We are going to develop a train simulator for the education of machinist candidates. The simulator will be realistic like the real train, with all of its features. Hence, we need the sounds to be heard by the machinist like driving the real train. We are planning to collect the real train sounds on the train and use FMOD library to provide the sounds. I asked a question about the sound formats before. I want also to consult about the sound card, speakers and speaker configurations. We are planning to buy Creative X-Fi sound card for our simulator system, do you have any idea, which one of them is more appropriate? Also, we have not decided to buy which speaker system yet. Can you suggest me any idea, any choice about the speakers? In addition, how do we put the speakers in the cabin for the best performance? I uploaded a picture of the cabin and a schema to the flickr, the link is below. http://www.flickr.com/photos/25993307@N02/ Thanks for your help…

Pretty much any sound card will suffice for playing back samples.

As for speakers, I don't know how you would install them for best performance and clarity. A lot of speakers need to be angled directly at the listener or the high frequencies can be lost. Either way, you want to look for speakers with a flat frequency response to ensure authentic sound reproduction. If you search for 'nearfield studio monitors' you'll find speakers that sound engineers use to test their mixes, which I would expect are good enough for your purposes. But I am not an expert in the area so take this as a starting point.