NEM 662 (Next18) Sound DCC Decoder

[MegaBlackJoe]

Hello, my name is Tim. I am a fellow railway modeler from Russia. A friend of mine is a dcc engineer - he has a small team that produces sound dcc decoders. He is a well known manufacturer in Russia and in fact has done 3 successful projects with sound locomotive decoders. So far he has dcc sound decoders that fit into HO and N scale locomotives. These are NEM652, Plux16/12/8 and NEM651 decoders.

Now his idea is to develop Next18 sound dcc to fit N scale and Z scale. But because the development process needs funding, he would like to study the demand first. I would be very grateful, if you could tell if Next18 is popular in the US.

If we can see a demand, such a decoder can be made with the help of crowdfunding. We would need around 300 people wishing to purchase Next18 DCC sound decoder. At this point, the price can be around 75 USD, but it can be dropped further if more people purchase this.

I am not giving any links since it's not an advertisement of services, but rather a research of the market.

So what do you think?

[peteski]

One thing that jumps out at me is how do you  use Next18 connector in small Z scale models?

The other thing is the sound files?  Who will design American sound files for that decoder?  No sound files, no sales in USA.  Even more established decoder manufacturers (like ZIMO) don't have good market penetration in USA because they only have a limited selection of American sound files.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

A few things:

1. We need a sound decoder that is less than 10mm wide. This would accommodate hood units that wouldn't fit ESU decoders.

2. We have a few Next18 engines, but they all offer factory ESU sound. The price between sound and non sound is usually about $75, so most modelers would just use the ESU factory decoder.

3. I think there is a market for adapter boards to update DCC ready Atlas and Kato engines to Next18. But these would need to be available separately so we can purchase these and use an ESU decoder if we choose to.

4. Lack of sound files is going to really hurt any decoder made available. One way around this is to open the sound files up so we can use our own .WAV files for sound functions. I think Zimo has unlocked decoder sound that use .WAV files. If this decoder was able to use Zimo files, that would be a big help. Digitrax files may also be unlocked, but they are no where near as good.

We really, REALLY need to standardize sound files across decoder manufacturers. Maybe this could kick start something.

5. Most modelers tend to standardize decoder use. For example, I use NCE for standard DCC installs and ESU for sound. I will use TSC and Digitrax for specific engines that require a form factor that is not available from NCE or ESU. While I like Broadway sound decoders, running them with ESU sound can be problematic because of manufacturer specif9c features. I can't use Drive Hold on ESU decoders for example.

A new decoder would only complicate this. If the decoder was programed to mimic the features of an ESU, TCS or BLI decoder, that would help. I do not know if features like Drive Hold are patented though.

There is a Chinese DCC decoder that mimics the feature set of older TCS decoders. So it has been done before, just not in sound.

6. I'm not sure many modelers would put money on a kickstarter like program. We need to see a working version before purchase. We have been burned by too many flaky products before (looking at you, BLI).

[greenwizard88]

I like how Digitrax makes drop-in decoders. I think you'd be better off making lightboards for specific engines that take a next18 decoder. I'd rather not take the chance on an unknown brand when most of my sound equipped fleet uses LokSound already.