx.

[@zurekc]

Those relics are irritating.

[@roryhand6650]

The relics really piss me off. It means, even with momentum on, often bringing the loco to a stop, it's then sat there after stopping with the engine still notching down and down. It's seriously making me consider saving up and replacing all my tsunami's and econamis with loksound.

[@stephenfuchs787]

A tsunami 2 can control all the brightness issues you discuss, Athearn chose how it is set up and that is not a soundtraxx issue. An over the counter Tsunami 2 has many many horn options, again, maybe Athearn fudged with calling a true Tsuanmi2, I have a RTR Athearn with sound and it is not an Econami as claimed. A better comparison would have two Over the counter decoders to install.

[@moestrei]

The thing is that the 2 original speakers probably did not have a sound chamber. The ESU 23mm has, but you really need to seal the 6 slots on it to make it air tight. Best is (currently) the LokSound with those Zimo speakers with 2 smartphone drivers in one housing wired in parallel (and phase correct) to 4 ohms. Nothing short of amazing. Placement within the loco can make a difference also. After trying lots of different decoders the LokSound has become my standard decoder but I think the differences really are academically / personal taste. Anybody stating that one is far better than the other is just kidding himself (or herself).

[@railwaycityproductions6312]

I inserted a single 28mm speaker without it's chamber in to the factory oem location using the factory oem sound enclosure.

[@CentralJerseyRailfan]

The Tsunami2 does have a startup sequence instead of just a mute/unmute. I use the emergency brake on my NCE Powercab to shutdown the engine and go to speed step 1 to start it back up again.

[@roguedragondraksis9114]

Notch one is applying power to traction motors at "idle". So there's really only 7 different rpm increases. With notch one being an on off switch to for power to the trucks

[@NYSWWC6633]

It really about the speaker. The unit with the loksound needs two 4 ohm parallel wired sugar cube speakers to sound right

[@SantaFeAllTheWay]

The Tsunami 2 sound is far better. Also each of the light functions in the T2 can be independently adjusted for brightness and separately turned on and off, including the truck lights with a simple CV change.

[@AKTG197]

Nah, ESU far better and more specific. You can do far more lighting adjustments with their decoders as well, especially if you own a programmer.

[@jagc1969]

@@AKTG197 A a better motor control. ESU wins hands down.

[@ZombieSlayer-dj3wb]

@@jagc1969 but picky on dirty track

[@KingTrump2024]

You should of programmed CV54 on the Loksound unit, would of made the crawl speed much more subtle . I find if you have several Tsunami's going at once, they all blend and sound the same, no little nuances like you get with the ESU decoders.

[@UBME2]

Tsunami2 has a setting that allows for variation between prime movers

[@pooleandrew]

There is no comparison. Loksound is the most realistic sounding, period. Tsunami doesn't even come close.

[@tonyhoogheem8368]

ESU has much better motor control also. Can't beat the drive-hold feature.

[@1500chessie]

You can exactly tell which loco has the tsunami decoder when running.The motor control is with the ESU far better, not to tell with the lokprogrammer one can easy programm everything to it needs.

[@HARPO1ME]

No it isn't. Can't even do programming on the main. All service mode is what they don't tell you. Nowhere near all the tuning available with the sounds and the power of the sound The ESU is more automated and great out of the box,but that is all you get. Tsumani 2 has a complete sound system with many mixers to get it just right.

[@kleetus92]

@@HARPO1ME Not on the 4 and 5 Each channel is adjustable

[@RenegadeModelRailroader]

How are both of these when it comse to speed mathing ? I also what motor is in an athearn vs a walthers cheers !

[@tomklimczak7176]

The number board and truck lights are not visible in daylight on the prototype.

[@BossSpringsteen69]

That's what i say.

[@croasdail]

I agree... even at night the truck lights on the prototype aren't super bright. Just enough for the crew to see the ground and gauge motion. It would be nice to know how easy they are to program with either. I use JMRI for everything...... what are the increments for each?

[@jacksmith1211]

The Tsumani has a better heavy diesel prime mover sound ,but since it had 2 speakers it blew the ESU away.The ESU is way to light on the deceleration of the diesel sound. A diesel knocks ESU missed it bad. Nice engines.

[@jmdhintz]

A agree. Way more bass outta the TSU

[@zurekc]

I think the loco with the TSU has two speakers. I have the Amtrak version and I installed two speakers along with LokSound. Wow!

[@hartmutlorentzen9659]

How can You change the loudness?

[@redleader8952]

The decoders have CVs that can be changed to adjust the volume. I believe the Tsunami2 decoder's volume CV is 128, while the LokSound's is CV 63. Raise or lower the value of the CV to change the volume.

[@tonyhoogheem8368]

I would probably use Tsunami if it had the drive hold feature that ESU has. But without that feature I cannot bring myself to use them.

[@outlet6989]

The demo might have been a little better if you turned down the house lights. That would have shown us a night-time view of the lights.

[@brucescott4977]

Did you mean Leslie S-3L?. Nathan did not make the S-3L whistle (horn).

