that Phoenix were still in business

I'm afraid they seem to have given up the business.

 

Even a couple of years ago, product availability was sporadic at best.

 

Has been discussed here and other places quite a bit. Sad because had good products IMO but poorly run over the last 5 years or so of its existence. I don’t think anyone of us really know the truth, but I surmise the owner just really didn’t want to do it anymore, for whatever reason like maybe health, wanted to retire, money, whatever, and the person he left running it did a poor job and probably had poor help, input, direction, etc. from owner.

 

Well, old design, old parts, making higher cost to produce, and really only large scale.

The Phoenix boards cost as much as a complete DCC decoder with sound, motor control, perfect speed sync, more features, etc.

Just not a good deal, needed to be half the price for what it was. Too bad, great sound files, but not even comparison for the modern DSP abilities of newer products.

 

What would you recommend now for dc operation? It was a great system but i have had a couple of p8 boards fail and also a couple of 2k2 boards give up. I have changed the batteries on the 2kboards but that didnt help.

 

So, what I would recommend depends on:

Your budget
your desired sound quality.

in my case, quality trumps ANY cost, so I use sophisticated DCC decoders with sound and enjoy all the features, like tying smoke units speed and volume to motor speed AND load, etc. (DCC decoders can run in DC)

if you want inexpensive, or are willing to take a little less in sound quality, then something like MyLocosound might fill the bill.

The quality of sound in Phoenix was quite good, very good recordings. The technology did not modify the sounds to match locomotive performance/load like modern stuff does, but they were definitely at the top in their "golden years".

Greg