 So, we'll be announcing all the details and the timing of all of this coming shortly in a month or two months. Watch the website, the dealers will be notified first and the digit facts that they all get and then it will appear on the website one day and if you are on our DETREX email list you will get an email letting you know that the new thing is about to be released. So, sign up for the email list on the website if you have not done so already. Next. The no worries warranty. We're still reminding people that we now have what's called a no worries warranty. Everything that we sell you is warranted for a year if it breaks, send it back. We do ask that you follow some simple instructions when you send things back. Contact TechSupport or check the website and see if you can find out what the problem is before you send it in. We get an incredible amount of product returned to us. Some people say that there's a problem. When we test it in the shop we find there's no problem. CVs need to be reset sometimes. CV 8 to 8 is a great thing that resets all the CVs back and forth so we can back up and run it again. It is possible to program some of your CVs in a way so that the train won't move for a long, long time and that is sometimes confused with the dead to cover. So check that first. On Detructs.com you can go in and fill out the repair form. That lets us know who you are, where you are, how to get in touch with you to ask you a question if you need to and where to send it back when we're done. So if you would fill out that repair form it helps us an awful lot when it gets back to the shop. We still get things that come back for repair that people don't put their name on. They don't put a return address on the package. And if that happens and you have sent in a repair and it's been a long time, give us a call and talk to the repair clerk Brenda. She will look on that shelf where all those things go and find out if your item is there. Package your products securely. Do not send it to us in a paper envelope. The post office bites the heads off of those and throws the decovers we all know where. Once a month we get an envelope back with an end torn off and no to go to. And that's not fun for anybody. So back to you securely. Send it to us using a trackable carrier, especially if it's a throttle or a command station or something expensive. If you put it in the mail, the US mail, they don't have to really help you track it unfortunately until it's been 14 days missing or 60 days missing or whatever, however you send it. But in some cases it can be as much as 60 days before they'll even start looking. So if it's something that matters a lot to you, please use UPS or FedEx or some way that you can track the package. Because we can't be responsible for it until it gets to us. So just get it there to us safely. We cannot accept UPS shipments from Canada any longer because of the problems that we've had with UPS customs charges being reversed to us on several packages. So if you are sending it from Canada, Canada Post is much better than US Post about getting things to us. They have superior postal service in every way. So if you're from Canada, send it back by mail. If you're in the US, send it by UPS. Don't trust the US customs service. All this stuff, a lot of bull cons. I know this seems like such a burden to have to fill out this form and everything. But really, surely, it's just a way that we can be sure that you receive your product back in a timely manner fixed in the way that you want it to be fixed. If you are sending something in and you send it in for warranty under the one-year warranty we do ask that you send a copy of your receipt so we can verify how long we've had it. If we receive it without anything letting us know that it's bought within the last year, a lot of times you'll get a phone call or a new mail saying please send us that information. And whenever you've got, send it in so we can get it done under warranty. And if it's not under warranty, the fees are not that much. Yes, Marty? A lot of times if you have not saved your receipt, your dealer will have it in his DOF system. He can print a receipt out for you. That is true. So, another good reason to keep those dealers around. Product announcements. Coming to the show, everybody said, what are you going to announce at the show? What are you going to announce at the show? Well, we're trying not to do a lot of product announcements at shows anymore because we don't want to wait for a show and have products announced only at shows. We think it's best to go ahead and have things ready to go in production when we announce them to cut down disappointment. We all know that the detractors have done this in the past. We've announced a product and it's taken longer than we projected. In some cases a lot longer than we projected. And sometimes it's through no fault of our own. Sometimes it is our fault. But in order to cut that down, we are trying to have things ready to go when we announce them. Like I said, we just violated that cardinal rule and announced something that is not ready to go just yet. But that is an opportunity for everybody to have input on that product before it gets to the field. So we thought it was more important to talk to experienced model road voters about the interface on this. I've had an ad that we thought we should go ahead and announce it now and let everybody have their say while we were still in development. And we're far enough along with it that it's not going to be that long, I'm pretty sure. So for new product announcements, watch our website. Sign up for the Detracts email list. We