2 questions (Building & Sound)

[E231-500]

G'day all,

 

Whilst in Japan, one of the things that stuck with me the most (besides the trins of course  ) was when I was in Akihabara. The music that pipes from stores like Bic Camera and Sofmap.

 

I want to re create this on my layout which is in the planning stages. Can anyone reccomend a good building kit that would be a good match for a department store?

 

Also, does anyone know of a small sound module that could be installed to play the music? I have very limited electrical knowledge so something ready to run would be ideal!

 

I cant add pics of the sort of building as I am on a work computer but here is a link to Bic Camera on wikipedia which has a picture.

 

Thanks in advance 

[Guest Closed Account 1]

The Kato Overhead station has a mall below it.

 

An iPod connected to small speakers strategically placed will let you playback your station sounds. They have a remote. Put the iPod/iphone below the layout so you can get to it.

 

Record or download some sound bytes.

[cteno4]

e231,

 

there are gobs of very cheap mp3 players ($5 or less) out there for next to nothing. just need to find one you can easily rig up with plug in power (small wall wart). many have charge via usb so you can try using their usb cable plugged into a little usb wall wart adapter. other thing to look for is one that will come on and start playing automatically. there are some out there like this that you can set it to playing when powered on. if not just have it wired so you can easily get to it to turn it on and hit play.

 

lots of cheap o little speaker sets you can plug into the headphone jacks of the speakers. $20 should get you a bunch of things to tinker with on ebay. not much in the way of electronic skills would be required for this.

 

since you wont really need stereo in this sort of situation so you can get cleaver and edit up your own mp3 files with different sounds on each track and have one player give you two different output tracks, one on each speaker to place in slightly different places.

 

playing with audio like this is something that takes some fiddling in your environment to get the effect you want. what sounds you use, where it comes from, volume, etc all make big differences. doing audioscapes is a real art and every installation is different. I've done them in exhibit settings and we always have to just play a lot in the actual environment to see what will work before finishing the piece and even buying the final equipment for the space.

 

Some of the larger Kato high rises are very department store like. to get something like the bic camera building you would need to do something yourself. might be pieces of an atlas highrise kit might be the lower black windows w/o having to cut small windows yourself. green max has the older 6 story kits that lets you do some rectangular buildings with a little kitbashing

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10007639

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10007638

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10007637

 

cheers

 

jeff

[E231-500]

Thanks guys for your replies.

 

When I get home I'm going to search the shops for a cheap MP3 player and also an MP4 to attempt a video screen.

 

Also I do like those buildings you suggested cteno4. I think I will have to do a kit bash job to get it how I want it.

 

If anyone else has any more ideas or hints please let me know!

[Bernard]

The sets Jeff recommend are great for "kit-bashing" and you can find a lot of mini MP3 plays and some have screens with music playing....how about an MP4 video player and play music videos on it, that way you'll get the music you're looking for plus a video?

[cteno4]

e231,

 

we had a few threads on making large video screens using cheap mp4 playback units

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,5900.0.html

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,5977.0.html

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,5889.0.html

 

and sound

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,5415.0.html

 

here is a neat one ive played with some

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/140479517043?ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649#ht_4705wt_900

 

first one was crushed but functional but had a bright spot on the screen (probably from getting stomped on in shipping). replacement was doa, but they were willing to send another if i took a video of it not functioning, but i just gave up. these are sold by a number of different vendors for $7-20 on ebay. so cheap its easy to have one die on you and have a couple of backups. folks have also used old smart phones that are not in use anymore but will still do video playback as well.

 

you can dig around ebay for cheap mp3/4 players. one issue with some of the cheapest mp4 players is the format the video is in (see some of the above threads) as the cheap ones use non standard formats to avoid tech royalties so you may have to do some fiddling with video file formats, but there are some cheap conversion programs out there that can help. not an issue with mp3 players for audio only. the ebay listings will do scummy things like have several more expensive items in a listing with a pull down to select which one and the listing is sorted by the cheapest one (usually headphones at 99 cents) so its a pain to find them. the car mp3 players wont work as they have no audio out, they play via fm transmission to your car radio, but some have a nice feature that you can set them to auto play with power up. i suppose you could get some tiny fm radios to put around the layout and then just transmit to them! might have to experiment with this idea!

 

mertline.com and dealextreme.com have some cheap stuff with free shipping. takes 2-3 weeks usually to get stuff from them but ok cheap stuff.

 

http://www.meritline.com/tf-card-reader-mp3-player-mini---p-79631.aspx

http://www.meritline.com/tf-card-reader-mp3-player-clip---p-79667.aspx

http://s.dealextreme.com/search/mp3+player.html?sort=Price&category=101

 

heres one with a remote control and audio out

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mini-screen-free-mp3-music-player-with-remote-control-sd-usb-3-5mm-audio-jack-silver-12v-91312?item=78

 

remote and speaker in one box $19

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/1-5-lcd-usb-rechargeable-portable-mp3-music-stereo-speaker-with-fm-radio-sd-mmc-usb-3-5mm-33875?item=4

 

tiny 3v speakers you could wire to a mp3 player

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mini-for-ipod-speaker-barrel-style-2185

 

biggest issue in all this is control of the system when you power things up. many you have to hit a few buttons to set up the device each time. this is why i liked the little unit above as it has an ir remote control so you can do that via the remote pointed at the screen (have to make sure the sensor can be seen through your building). audio is same way. you can put mp3 audio players out in an accessible areas and then just run wire to speakers where you want, but you may need amplified sound to be heard on the layout. there are also some dedicated audio playback systems to do exactly what we are discussing here for audioscapes but they start at $50 or more. but these systems will power on in an auto play mode and can even have some interesting programability. others have used multichannel audio boards in old pcs to provide a multi-trak playback on their layouts so they can script a very complex and sequenced set of audio for a wonderful audioscape.

 

again its something that takes a lot of fiddling to see what you like, your room and layout will be able to do, your skills and willingness to spend money and time to get something to where you like it.

 

one other big issue is the relative noise of most model trains is really high and will really drown out many of your sound effects so that means its a volume war. if the sfx are too high then they loose the subtle nature that audio effects require to really be effective. acoustics of the room and how your track and subroad bed is done can have different effects on this as well.

 

I do really love the 6 story green max kits for kitbashing. they are meant to do this and even have scribe lines to cut the walls down. greenmax is in the process of changing their serial numbers, packaging and re-releasing some older stuff, so hopefully these will be available again soon.

 

there are some cheat ways of doing high rises with alternating layers of strip material to not have to try to cut windows. also a thread on high rises with more info

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,1074.0.html

 

cheers

 

jeff