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Gears of War PC (2007, DX10) 5.1 via HDMI?

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First post, by XAGMNINETY

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Hey all,

Just found this forum and honestly, considering how much I tinker with old software on my gaming machine, I figure I'll be around here often.

I wanted to drop in to ask those more knowledgeable than me about getting proper 5.1 audio via HDMI from the 2007 release of Gears of War (and early Unreal Engine 3 software, for that matter). Sadly, playing the "Ultimate Edition" (lol) released in 2016 is completely out of the question, as one of the W10 1809 Update patches busted the effects pipeline in the game over a year and a half ago, and the devs never fixed it. Runs at 40-55 FPS at 1080p on the highest-end GPU's. My guess is it's broken forever.

Anyway, I got the original GFWL release via a keyseller, and while it runs great in 4K, I've run into an apparently common issue from over a decade ago.

See this previous VOGONS link, for reference.

Not Old But... Gears of War Trouble

I'm familiar with the method ultimately used to "remedy" the audio issues, which is to swap the "Generic Software" tag in the WarEngineUserSettings.ini with the name of your AL audio hardware device. From what I can tell from extensive Googling, this is the only way to force 5.1 audio into this game. Guess Gears has a history of crappy PC ports.

The problem is that I don't have a dedicated sound card in my system (9700k, AORUS 1080ti, 16GB DDR4) and when I use the ALCapsViewer software, only "Generic Software" shows up. Now, I am aware that audio processing hardware is now integrated into modern GPU's and pumped out the HDMI port rather than through a dedicated sound card, so I assume that there's a way to force the game to use hardware in this manner. But for the life of me, I can't find anything on how anyone has gotten this done with just a graphics card (in this case, an nVidia GPU).

I was planning on a modded Mass Effect 1 run in the near future as well, and I'm aware that this 5.1 issue also stretches to that game. So I could really use a fix if I want proper surround.

Oh, and for reference, GPU --> Yamaha AVR --> TV via LPCM audio. Pretty much every game (minus PC Halo: Reach, ha) on every machine (PC & Consoles) outputs perfect 5.1 audio through this setup.
..................................................................| - -> 5.1 Speakers
Any help would be appreciated.

X

Reply 1 of 4, by jonpol

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XAGMNINETY wrote on 2020-04-30, 05:04:

I was planning on a modded Mass Effect 1 run in the near future as well, and I'm aware that this 5.1 issue also stretches to that game. So I could really use a fix if I want proper surround.

Hi,

I don't know about Gears of War (have it on xb360 but not the PC version), but I have successfully played Mass Effect 1 with 7.1 surround sound using HDMI from my GPU if I use IndirectSound (i.e DirectSound, not OpenAL), and presumably DSOAL would work with it as well. You might want to try either one of those when you play Mass Effect.

Reply 2 of 4, by XAGMNINETY

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Hey man,

Thanks for the response, and sorry for the month-long delay, 🤣.

Unfortunately, I did try the IndirectSound wrapper when I initially made this post. When launching the game, I get a nice "you cannot run the game with modified executable code" error.

I understand that IDS works well for games outside of GFWL (see: Origin/Steam Mass Effect), but it's not going to work here, I don't think.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Last edited by XAGMNINETY on 2020-05-26, 00:50. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 4, by XAGMNINETY

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I've also attempted to follow the instructions in this guide:

https://hardforum.com/threads/how-to-get-5-1- … of-war.1240477/

to no avail. My AL_RENDERER value in the Log trace is simply "Software" rather than "Generic Software", and when I run the game with that value, there is no audio outside of cutscenes.

I have the latest OpenAL libraries installed and have Rapture3D installed as well (for DiRT 2, iirc), and have tried both of those to no avail.

Starting to hate Microsoft and Cliff's smug PC-hating face.

Reply 4 of 4, by mirh

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Of course you have to use the right DeviceName for Rapture3D or openal-soft.
Or just ditch away wrap_oal.dll in both your system and game folder, and the game will be obliged to use your fully fledged renderer.

pcgamingwiki.com

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