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Topic Summary

Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 30. March 2022, 04:20:39 »

 Just to double-check, if I want 5.1 sound that's better than what's currently available in the game settings, first I do this:

    Download the OpenAL Soft Windows binaries: Download link.
    Copy the DLL from bin\Win32\ to your game's main folder.
    Download the alsoft.ini file from the end of this post and copy it to your game's main folder.
    Open cam_ext.cfg with a text editor and put the following line at its end:

        snd_oal_device OpenAL Soft

...except in the ini I change "channels" to "surround51" and that's it?

What about "stereomode = headphones" ?  Would that have to take on a different value for 5.1?

Any other optimizations to make this suited for 5.1?  Should I change my windows settings or disable crystallizer and CMSS like the tutorial video says?

Thanks.
Posted by: Hirmuolio
« on: 13. August 2021, 22:38:28 »

I think it is worth noting that with one small change this also makes SS2 work with surround speakers (this thread is also one of the first results on google search for thtat).

In the alsoft.ini remove the headphone and hrtf lines and change the 
channels=stereo
to 
channels=surround51
to make the audio into 5.1 surround.
Posted by: GuyFawkesGaming
« on: 21. December 2020, 19:38:12 »

Honestly even I don't know everything about EAX emulation. Most stuff is strait forward like copy dsound.dll and dsoal-aldrv.dll into the game folder (or a3d.dll a3dsnd.dll and dsoal-aldrv.dll into syswow64). Some of the same issues standard openal has, such as the -12 reverb fix, also manifest with DSOAL. But some games just don't work with no real explanation. Some people have been able to solve this by installing creative alchemy alongside DSOAL, but no one's really sure why that fixes things since you don't actually need a creative card or alchemy even functional for it to work. I theorized it might have something to do with the registry since indirect sound offers the following fix:
Code: [Select]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{47D4D946-62E8-11CF-93BC-444553540000}\InprocServer32]
@="dsound.dll"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{3901CC3F-84B5-4FA4-BA35-AA8172B8A09B}\InprocServer32]
@="dsound.dll"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\WOW6432Node\CLSID\{47D4D946-62E8-11CF-93BC-444553540000}\InprocServer32]
@="dsound.dll"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\WOW6432Node\CLSID\{3901CC3F-84B5-4FA4-BA35-AA8172B8A09B}\InprocServer32]
@="dsound.dll"There are also 3 A3D solutions; QSound wrapper (which A3D Alchemy appears to be based on), A3D Live and Creative's official wrapper. The best solution for this also depends on the game. I suggest also installing the A2D driver (included with A3D Alchemy).
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 17. November 2020, 07:21:05 »

I updated the main post with information from @GuyFawkesGaming , thanks again!
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 14. September 2020, 12:49:40 »

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.
Posted by: GuyFawkesGaming
« on: 12. September 2020, 21:45:18 »

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.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 01. May 2020, 09:39:30 »

Quote by zaxap:
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?
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 30. April 2020, 15:56:59 »

.
[Baby-Development.png expired]
Posted by: zaxap
« on: 30. April 2020, 07:42:30 »

can you detail almost step by step how to do everything please
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 23. September 2019, 20:21:13 »

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??
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 21. September 2019, 10:11:16 »

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
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 25. August 2019, 16:36:44 »

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.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 10. July 2019, 22:23:59 »

Quote by Marvin:
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.
Posted by: Chandlermaki
« on: 30. May 2019, 18:04:20 »

I have to say, I was expecting a subtle difference, but the improvement here is immediately apparent. Very impressed, and thanks!
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 27. May 2019, 19:58:56 »

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.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 27. May 2019, 19:55:19 »

Sure it's supported, just not with HRTF.
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 26. May 2019, 19:28:39 »

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?
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 26. May 2019, 18:14:29 »

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.
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 23. May 2019, 22:51:32 »

Bump... anybody know the answer?
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 21. May 2019, 01:10:34 »

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.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 19. January 2019, 19:27:37 »

Thank you! Updated.
Posted by: SirYodaJedi
« on: 19. January 2019, 16:08:43 »

