Problems with Locomotive Sounds

[sd45t2]

I have had MSTS for about 12 years now, and I like it. And I would like to think that I am finally understanding some of the nuances that are in this gaming platform. Yes, there are other platforms and simulators out there, but I am not willing to part with my meager wages and go into a whole new level of frustration. That being said, I have addressed this problem before, and I truly appreciate the time and patience shown by the membership here at providing solutions. My issue is with changing sounds in locomotives.

Let me state here and now that I have been successful in changing some of the sounds in my engines with the sound modifications available on this site - but now, I am being thrown for a loop. Following the instructions in the read me files for most of these sounds, I do the following:

a) BACK UP the original locomotive and sounds
b) Copy the new sound file to my "Common.Snd folder in Trains/Trainset.
c) REMOVE the original sound package from the locomotive being modified.
d) Copy the new sound package from Common.Snd and paste it into the locomotive being modified.
e) Open the ENG File, and change the sound description in both the .eng and .cab files and SAVE those changes.

Most of the time, the modifications have worked as designed. But now (after many uninstalls/reinstalls of MSTS), (Yes, I know that Uninstalling/Reinstalling is not the preferred practice), I am having a problem. I get no sounds at all other than the "idle" sound. No interior sounds, no horn, no throttle up, nothing. BTW, the sounds I am modifying are the 567 and 645 sounds. So my question(s) are: (1) Should the new sound file be placed in the Common.Snd folder AND the locomotive? Or should it be placed in the locomotive only? (2) Where I am changing the sound string in the Engine File, does that wording have to be exactly as written (upper case/lower case, dashes/underscores, etc.? (3) Then, when faced with non-working sounds, I DELETE that locomotive and replace it with the BACK UP - but then I get the "unable to .sms file" message.

Extremely sorry for the length of this post, but "explaining" my problem is the only way I know how to present it to the many fine people here. Thank you for your patience.

[baldwin]

Normally, if a sound package is in the Common.snd folder, an alias is used in the eng file to point it to the package. The readme or other instructions with the sound package should show you how this is done.

If you drop the complete sound package into your locomotive sound folder, there are two lines in the eng file that need to be changed to point to the new sms files.

Another method is to copy the two sms files from the common.snd folder into the locomotive sound folder and edit the eng file to use these files.

If aliased to the common.snd folder they will look like Sound ( "..\\..\\common.snd\\567 Turbo Soundset\\GP30Eng.sms" ) and a similar one for the cab sounds.

The lines you change in the eng file do not have to have capitals but must include any dashes or underscores in the sms filename. If there are spaces in the sms filename or path, you must enclose everything inside the brackets in quotes.