Improving sound for lots of stock

mdanie · Post by **mdanie** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:32 pm

I have several hundred locos, carriages and wagons installed as well as many routes managed by TrainStore. I installed SVR, so got the carriage sounds on all trains

but corrected that by reinstalling the default genpasswag.sms (I think that's right) following advice on the BlueArrow forum.

All my external sounds are now pretty weedy and I'm sure I can improve them with the steamtrack series. But what I'm asking you kind souls is whether there is a quick (automatic) way to link stock to their correct sounds or do I have to modify the eng and wag files manually? This is particularly true of carriage sounds where there seem to be different sound sets for "inner" versus "end" carriages.

As always, any advice VERY gratefully-received

jefry · Post by **jefry** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 9:51 am

I found a file over on trainsim.com called engmod20.zip, which looked hopeful. But it doesn't include sound as an alterable parameter.
<Sigh>. We'll just have to continue doing it all one at a time.

mdanie · Post by **mdanie** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 10:34 am

thanks jefry - busy weekend ahead

saddletank · Post by **saddletank** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:06 pm

Sadly the manual way is the only way at the moment, although this sounds like a job for a Route Riter upgrade. If you have the sounds installed in your main SOUND folder it would be very handy if RR could interrogate a wag file and ask you which .sms file do you want to put in it...

If you email Mike Simpson he may be amenable to assist.

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 9:35 pm

If I understand the issue correctly, there is a way but it depends on how accurate you want to be.

Start with the special sound sets that include uk-bogiecoach-01.sms and uk-bogiecoach-05.sms installed in your Global Sound folder. Rename genpasswagsteam.sms to genpasswagsteam.sms.old and then rename uk-bogiecoach-05.sms to genpasswagsteam.sms. Do the same with genpasswagmodern.sms and uk-bogiecoach-05.sms.

That will give you good sounds on all stock that is referenced to the default sound files. It won't give you the special sounds for end carriages and it may give you door slams on some freight that uses the default sound files. (The latter can be solved by changing the reference in the wag file to uk-bogiecoach-11.sms, for example.)

It's a lot easier than changing every wag file.

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 9:47 pm

Another "short cut" is to use a good text editor like UltraEdit (Shareware but well worth the registration cost).

You can tell it to change every occurence of genpasswagsteam.sms to uk-bogiecoach-01.sms in every *.wag file in your Train Simulator folder and it will.

Then you can go in and manually fix the exceptions like the freight wagons and the end carriages if you want.

saddletank · Post by **saddletank** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 1:16 am

Yes, passenger coaches are fairly easy to tackle in that way. I was thinking of goods stock where bogie vehicles are mixed with 4-wheelers, etc.

And with a set of commercial USA sounds I have there are 11 different sms files with varying bells and whistles (not literally I hasten to add) and selecting these means you must plough through your whole TRAINS folder copying and pasting until you go blue and roll about on the floor foaming at the mouth...

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 1:25 am

Sounds a bit masochistic to me, Martin.

saddletank · Post by **saddletank** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 5:27 pm

Not really. But I ought to stop eating the cat litter.

buffy500 · Post by **buffy500** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 9:40 pm

saddletank wrote:Not really. But I ought to stop eating the cat litter.

New or used ?

saddletank · Post by **saddletank** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:42 pm

New of course! What do you think I am?

mdanie · Post by **mdanie** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:02 am

Thanks all for the suggestions. I shall make the general tweaks then slowly "perfect" them for each activity as I go along. Should make it more manageable.

supergoods · Post by **supergoods** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:29 am

Be carefull changing specific sounds to genpasswagsteam.sms, I ended up with a 45 wagon coal train and the original .sms file which had so many sounds going at the same time it overwhelmed the locomotive sounds.