SS2 Headphones Sound Upgrade

[6644635ee4d0bgrey]

doesnt using OpenAL Soft disable EAX? OALSoft uses EFX, but are you sure that it translates EAX calls to EFX?

last i read that OpenAL Soft never supported the EAX extension.

https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/issues/62

https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/issues/30

[6644635ee5082Marvin]

No, it doesn't support EAX, the translation has to be performed by the engine. Fortunately, NewDark does this.

[6644635ee5312fosley]

So I ran through the directions and everything seems to be working fine. It's still nowhere near as good as a proper, multi-speaker setup, but it works a lot better than any other 2-speaker surround I've ever tried.

One thing I've often lamented about traditional 5.1 and 7.1 setups is the lack of vertical localization; everything always sounds like it's on the same plane as you, even if it's above or below you. I imagine a good solution would be an 8-speaker system with 2 upper-front, 2 lower-front, 2 upper-rear, and 2 lower-rear speakers to give total sound immersion, but I've yet to find a game or option in Windows that allows changing the apparent direction of arbitrary speakers on arbitrary channels. So the HRTF-style surround seems like it could be pretty awesome for not only giving surround without disturbing others in the house, but also for giving vertical surround where standard speakers don't have any.

But I'm not getting any kind of vertical effect from the OpenAL stuff.

I can see that neither IRCAM nor CIAIR even try to do vertical (everything is on a horizontal plane), while KEMAR is supposed to have data from -40 to +90°. But if I delete the openal\hrtf folder with the IRC_1059.mhr file in it (which I assume goes back to the default of KEMAR), I'm still not getting anything that sounds remotely like it's above or below me, even in the cargo bays on Engineering. Does anyone else get any kind of vertical effect? Or is it possible the game doesn't even try to localize sound except in 2D?

[6644635ee5436Marvin]

IRCAM has elevation angles from -45 to +90° in 15° steps. Works for me, as seen in the video demonstration where I'm standing in front of the pumping machine. The effect is not very pronounced, though, I give you that.

[6644635ee5599Silversharp]

Sound improvement (positioning sources) works great.
But since the original download link for the openal-soft-1.18.2-bin.zip is dead, I provide You with a mirror:

link

[6644635ee56a2Marvin]

The site moved:
http://openal-soft.org/

Thanks for noticing, updated the main post.

[6644635ee579dSirYodaJedi]

The HRTF table complier updated in 1.19.0. See The PCGamingWiki page for updated instructions.

[6644635ee5879Marvin]

Thank you! Updated.

[6644635ee5c4fRocketMan]

I have 2 questions:

1) Does HRTF still work with 5.1 systems?  I selected 5.1 in my cam_ext.cfg but installed this driver.  Will it still give me 5.1 because I would like to try that.  Will it be any better than the OpenAl that was available before installing these files?

2) I can't seem to pick 44kHz on my X-Fi Titanium in Game Mode.  It only allows 48kHz and 96 kHz.  Will it not work unless it's set to exactly 44 and if so, any idea how to change it?  The normal options don't seem to be exposed through the control panel since creative has its own.

[6644635ee5d47RocketMan]

Bump... anybody know the answer?

[6644635ee5e4eMarvin]

1) Afaik not, you need stereo sound.
2) It will, OALS has 44 and 48kHz HRTF tables built-in. Game sound will be upsampled accordingly.

[6644635ee5f79RocketMan]

Uh oh.  So, I already followed your installation instructions most of the way and put the dlls where they're supposed to be etc. but I also changed the cam_ext file to support 5.1 speakers for OpenAl.  I think it was the original OpenAl driver that supported 5.1.  Does the new driver drop support for it?  Basically should I uninstall the openalsoft in order to get 5.1 working again?

[6644635ee6054Marvin]

Sure it's supported, just not with HRTF.

[6644635ee617fRocketMan]

Oh ok that's good.

As far as we've come with sound, I'm amazed we still haven't achieved 4 channel HRTF with elevation that was hardware accelerated by the Turtle Beach cards back at the turn of the century.

It's like how we look at the technology behind the pyramids and wonder how the heck they did it then when such a thing couldn't be done later on.

[6644635ee634eChandlermaki]

I have to say, I was expecting a subtle difference, but the improvement here is immediately apparent. Very impressed, and thanks!

[6644635ee6d06Kolya]

The fork is essentially maintained by one guy who unfortunately can only be spammed via email and does not have a donate button on his website. In any case: All thanks go to Chris Robinson!

