Over 70 UK and European sound files were available to Aristo-Craft before it became Crest and several new locomotive recordings were made on Aristo's behalf. Unfortunately Lewis decided upon a software architecture that could not be characterised to use any of them.
The opportunity was missed as Lewis made the decision to continue developing a 'Pheonix' style synthesised sound module that did not allow customised sounds from the UK, Europe or even the USA to be programmed. Not that the incumbent 'generic US diesel' had any character anyway. Recording a 'runby' outside Aristo-Crafts warehouse and then up and down sampling the speed of the recording with no startup or shutdown sequences, no changes in exhaust notes etc. etc. It simply did not even begin to stand up to the developments from Loksound, ZIMO and others at the time.
I'm real sorry that this product stops here, but when you have a dinosaur on your hands you have to realise it will die out sometime. I don't mean to be 'mean' here as I have integrated the Revolution's receiver with external 16bit sound cards and simply love the whole setup, so to see CREST crumble is not something I ever wanted to see.
Having based my own implementation on the Revolution controller, the question is - who fills the gap for a reliable R/C system now?
I like to know as I have not had to look for one until now.