hi. new member here, found this thread after some more or less random search related to alchemy.
i've been through some small research after recently fighting with the sound in mass effect 1 (unreal engine 3, using openal - yes, i know that's not what alchemy is for) and in games in general, and some people here seem surprised for no reason.
there's only one thing that matters in regard to 3d audio in games: creative sucks.
the very reason why alchemy sounds like it does on non-creative cards, is actually pretty obvious: it goes the software route, via creative openal. creative's openal32.dll (used in games using openal natively as well), has 3 modes of operation.
1) if creative soundcard is detected, it uses the hardware
2) if not, it uses 'generic hardware' mode, emulating openal (and eax effects) using directsound3d
3) if 2) doesn't work, it uses 'generic software' - play something so the user can't complain that the sound doesn't work, but the effects are basically gone i guess, and it's limited to stereo only
now, guess what happens when you're using alchemy. since it's needed since vista, you're on vista or above. since you're on vista or above - that's right. 'generic hardware' mode doesn't work. so basically, unless you have creative soundcard, using openal from creative guarantees shitty sound, no matter if you're using that dll for alchemy or for native openal games.
software sound processing can sound right though.
http://openal-soft.org/
just follow the readme - all you need is to copy the hrtf folder to %appdata%\openal, create your config with alsoft-config (or just create alsoft.ini in %appdata% on your own - i'll paste mine below), and well - the most important thing - copy soft_oal.dll from bin\win32 folder to your game folder, renamed as openal32.dll. regardless if you're using alchemy or the game is using openal natively - it should definitely help for soundcards other than sound blasters.
my alsoft.ini is pretty simple actually:
[General]
sources=64
channels=stereo
stereo-mode=headphones
hrtf=true
resampler=sinc4
sample-type=float32
why the hrtf? obviously, such setup requires headphones. but trust me, it's worth it. check the youtube for some videos of quake 3 or unreal tournament using it.
now, as an alternative to alchemy, i would like to post one thing for testing. i didn't try alchemy myself, since i don't have creative soundcard, and all the unlockers posted here are, well, full of viruses, to say the least. i don't care about the explanations, i can understand one or two false alarms, but i won't risk it when virustotal lights up in red for more than half antivirus programs.
openal-soft is being worked on by its developer, but there's one more thing he created, that's unfortunately not in active development anymore.
http://repo.or.cz/w/dsound-openal.git
it is what it looks like - a simple alchemy-like solution. unfortunately, no docs, no website, no ready-to-use builds... oh wait. i've just compiled it few hours ago.
https://www.sendspace.com/file/eywb1e
some games may crash (tiberium wars does), some games may have reverb where there should be none (kotor 2), and in general games using miles sound system are more or less guaranteed to hang during exit. still, it works. i wouldn't waste my time with games using miles though, it has tons of backends and there's often no way to select which one it'll use (other than removing mss* files).
fallout 3 seems to work fine - i'm not entirely sure since the test was rather short and it was missing few sounds sometimes, but that's a matter of allowed audio channels - rising it above 64 should fix it. left 4 dead works fine with snd_legacy_surround set to 1.
overall, i prefer when the game supports openal natively, since mass effect 1 with openal-soft sounds absolutely brilliant, but i guess this wrapper may be useful for other games. it's a matter of tests though. also, even if enabling eax crashes the game, it still makes sense to use it for the hrtf alone.