You could also open an issue on his github page: https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/issues

I would like to optionally deploy this via SS2Tool, but I see 2 problems from the installation description:
1. unpacking to %APPDATA% - SS2Tool so far only deals in the game folder and I prefer to keep it that way, but technically this isn't a problem.
2. setting the sample rate on the current sound device - this is probably not possible for SS2Tool to do safely and compatible across OS versions.

[6644635ee6f18Marvin]

Back from my slumber - sorry for the late reply.

Actually, this is something I wanted to test for some time now, and lo and behold, you don't have to change anything outside of the SS2 folder anymore:
1) The alsoft.ini file can be read from the same place that the DLL resides in. If both are placed in the SS2 folder, the options will be parsed from there as well. However, the OALS config tool naturally won't find it, so if you're not a novice user, the global installation is still the recommended one (although having local options for each Dark engine game for example is nice to have).
2) If OALS, for any reason whatsoever, cannot find or parse the HRTF file you're providing (or forgetting to provide), it will default to its built-in KEMAR table. So if you're in 48KHz mode, which probably everyone is nowadays, and you're only provoding a hrtf=true option, then OALS will just use its built-in 48KHz table and upsample the game's sound to that frequency. Not the prettiest solution, since I would still recommend every expert user to use a custom table (upsampling artifacts should be neglible, so just use 48KHz for the future). But it works, and definitely much better than the default stereo sound.

Those changes were introduced in 19.0. I updated the quick-install and the ini file, both of which you can use for the SS2 Tool.

The only caveat is that you have to have headphones enabled in Windows. But if you're dense enough to have 5.1 enabled while using headphones, you sort of deserve the garbled game sound you'll be getting, I guess.

[6644635ee7282sarge945]

This is FANTASTIC! The only thing that would make it better would be something like physics-based sound propagation, which is obviously never going to happen.

I could imagine the game being terrifying when you hear sounds coming echoing down a hallway or through a vent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T25Ello5LB8

Now that it's doable from the game folder, this would be a great addition to SS2Tool

[6644635ee73b4RocketMan]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but I think there are dev tools for the A3D 2.0 API.  A3D 2.0 allows "physics based" sound propagation, as it takes the level geometry and simulates how the sound bounces off the surfaces.  Sensaura did this too to an even more advanced degree (higher level reflections and more dimensions for the HRTF).  If you had the old hardware and the dev tools, it might have been possible??

[6644635ee7490zaxap]

can you detail almost step by step how to do everything please

[6644635ee757cKolya]

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[6644635ee77f4Marvin]

can you detail almost step by step how to do everything please

I wouldn't know how. The quick install is as basic as it gets, unless you have trouble downloading, extracting and copying files.

What step do you have trouble with?

[6644635ee7b0eGuyFawkesGaming]

This guide's pretty good, but I think it could use some updating now. First, pre-compiled HRTF tables can now be found on the web, so you don't really need either makehrtf.exe nor the hrtf_defs folder. A video to speed run the table selection process can also be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCXQp7swp5k. Second, the first post mentions that bsinc24 is best, actually though it's cubic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62U6UnaUGDE. Lastly, this isn't required but something I just recommend, make a shortcut to alsoft-config in \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs so it appears in the start menu.
Also, this isn't exactly relevant to SS2, but since I've seen many OpenAL guides out there use this one as a base I should probably mention it anyways. You can use a program called DSOAL to remap EAX effects and directsound 3D to ALsoft's EFX. It also includes the HRTF tables in the hard mode installation zip. There is also A3D Alchemy which uses a modified A3D to directsound wrapper combined with indirectsound; you can however make it use DSOAL with it's HRTF by copying DSOAL's dsound.dll over A3D Alchemy's a3dsnd.dll (indirectsound) in sysWOW64 or system32. Also you may want to keep Creative Alchemy with restriction remover for those few EAX 5 games like Bioshock since DSOAL doesn't do that yet. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

[6644635ee7c3fMarvin]

Thank you so much for the input! Yeah, after the original writeup, I only ever made slight updates but I guess now would be a good time for a makeover... I will try to incorporate your changes.

The EAX emulation sounds very interesting, would you mind putting that up as its own thread, which could be linked both here and from MOTHER? Sounds like too interesting a subject to ignore, but I would not like to bloat the headphone guide even more.