Decided to take the plunge for TZ. Never happy with the quality of the sound and wish that it had been a DCS game as Williams initially planned since I have owned it. (a little over a year). My other two games from that error TAFG and STTNG always sounded better. Especially with the Chris Granner mix being available I thought it was worth the expenditure. I hold onto my games for the most part and I don't see TZ leaving anytime soon so I can "depreciate" the cost over many years. Also bought a set of FF speakers (without crossovers for the Pinsound board)

Installation was easy as far as the board is concerned, speaker panel not as easy as a blind nut on each side was loose.
Tried the Granner mix first. Took about 20 minutes or so to organize files on the first boot-up. Since then I have learned about Freac Free audio converter program and this does the converting in a minute or so, so I now pre-convert files to wav format on my computer.

You have to play with the boards controls to get it to sound right. Initially I had minimal back box volume with the pots in the suggested setting. (sounded really bad) After playing a bit got is sounding pretty good. One real annoying "feature" was the volume of the conversion process (now skipping with Freac) and the volume of the startup sound. Found the feature where you can put any wav file in the audio folder and call it boot.wav for it to be played instead. I used the unused piano wav from the twilight zone mixes. Much better!!

I had thought that the Chris Granner files were the same as the native TZ just higher quality. They are actually different. Not bad but I would have to play the game for a while to see if I liked them better. As others have said familiarity is a big part of the game experience. The original file mix played through the pinsound board and the FF speakers does sound a whole lot better than stock though so I am still happy. I did not try the speakers with the original board and roms as it does not have the crossover that the standard FF speakers have, so I can't say if it is the board or just the speakers. Obviously the pinsound board has 3 separate amplifiers instead of just one that the original board has.

I don't think I would get one for STTNG or TAFG. I might upgrade the speakers in those games though. I would have to try one of the re-orchestrated mixes and find it much better than the original in order to support buying the board at its current price for those games.

You have to really lower the volume and then it is too low to play like that so you have to increase it again at least I would on my game.

"Try the reorchestrated TZ mix. It's incredible and exactly what you are looking for - familiarity with higher fidelity."

I think that is the Chriss Granner mix which I do have and mentioned above.

dup

Thanks I tried that one. Didn't like the combination of original voices and attempts at new voices.

The cabinet volume control is supposed to work as it did before. I don't have a Data East game so I can't say for sure. I know that if you read earlier posts there was some mention about Data East.

Did you update the firmware? You would think that a board would ship with the most recent firmware but...... Same for pinball machines shipping with older codes. I guess it is too much trouble to check before sending them out. I am pretty sure my new board did not have the newest firmware. Switching between mixes didn't work well until I updated it. Just take an extra USB drive and put the firmware update bin file on it and start the machine. It was easy enough. Shut down when finished and put back your USB with your game mixes.

I would think that Guns_and_Roses_1994.zip from the download area would be the original sounds. It would be nice if the download area included a description of the files contained in the mix.

I don't think the beeps are removable but luckily the boot.wav works to remove the loud ready sounds.

As far as delay, haven't noticed that on my TZ hopefully the board designers can help with that.