Freeing up an ESU v5 LokSound Decoder SoundCV

LokSound decoders have a series of CVs that they refer to as SoundCVs. These CVs are located at the top of the Sound slot settings page of the Decoder pane. See fig. 1.

Figure 1 SoundCVs and their configuration

Notice that the majority of the SoundCVs are already in use by the programmed decoder. SoundCVs 1 through 10 are standard settings across all the sound files the author has looked at and used. The remaining ones are set as needed by the developers of the sound files. Notice SoundCV16 is free for use by the end-user (that’s you). The corresponding CVs that hold these values are CVs 155 through 170. So the SoundCV1 value is held in CV 155 SoundCV2 is held in CV 156 etc. It should be mentioned that v4 decoder do not have these SoundCVs defined as the v5 decoders do.

So this is all well and good but how are these SoundCVs used and how do we access them? Let’s examine the Overview sheet of the Sound pane shown in fig 2.

Figure 2 Sound slots and SoundCVs

Using your mouse hover over the    symbol for sound slot 1 and you’ll see all the SoundCVs used by that sound slot. That symbol represents SoundCV usage and demonstrates which sound slots use them.

Recommendations

Just a couple of recommendations on what SoundCVs to change and which ones to not change, first, modifying those used in the prime mover sound slot is asking for trouble. Don’t do it unless you absolutely know what you are doing. This also applies to any of the other sound slots. Second, find a sound slot that you can do without. An example of this is sound slot 26, Starting Delay. It uses SoundCV 13. If you turn off the Starting Delay feature shown at the bottom of the Driving Characteristics sheet you will free up SoundCV 13. ESU recommends you turn this setting off with trains in a consist anyway. This is the recommended procedure. Determine what you can do without and utilize the unused SoundCV(s).

An Alternative

The author explained in the “update” section of this post that there is an alternative to removing a sound slot. Take a look back at figure 1. At the bottom of the figure is a value called Sound Configuration. The ESU developers left this single quantity that can be accessed from a sound slot. The really great thing about this is that each sound slot has its own Sound Configuration variable. So they gave you one value you can use as you see fit. How you access this quantity is explained in the <Update> section of this post.

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