The HRTF table complier updated in 1.19.0. See The PCGamingWiki page for updated instructions.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 30. October 2018, 21:49:30 »

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

Thanks for noticing, updated the main post.
Posted by: Silversharp
« on: 29. October 2018, 14:55:28 »

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
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 04. April 2018, 08:30:06 »

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.
Posted by: fosley
« on: 04. April 2018, 07:54:54 »

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?
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 18. March 2018, 07:31:35 »

No, it doesn't support EAX, the translation has to be performed by the engine. Fortunately, NewDark does this.
Posted by: grey
« on: 17. March 2018, 21:14:23 »

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
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 28. September 2017, 18:07:54 »

I updated the post to OAL Soft v1.18.2 which comes with built-in HRTF tables, making it much less probable to screw up the installation. I did notice a bug with the ghost despawn as Lightwave suggested, but that seems to be tied to a SS2 bug and happens regardless of the sound lib used.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 13. June 2017, 08:26:53 »

That was quick, and you don't need to apologise for your English, native speakers are actually in the minority here I think. :D

If you can describe the problem, could you post it to the project's bug tracker? Maybe it will be fixed eventually. I'll keep linking to the older 17.2 version for now.
Posted by: Lightwave
« on: 12. June 2017, 20:49:09 »

Ok, the problem was gone if you compiled library by yourself with a new Visual C++ compiler (2017 Community, for example).
OpenAL releases on kcat.strangesoft site was compiled with GCC MINGW-64w and I think it's has an issue with code generating on certain circumstances (well, I'm not an expert in cross-compiling).

Sorry for the disturbing (and for my english, too).
Posted by: Lightwave
« on: 12. June 2017, 17:05:57 »

> In what way, do you know why
Maybe it's OpenAL bug like memory leak or something (because 1.18 implements many features) or bug in NewDark audio subsystem. Who knows~

I can try to make git bisect on OpenAL codebase and see what's the commit breaking the game.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 12. June 2017, 13:06:54 »

In what way, do you know why? I'm sure the project creator would like to fix that. Or me, if it's actually my fault. I'll look into it when I have the time.
Posted by: Lightwave
« on: 12. June 2017, 12:34:28 »

Warning: latest OpenAL Soft 1.18.0 breaks the ghost despawn.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 24. February 2017, 13:50:57 »

https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/

Cool. It would certainly be nice to have an open-source, hardware- and OS-agnostic software audio engine available which is maintained by more than one guy in his basement.
Posted by: Olfred
« on: 27. September 2016, 12:31:30 »

It's more close to A3D than to EAX.
What A3D did was to get (a simpler version of) the world geometry and simulated the sound playback relative to your position.
So when a sound was played around the corner, it was in lower volume.
EAX simply added effects on the sounds, disregarding your position in the world.
(later EAX was better, but let's just stay at the time of SS2).

Back to Battlefield (or the Frostbite engine). If you have a Tank there are somewhat like 20 or more sound generators on the tank itself.
Now if a tank drives by from behind, you can hear it coming from behind and driving past you.
It even sounds different if you are standing up or laying down as some of the sound generators are now closer to you and some other get obstructed by the tank itself. Now if there are walls around or the ground is made of a special texture, you even hear the echo comparable to the materials surface.
The sound engine is really rich in features when it comes to 3d emulation.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 27. September 2016, 08:34:09 »

Interesting. EAX type effects making their way back into gaming should be a given since devs can do all those things in engine  in software now. Not sure what you mean with the positional audio. I'll try to look for that video.
Posted by: Olfred
« on: 27. September 2016, 05:47:37 »

No.
Whatever produces sound does have one or several (like tanks) sound generators attached to them. You hear the sound relative to your position. Additionally obstruction of geometry and reflection of sound depending on the material is also calculated.