[@geraldratte9254]

the 5257 sound way much better and more realistic than the other one

[@goodtimecoalhauling4726]

Loc-sound or no sound in diesels. They are years ahead of the competition.

[@securitytechnician]

How do you shutdown your loco?

[@truebras]

I use all 3 major brand of sound decoders. My criteria is sound fidelity to the prototype. Most of comments here of choice of sound decoder for this 20 cyl EMD 645E3 prime are actually based on the brand of decoder of one's choice and not sound quality and fidelity to prototype. The Tsunami decoder DOES NOT make distinction of prime sound between EMD 645 12, 16 and 20 cylinders. Which in many cases, not in this locomotive would sound wrong. This is a TSU problem that persists from 15 years ago. There is no full start up sound at TSU 2. Sammo, like TSU 1 of 15 years ago. If there is only redeeming thing about TSU 2, is that is louder, but also I can hear a lot more midrange frequencies. Which is not necessary a good thing in terms of sound quality. TSU 2 it didn't evolved much from TSU 1.

[@trainknut]

This is a 16 cylinder 645 and both models appear to sound like 16-645s, however I think you are right with the 20-645s, I seem to remember loksound having a lot more turbo sound in their SD45s and F45s than tsunami decoders.

[@silverstatehighiron]

Not Nathan S3L. Leslie S3L. ;)

[@frightrisk7407]

Are these locos N Scale or HO?

[@spacecalander]

Both can be tuned much better than this video shows. Both have basically made people not talk about WOW sound anymore. If you adjust front end trim and rear, you can make tsu very smooth.

[@railwaycityproductions6312]

I am comparing out of the box athearn with the default sdf40-2 file. The trim doesn't fix the terrible back emf control on tsu.

[@croasdail]

Mixed emotions with this review. Not very apples to apples. That said the couple of takeaways I have is that new 21 pin plug works great with ESU - assuming the poster didn't do more tweaking than he said. Also, the notching with the ESU sounded better as well. Love that Athearn is back producing this units again, with the new lighting effects.

[@railwaycityproductions6312]

The only "tweaking" i did was turn down the master sound on the esu because it was causing the speaker to do little crackling. Please elaborate how this isn't apples to apples. Both are athearn genesis sdf40-2. i loaded the esu 21 select board with the sdf40-2 sound file that was released. This was a sound comparison of ESU's SDF40-2 File vs tsunami oem file in the sdf40-2?

[@bobaroo58]

In my option, the Athearn sounds better with its two speakers

[@akr3985fan]

To me the Lok Sound smoked the tsanami it sounds more Natural and if you listen to the KZbin Video that Features a Real Santa Fe SDP40F 5250 is one of the Engines thats in this Video you can here the similarities of the Proto and the Engine you installed the Lok Sound Decoder into.. Both of my KATO N scale SDP40F's 5250 & 5253 have the Lok Sound factory Installed the sound Quality is so prototypical to me, I wouldn't have em any other Way.. Happy Railroading

[@SheltonDCruz]

Tsunami was better IMHO.

[@georgeferrer23]

In my opinion the tsunami 2 prime mover has more rumble then the lok sound.

[@HARPO1ME]

Better,more power ,more tuning available. ESU has no eq ,reverb,echo or and other mixers to boost. Made in USA beats made in Germany.

[@missingno3617]

well, you can't make sounds for tsunami or change to another soundfile as easy as in loksound, so it sucks, and also the lastest version of loksound (v5) has many improvements over the v4, the only bad thing with loksound is the default speaker that comes with, it isn't that good.

[@christopherbrown5338]

@@missingno3617 Soundtraxx sucks so bad they won "Model Railroader's Reader's choice Award" 2 years in a row AND "Favorite miscellaneous electronic device for their Sound Car decoder.

[@Trainmaster909]

@@christopherbrown5338 Model Railroader’s “readers choice award” means nothing. Their reader base just care about “deep” sound, and not the accuracy, fidelity, or delivery of the sound. If you wanna know how much they actually suck, listen to their K5LA recordings. All 3 are sounds a K5LA does not make. They also ditch natural sound for a flat, single note horn, then make you artificially bring the reverb back… and the end result is about as fake as Kim Kardashian’s body.

[@christopherbrown5338]

@@Trainmaster909 I think someone is smoking crack.

[@shiftintohigh5564]

👍👍👍😎

[@Superseanbarry]

The Tsunami has more low frequency

[@johnserafin3689]

The Tsumani blows away the ESU wimpy prime mover. More pronounced period. The big diesels lug when they spool down. ESU always has just a wimpy sound even with the same speakers. The Soundtraxx EQ's can even make it better. No compairson. MRC has a better 645 then the ESU. And for the brighter lights. That illusion is just how the LED are wired and the resistors used. Buy American Soundtraxx and leave the German stuff ESU in Germany for there models.Nice try promoting ESU over Soundtraxx power in there sound.

[@ACLTony]

This was not an apples to apples comparison. A realistic is to have Tsu-2 vs a Loksound V4.0 with a pair of sugar cubes. Loksound would have easily won out.

[@northstarstatepolitics1652]

Paragon 3 is better than all of them!