Quoted from NPO:All right, so I got to play a couple games of BSD with pinsider Hazzard's remix, which was absolutely outstanding. What I have to say really isn't a review; it's more of my experience.
So the unit comes in its own box directly from France (all distributors I knew of state-side were sold out) with just some plastic covering to get it in the mail. Hey, whatever saves me shipping money - I'm ok with that!
So here is what it looks like when you first open the box. Truth be told, I did purchase the SanDisk 16 GB flash drive. Hey, they know what works best with this unit, and the price was like 5 cents different than Amazon. Take the hassle out of it for me!
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First things, first - FOLLOW the instructions. At first, I won't deny, I was a bit stumped as I was jumping on Pinside and the PinSound Community Forums looking all over the place for a nice, quick, simple, in-your-face set of instructions. That's when I looked in the packaging and saw these:
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The ones on the left come with any PS board, and they lay out ALL possible confirgurations - WPC89, WPC-S, WPC-95, etc. in a very easy to follow format. The latter handout came with the flashdrive, so I don't know for sure if it normally ocmes with each PS board or not. Now, I did one of these back in 2016, and I remember how long it takes to install the files from a zip format. Not fun.
So, what I did was go to Mr_Tantrum 's PinSound Tutorial Thread and went to his opening post: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tantrums-guide-to-pinsound#post-3715636
All you need to do is unzip the remix and then copy and paste that to the USB drive. To make things simple: FORMAT THE USB DRIVE first. Once you do that, unzip your remix of interest on your computer like so:
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Within each folder, you should have a folder set-up like this:
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Now, with Hazzard's BSD remix, he has an additional folder called "single". I do not know the purpose of this particular folder (I'll let Hazzard chime in on that one), but I do know others have installed this remix without incident, so I trusted this folder setup and copy/pasted it directly to my USB drive supplied by PinSound. With both the original and Hazzard remix unzipped, installation took significantly less time (read: 5 mins or so).
I then installed my new board into BSD. Thankfully, this part is rather "NPO proof" (read: idiot proof) as the two main power connectors are uniquely pinned (so they cannot be plugged in incorrectly), the ribbon cable only goes one way and has a raised housing so you cannot accidentally installed it "off center" (installation where you think all the pins and holes line up, but truth be told you installed the ribbon connector one set of pins off), and the speaker wires do not matter as they should complete a circuit connected either way.
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Nearly 25 years difference in technology. Love the potentiometers which act as equalizers for treble and bass. I also love the bottom left corner. Notice how there is a note on the bottom left connector? The PS guys mark off which 5V connector NOT to use by covering it up with that note, so you do not inadvertently damaged your new board. Pretty awesome!! Great attention to detail - or "cover your ass" method - depending on how full or empty you see the glass.
Once installed, I plugged in my USB drive, double checked all my connectors, double checked that I had all of them hooked up via the instructions, and then fired the game up. Takes PinSound about 7-10 seconds to initialize, and then the automated voice informs you "Scanning audio files, please wait." or something of the sort. Plays some "happy lil' elevator music" while you wait, and again, you don't wait long if you unzip the files as described above.
Once it's done, you get an "escalating in excitement" 3-chime jingle, and then off you go! I did not take a video of the actual game as you can view it currently on YT:
So, overall, a very simple install. Took me maybe 25 minutes total from opening the box to hitting the start button on my game. Now, that being said, I took advantage of the knowledge and struggles of those before me, and I have had previous experience with PS on a very VERY problematic TAF that had a 5V circuit hitting 4.75V regularly (read: reset nightmare). Even with the Kahr board, that TAF was simply struggling to fire on one, much the less all, cylinders.
To keep things simple: find a remix you like and THEN buy one of these boards and let someone else do the heavy lifting (making the orchestration remix). That lead me to a very simple and fulfilling installation. As time goes on, I may reference Mr_Tantrum's thread for the tools on creating my own remixes just to experiment with it and get more familiar with "beyond the install". As of now, wow, am I happy with this product.
Also, my only experiences rest with WPC89 games, so anyone struggling with Stern SAM games, I'm sorry, I have no experience to provide insights on what could be wrong.
My advice: if you can "get over the hump" of installing the unit, follow the directions to a "t", and take things slowly - the PinSound board seems to be a great product. I can see where people would get frustrated waiting 1-3 hours for the sound files to unzip and install, and THEN the board starts giving you errors and acting up. Do yourself a favor: unzip them on the USB drive - it makes the install go MUCH faster. Hazzard's BSD remix is about 430 Megs; along with the original sounds to install it took about 5 minutes total.
Next, making your own 2.1 stereo harness and introducing your own power supply for the 5V needs to keep your game's 5V breathing gently....!!