Many people disable the fake knocker sound and add a real knocker. I disabled the fake knocker in my TSPP, since it's a terrible sound.

Just out of curiosity, did the awesome loud knock you used to hear really sound fully like the real thing? Is it possible someone installed a knocker kit in your LOTR, and somewhere along the line the setting for it got switched back to the fake one? I've never done it, but you rig the kit up to the ticket dispenser or something I think. Might be worth poking inside to check.

Because the fake sound is always terrible, and there's not much you can do to fix it that I'm aware of. Even with Pinball Browser it's hard to swap because you're limited to the same sound length when you swap sounds, and it's incredibly short, making it hard to get anything else in there.

That's a good bet - When you install a knocker you have to turn the software knocker off and set the Q23 ( I think) option to knocker.

So it doesn't have a real one at all? I've not heard of a stern software knocker that sounds good.

Ditto, first thing I do on my Sterns is set it to low, can't stand that noise.

It's just a digital sound file, it's not anything that would get changed from jarring. Unless all your sound for everything else is somehow terrible too.