I own a recording studio.
The only reason to upgrade your sound is IF you are going to do some high end audio editing/mixing . . . OR you need a surround sound output and you currently only have a stereo output.
More serious digital audio work is usually done with external digital converters and interfaces, where decent units are $500 and up for 8 to 16 channels . . . some high end AD converters cost $3000 to $8000 for just 2 channels . . . just the converters.
In the Pro-Audio industry no one uses "general consumer sound cards".
If you are going to just use for gaming, any "surround sound" card should do. But compared to external professional audio interface, computer sound cards lack clarity, depth and air . . . but you can only hear it through good studio set up in an acoustically engineered control room. My reference monitors are $5000 a pair.
If you don't need surround . . . the money would be better spent on more RAM or that "Train driver" controller looks like fun.
Hello Edion2
I completely and respectfully disagree with what you just said about only needing a high end sound card if you were going to do some mixing/editing.
You may own a recording studio which is fine but that has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. We are talking about fixing the messed up and missing sound that comes out of TRS2006 if you have a on board sound chip, namely the Ac97 which comes built in on most boards. It can not pull the sounds out of 06 properly thus you get drop outs on the engine throttle sounds and if you turn your head in the cab the sound drops out, hearing sounds from some crossings and industries from the other end of the route, inconsistent volume along with a lot of other sound problems to numerous to list here. Well guess what, the Sound Blaster X-FI sound card fixes all of the sound problems in 06 and that's the only reason that I suggested that card. Not so he/she can do some high end mixing/editing, even though it's true that you can do a lot with this card in that department, but I sure not what you can do in your recording studio of course. That's not what we are trying to do here.
As to more ram or a train driver controller, that would be nice too but will not fix the sound problem.
This card is cheap now compared to what it was 2 years ago. It listed for $300.00 back then. I got it in sale for $150.00. Now you can get it for $135.00. Not a bad deal for what it does for Trainz.
If you don't believe what I have said just do a search on the forum for sound problems. There are a lot of other members that have used the same fix. If the old forum was still here you would have a post that was 40 pages or more long on the sound problem, I believe by Alex.
I know that this sound problem is not the fault of the AC97. Its in the Trainz game code. Something got broke when they made 06, but Auran has already told us, when they made SP1, that they were not going to do any thing about the sound problem because it would require a complete rewrite of the code. That's when I bought the Sound Blaster X-FI card to fix the sound.
If you're running 06 and are not having any sound problems then maybe you could share with everybody which sound card you have in your computer. I know that lots of members would love to know.