are emailing now when we make product announcements to end users. If you are getting emails that you don't want to receive, go ahead and click unsubscribe. It will not hurt our feelings at all, but we do it all the time. We're going to get a lot of emails we don't need to get. So that's how we're announcing new products. The Q&A session. This is the time when you guys get to ask all the questions you want. We'll stay as long as you like. Anybody who needs to leave at any time will not be offended if you get up and leave. Sometimes the questions get pretty technical. If you feel that the question has become too technical and is really off topic for the group I would ask you to raise your hand and wave it around in the air. If I get enough people raising their hand and waving it around in the air I will stop the discussion and move that discussion to one of the guys in the back If it's specific to a specific layout and other people want to move on to other topics That will allow us to keep things moving and get everybody a chance to get their questions answered. Those are the basic rules of the game. We had somebody email in this question and this is his email word for word. So let me read it to you. This is from Bob Frye. He usually comes to the convention but he was not able to join us tonight. So he wanted this question answered. He said, the district's tech support has stated to the sound forum group that no firmware update for the SDH164 Dean product There is no firmware update for the SDH164 Dean product. They are getting inquiries about it and don't know where this false information came from. His question is, does the district's know that the SDH164 Dean product is being returned from users and dealers with a reason for the return by the customer? The response from the district's customer repair is, quote, no problem found with a suggestion of turn back EMF off, which could be considered a firmware update. With your no problem found returns of the SDH164 Dean, do you have any suggestions for your dissatisfied sound customers? Okay, so he has a valid question. And I don't know that I would consider turning off back EMF a software upgrade because the software hasn't changed. It's just a matter of turning off back EMF. Yeah, that's fine. Turning off the back EMF CV that controls back EMF. So that's a suggestion for how to handle that problem. Instead of going to talk for a minute about the SDH164 Dean and the no problem found items that are coming back, so take it away. He designed it, he can talk about it. Okay, going on about the 164 Dean in particular, we looked at a number of units that have been sent back and when I see some sort of stuff come back in that's different from what we've seen before, I typically have a pretty close look at it. We took a look at a number of units when the European people actually go through and test it, that it works to original design specs and they all test it fine. So they end up in my desk and I've been through the handful of them. And what it appears to be is the unit, the SDH164 Dean, was designed to run with a 32 over speaker for various reasons. And basically if you run it with a lower impedance speaker you can do that it won't damage the decoder, but what you'll find is because of the extra power draw with a much lower impedance speaker than it was optimally designed for, you're going to interfere with the back EMF operation, okay? And that's why we find that if somebody's had that problem we usually suggest turn off back EMF which is setting CV57 to zero. The problem goes away. So it's not actually designed for the decoder, it's the fact that everyone I've seen to date it has been the speaker impedance is too low for the designed value the decoder was designed for, okay? So you can use an 8 ohm speaker, you're just going to have to turn on the back EMF or keep your volume down. Because what happens is as you try to volume up you end up overloading the power supply on the decoder. It doesn't damage it, it just means that it's going to cause some problem with the back EMF. Most people don't need the back EMF so it's a very simple thing to turn off and problem solve. The quick answer is to use the problem speaker for that particular installation. Now it comes down to people who cranked up the volume way high because impedance is much lower, the current gets much higher than the decoder was designed for. And most people are turning the volume up because as you get older it's harder to hear, I guess. Is that true, Dave? Dave? Yeah, exactly. But basically the transducer efficiency is the key item and obviously HOD in scale because you have such a small transducer trying to couple energy into the air to give you sound pressure level. You think the only way to fix it is to increase the volume or increase the power. The problem is that a lot of these small speakers are not designed for higher power levels and in this case the decoder is not designed to have the sort of currents that occur with an ATOM speaker. That particular decoder does not like it. So looking back at all the ones I've ever looked at once we know they've been through test and all the decoder functions are correct, the functions work, the motor works fine, and then we check with the speaker and we find it's an ATOM, we know it's a problem. If it isn't, we test all the 32 and it works fine. So that's the particular issue we've had with the SDH, 164Ds, and I do not believe that a changing CV is a further upgrade. Personal opinion, you know, we can discuss that, but that's what we see. Anyway, that's what I've seen having a look at the supposed failure mode once