I have finally got around to archiving all of the menu music ever used in Rail Simulator and Train Simulator. To the best of my knowledge, this is a complete archive of TS' menu music and ambiences, uploaded in both DAV files directly from the game and WAV files for convenience. Below I have copied the description from the Web Archive page, which I have linked to at the bottom of this post. "This is an archive of all menu music used in Train Simulator from the release of Rail Simulator in 2007 to the present day. The files have been uploaded as DAVs, their original format and the one used by Train Simulator, and have also been converted to WAVs to listen to normally. To use any of these files in-game, grab the DAV version, remove the year from the file name (so it reads UI_FrontEndLoop.dav) and place it in RailWorks\Assets\Kuju\RailSimulatorCore\Audio, replacing whatever is there already. These files originals taken from the game itself, using various installs of the different versions of RS and TS. Below I have listed when each files were used in TS' history: 2007 - Rail Simulator, RailWorks and RailWorks 2 2012 - TS2012 and TS2013 2014 - TS2014 and TSC2024 2015 - TS2015 2016 - All versions from TS2016 until TSC2024 The origins of each track are unknown. The music made for TS2014 and TS2015 was made by an unknown composer, and the other recordings are likely to be stock audio bought by the developers of the game." https://archive.org/details/ts-menu-music
I think 2015 has the edge over 2014, and both are better than the sound effects. Other opinions are available. Thanks for collecting them.
In theory you could use any song as the menu theme as long as it fit under the file size limit, although I can't remember what that limit is. I've managed to get the Train Sim World 3 menu theme playing in TS using the iTunes version of it, and it is very weird but is regardless a very pleasant menu theme. At one point in the past I have had the Saints Row 4 theme playing, and later on the Need for Speed Rivals theme as well. In the past it was possible to have any WAV file and modify the UIAudioControl.proxyxml file to point to it, but that stopped working for me a few years ago.
I'll just stick with the shunting clanks, I spend so little time in the menu that music means nothing to me, and as for nostalgia, meh, just old people being old and doing old things if you ask me.
I'm twenty, I've been playing TS for almost half my life now. I don't like the music because of nostalgia though, I do genuinely like the music itself.
You can't drive trains while you navigate menus or while the scenario loads, so it's worthwhile having music you like while you can't do anything else.
I apologise, it was an attempt at humour and you clearly have no time for such shenanigans, I shall remain stoic, humourless and serious, as this hobby apparently demands. I do indeed genuinely prefer the shunting ambiance to any music though, just my personal preference.
Subtle humour doesn't come across very well over text. I was responding to the nostalgia comment, regardless of if it was a joke.
The process is a bit long-winded but it can be done for any song, assuming you want the files to be in the DAV format. It was possible to use regular WAV files but that seemingly has been locked down. Get the music or audio that you want and use Audacity to export it as a WAV. I've found 16-bit signed PCM files are too big - I don't know what the exact size limit is but I assume it's 45MB. If the file is too big it won't play, and you'll have to use a different codec for it. When I was converting the TSW3 menu theme I used an unsigned 8-bit PCM. I had bought the song on iTunes and it's incredible to see how much more efficient M4A is compared to WAV. When downloaded from iTunes it's 13MB. When exported as a 16-bit WAV it is 72MB. Even the 8-bit one is about 35MB. Finally, use DAVDecoder to convert the file. While DAVDecoder is meant for converting DAVs into WAVs, you can do it the other way around but it isn't set up for it. Using the Browse menu only shows DAV files, so you manually need to insert the input and output directories including file names. My solution is to use the copy as path function, paste it into the input box, remove the quotation marks at the beginning and end, then do the same in the output box but change WAV at the end of the file name for DAV. Afterwards it works perfectly.