There was some feature video from the developers where they showed of and described a little bit about it. Sadly I can't find it anymore.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 26. September 2016, 22:40:52 »

Quote by Olfred:
When it comes to an interface or sorts, yes.
Nowadays the good games have 3d surround for headphones built in.
As example, Battlefield 3 and the following titles have pretty neat sound atmosphere going on.
Isn't that just a variant of CMSS3D though?
Posted by: Olfred
« on: 26. September 2016, 21:04:08 »

Quote by Marvin:
Yeah, A3D2. 0 is still ahead of anything we have today.
When it comes to an interface or sorts, yes.
Nowadays the good games have 3d surround for headphones built in.
As example, Battlefield 3 and the following titles have pretty neat sound atmosphere going on.
Posted by: citadel
« on: 26. September 2016, 19:01:48 »

Quote by Marvin:
I'm confident however that headphone sound will see a lot of attention soon thanks to VR.
Feel that in my guts as well and have started reading, checking out the HRTF frameworks etc. :] A binaural game is my upcoming project. I am playing A Blind Legend on my phone and it seems to be an interesting market, it just gives a completely new perspective to such a common thing as even some cheap earbuds.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 26. September 2016, 17:41:07 »

Another happy customer,thanks.  :)
Yeah, A3D2. 0 is still ahead of anything we have today. I'm confident however that headphone sound will see a lot of attention soon thanks to VR.
Posted by: citadel
« on: 25. September 2016, 22:16:27 »

I can't reiterate enough how I enjoy this mod/upgrade!
A bit of searching brought me to the personal page of this modest Swiss/American guy Toni Schneider (https://toni.org/a3d), who worked on A3D, explains how Creative buried the original 3D sound functionality after they had bought Aureal and shares some impressive A3D demo videos from an old CD he found.
The binaural experience was flawless already back then in game classics like the original Unreal (makes it even more unreal), Motoracer or Jedi, sadly Creative locked A3D up.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 20. September 2016, 19:05:07 »

I added this thread to MOTHER's collection of SS2 Help Guides and changed the icon of the first post to the same lamp symbol all guides have.
I will not move it to the Helpdesk where the other guides are that deal with immediate installation problems etc, since I feel this is more of an advanced topic.
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 20. September 2016, 17:19:04 »

KEMAR has better precision, IRCAM has better accuracy since you can select a lot more different HRTFs. The choice is yours.
Posted by: citadel
« on: 20. September 2016, 16:49:44 »

I see.
Does it mean the KEMAR MHR has a better "resolution", more detailed table, thus sound localization should objectively be better as OALSoft needs to "interpolate" the IRCAM samples more?
I did not hear much of a difference between the custom and the default MHR, just created it "because I could" - may as well revert back to the original.
Thank you!
Posted by: Marvin
« on: 20. September 2016, 08:00:37 »

Good to know the guide helped you making your own table.
The default tables are built with the KEMAR set from MIT which provides 710 records at different positions whereas IRCAM only uses 187 positions, hence the smaller file size.
Posted by: citadel
« on: 20. September 2016, 03:07:16 »

Marvin, thank you very much for this post and the detailed install/setup guide, got it working with my custom HRTF table (IRC 1020 works best for me).

One note - my MHR is considerably smaller than the in-built default ones:

Code: [Select]
53,853 default-44100.mhr
53,853 default-48000.mhr
13,417 irc_1020_44100.mhr

The built process finished without errors:

Code: [Select]
c:\Users\citadel\AppData\Roaming\openal\hrtf_defs>makehrtf.exe -m -r=44100 -d=sphere -i=.\IRC_1020.def -o=.\irc_1020_44100.mhr
Reading HRIR definition...
Calculating diffuse-field average...
Performing diffuse-field equalization...
Performing minimum phase reconstruction...
Truncating minimum-phase HRIRs...
Synthesizing missing elevations...
Normalizing final HRIRs...
Calculating impulse delays...
Creating MHR data set file...
Operation completed.
Posted by: Olfred
« on: 21. August 2016, 19:56:30 »

Can you make a sound recording of the "glitch"?
Posted by: Fallen+Keeper
« on: 02. August 2016, 21:47:03 »

Ok, thanks for your time. I will try different hrtf presets if problems persist.
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