you run it back from the garden and check everything, the decoders are fine and there's really no problem found. Go ahead. I think they're good for the price. They've all run pretty well. Unfortunately, most locomotives don't want to slaughter an ATOM, you know, I began to run into the ATOM problem when I pushed the horn. And in the latest batch of days that came out in November and December, when you push the horn some really wide things got to you, without even adjusting the volume, you know, some of them were reverse and stuff. And so, one simple thing I'm looking for, because I don't want to go back and pull these out, can you point me in the direction of the 32-tone speaker that's a small overword, because I have looked, I have spent so money whining and, you know, silently seeing, you read through, you try to understand the descriptions and you end up with things and you look at them and you go, oh, this isn't going to work. And I'm presuming, because I've got all the threads on this thing, I turned the back nail off. It's worked fine on some of the locomotives. It had created problems on other locomotives. So we've got to basically run the throttle up and down. So what I'm looking for is where I can buy the particular model numbers of some 32-tone older speakers that are smaller, and let's say equivalent to the sound tracks, 0.56 by one inch, they're, you know, they call them, they're many, many old ones. And I'm guessing that you guys probably received enough complaints that you have done some research and that there are some compatible 32-tone speakers that are smaller, because quite frankly, that 28-millimeter speaker does not fit the majority of locomotives. Yeah, I tend to agree that, obviously, the 28-millimeter is fine in the diesel tank and it's okay in an F40, which is the Kato model. So in fact, the 28-millimeter was originally used in the three Kato locomotives, the AC4400, the SD38-2, and the F40PH. So that was the original background for the 28-millimeter speaker. So we have a hole, I agree, we have a hole in our product line for a 28-millimeter in the width that would go in a diesel tank, which is about 20-millimeter maximum width or 18. So that's something that Zeig has been looking at. So we agree with that. In the interim, if the unit is not malfunctioning with the factory original 32-tone, then that's the issue. If with the 32-tone original factory speaker, it's misbehaving, then we need to take that one back and give you a new one. Okay, so that's a different issue. So we've got to, first part of the debug tree is that it's misbehaving with the 32-tone original. If that's the case, then set it back. If not, we have to work on solutions that get you a 32-tone speaker. Now, we have some people that have actually put like a 10- to 16-ohm speaker that resist a series of the speaker, and that helps quite a bit. It lowers the volume, but it turns out the greatest impact you can have instead of turning up the electrical volume or the power level driving the speaker like a watt, the biggest thing is actually working on the transducer on the cavity loading the speaker. That has a far more profound effect in the sound pressure level or perceived volume than just trying to wind up a little half-watt speaker to one watt, which will actually distort very, very badly. So a very, very strong part of the issue is making sure that the transducer efficiency is as good as you can get. That is the key, okay? That is the bottom line for all of this. And you might also realize that acoustically, the ear has a logarithmic or nonlinear response, power or response. And basically, if you go from 100 milliwatts into a speaker to one watt, multiple by 10, the perception of volume increases only a double. So human beings, the ears actually only see a very small increment in volume for a very, very large amount of pressure level. So we should be able to run the speaker down at 100 milliwatts, for example, which will be way out of the area of problems with getting the sound from the back of your ear power less as the power supply of the STH164D. However, that also means that you need a larger transducer or a much better sound pressure coupling mechanism. The resonator cavity must be larger, et cetera, et cetera. That is the physics, and we'll have physicists explain all the background to that, but that's just the way it seems to be. So to cut to the chase, the mounting of the speaker really is the most critical item on any of these samples. So when we first found the problem with the back eMF issue, we put in our notes from the factory, going back in your morning hours, that if you have that issue, and if sending back eMF to zero removes the problem, then that is the issue. Is that answer your question? You're not satisfied yet. Yes, you've got the 28 ohms more, and we hear you clearly on that. Correct, yeah. Except for f-minus, there's no room for that. I totally agree. If you want it in the narrow body, if you want it up in the back or inside that, now you can get it in the dynamic breaks on something like, you know, the large dash lines. But I think Zayna's hearing me very clearly on that. If you don't think so, come by the booth and be on Zayna in terms of you want the 32 ohm, where all he is. So yeah, we do agree that there are some issues with some of the HLM motors. Again, most of the time, the reason we designed the original DH-1s, DH-84, I believe, the 9-pin NMR, sorry, the 9-pin Digitrace connector, we did that back, 95, I guess, was it? Yeah, the DH-84. The reason we set that with that decoder was most of the shelves, you know, all the motor manufacturers are