Settings

Settings are provided at application and project level:

Project settings

Various settings are provided that are saved with each project. These are accessed through the menu Project>Project settings.

Name	Data type	Unit	Comment
Rolling noise min. frequency	Number	Hz	The minimum 1⁄3 octave frequency band to use when calculating rolling noise.
Rolling noise max. frequency	Number	Hz	The maximum 1⁄3 octave frequency band to use when calculating rolling noise.
Handling of missing TDR	Choice	Hz	Select how to handle calculations with data missing from the TDR file (usually at high or low frequencies). Options are to: 1. use extrapolation outside of the provided frequency range, 2. use the calculated TDR for frequencies outside of the provided frequency range, or 3. cancel the calculation to manually rectify the data.
Time buffer	Number	s	The amount of time added to the start and end of the train pass-by when auto-calculating appropriate pass-by parameters for each situation. N.B. The minimum pass-by duration for the assessment is twice the elapsed time between the ends of the first and last vehicles passing the measurement point; the buffer time specified here is added to both ends of this duration.
Time resolution	Choice	-	Select whether the time resolution is to be considered as ‘coarse’ (approx. 100 time steps), ‘normal’ (approx. 200 time steps) or ‘fine’ (approx. 400 time steps) when auto-calculating appropriate pass-by parameters for each situation.
Normalisation mode	Choice	-	Select whether auralisation files are normalised to the greatest sound pressure encountered for each situation (‘Auto’, gives best listening experience), or whether all audio files in the calculation have a fixed dynamic range (‘Manual’, best for comparing audio differences between different projects or situations)
Manual normalisation value	Number	dB	If ‘Manual’ normalisation mode is selected for the auralisation, the audio files will be normalised such that this value represents the full scale deflection of the audio. (If this value is set too low, audio files will be overloaded, causing an error in the calculation.)
Individual source output	Checkbox	-	Enabling this results in individual audio files being generated for every individual source and receiver combination, instead of just single files for the overall noise at (each receiver). This will cause the calculation to take longer and the results will take up significantly more storage space.

Enabling the ‘Read-only’ option will prevent the project being saved over, and is useful if you would like to prevent changes to a project. Changes may be subsequently saved to a new file if desired. If the ‘Prevent all editing’ option is selected, then additionally, no parameters will be able to be changed, and calculations for this project will also be disabled. Use the ‘Password’ button to apply password protection to the ‘Read-only’ and ‘Prevent all editing’ status.

Functions are also provided from the Project settings menu to backup/restore the main project database file. Note that model backups will not include any results or supporting input files.

Additional functions are provided to repair the project database and restore the supporting calculation functions. Use these if advised by Train Noise Expert support.

Application preferences

The application preferences are global, and will apply across all projects. They are accessed through the menu Edit>Preferences.

Select a global library location for convenience to use with the “Import to library” function. This should be a path to a valid model file or backup file (.tnem or .tneb file extensions).

The author and organisation fields are optional and are currently not used in the software. These may be used in a future release.

Select “Open last project at launch” to ensure that your last project is instantly reloaded when starting the software, saving you time.

Select “Check for new versions at launch” for Train Noise Expert to automatically check for a new version every time you start the software. Note: this requires an active Internet connection and maintenance contract.

Select “Allow features in Beta” to gain access to additional features and calculation settings. Note that some of the Beta options may have limited validation and/or could change in future releases; please contact us for more details about these features.

Select “Enable directivity 3D view” to enable the viewing of source directivities in the 3D model view. For complex models with many point sources (typically >100), generating the 3D directivity plots can impair the user interface performance, so the facility to turn this on/off has been provided here.

Select “Use legacy MATLAB runtime (2011b)” to use the old runtime rather than the more recent runtime (MATLAB 2024a, installed from here). Advantages of using the newer runtime are for improved speed of calculations, but in the event of issues installing the latest runtime, the older version can be used. Support for the legacy 2011b runtime will be removed in future versions of Train Noise Expert.