going from the same prints most of the time and if you've got a particular G and narrow hood width around the prime mover, depending on the shell thickness and the plastic, you're going to get a pretty consistent internal clearance. And that's what the DH-84 was designed for. I think it was 7 to 60,000s of an inch, whatever, and I think it's 18 millimetres or whatever. So bottom line is, yes, we know that we need a speaker that would be much easier to install in the back upper section of a narrow hood diesel. So we're hearing you on that, and I don't disagree. But thank you for saying at least you like the decoders, because they're really designed, if you look at the, say, the Sonayman soundtracks, that's an excellent decoder. It's a 16-bit CD quality sound, and Steve did a great job with that decoder. You know, we're not trying to compete we're in a little different market place where you want okay sound at an okay price. And that's a different performance point we feel. And we got it to sound because we've got a lot of our customers insist that we do it. It wasn't our first it's not our primary business, but we do it basically to give you alternatives. It's like a smorgasbord, you can buy you know, soundtracks or whatever or you buy ours. So we don't try and tell you, we're not going to try and explain to you that we've got 16-bit sound, because that wasn't even the design goal for that same product. One other thing I would add I probably try and fit in the speakers, capacitors, a little wire into the decoder and unless you have a million which I do sometimes you often have a lot of head space and there's not easily enough room to put all those and I do like that your 164 is thinner than the Sonami TSC-1000 Yeah, and I think It tends to fit better in certain applications although it's a different level of sound but again, I think the price is pretty good. Yeah, and there is a classic problem there, and that is capacitance, which all the decoder is going to need, okay. You go over and do it wrong or something and guess what's going to happen. You run out of energy. Now, in a non-sound environment it really doesn't matter because it looks like a jerk slightly, you don't really notice it in a sound environment it's because you can hear it it's like hitting the other side of the head. So basically all sound decoders need some sort of energy storage mechanism and none of us have a magic capacitor that anyone else can't buy or whoever they made mine so bottom line is we've tended not to put the storage capacitor on the motherboard with the main decoder because as you point out it's going to go somewhere and you're going to be a millimeter too high and that's just like it's all over. So we've avoided putting the energy storage cabs. I know there's a lot of ESU, there's a lot of MRC and some sound tracks that have got those typically say like 100 microfarad 5V or 60V cabs and they're large. We can buy the same cabs, we can boom in the same places but we buy the on the whole we've tried to use the recently good energy density small capacitor that can be put on the rolling lead and I think that's a lot cleaner solution it's a lot easier to mount that somewhere and you also have the option at that point because you have the leads on it, you can put a 10,000 micastron and you really can't do that and we still work on a programming track even with those extreme capacitors. What it means is you can lift the track, you lift one with the track and the sound keeps going so we felt that that flexibility of being able to mount what we actually provide or be able to upgrade and the capacitors will change it was more important than trying to make it one unit where everything's on it so there's a different way of doing it that's why we're in business, we only have competitors that do it, things differently and that's a choice that you can make as a consumer which way you wish to go but thanks for trying to do this Any other questions? Well the back EMF is something that is not actually prototypical for most American locomotives I believe one of the first American locomotives where the locomotives speed was fed back into the traction motors to keep a constant speed and somebody can probably correct me on that but that's what I've historically heard there's only one that has an American prototype that has back in load compensation should we say it was a very common European feature because they run at constant line speed with different train lanes and for them they have to hold a very tight schedule with all their operations so in the real opera prototypes in Europe they generally have some sort of load compensation so if they're running two carriages or 45 carriages which is not prototypical for Europe really they would run at constant line speed that's very critical for holding tight time tables in this country they just hook up a couple more SD60s and they pull a few more co-loads so it's a very different operation so the back EMF really featured that we added for the Europeans and I chose to set a medium amount of it as a default setting so the default for most American operations really is zero that's because that really is what the prototypes in this country do you take a normal let's forget the AC series the AC powered traction motors the rigid DC traction motors as you load them up they will slow down and that's the prototype so basically you can use the back EMF to improve the low speed response of the gears and the stickion and the physical effects of the lug of motor mechanism in the model but it's not prototypical for American prototypes typically that's your question ok next