So back in the days in early 00's i used to play q2 online a lot, and could be pretty sure of opponents position on map throughout a match. Ingame sound was software rendered and i was using sb live! with standart drivers in win xp... After a solid break of 10 years in gaming i found out that soundstage is a total mess when playing on win10 laptop with some realtec alc. So i started researching what was the best sound option and yet dig out my old sb live! from the attic. The best option turned out to be a hardware rendered openal 3d sound pairing with x-fi cmss3d with macro and elevation filters on on r1q2 game client. The second option was using openal sound on q2pro game client, but it was a mess when using it in a hardware, and q2pro developer claimed openal soft to be used with his product (mentioning: In OpenAL mode, Q2PRO uses linear distance sound attenuation model, whereas R1Q2 uses inverse distance AFAIK. Thus it is expected that the sound can be quite different between two). And i wonder what are this models he's talking about and whether hardware openal could be somehow properly used when gaming with q2pro client?
But even more intriguing to me is another 3d model i came across. While researching the best option, buying xfi card, setting it up etc i had to make use of my sb live! and the only option i found under win10 - were kx-project drivers. Its performance in 3d positioning was mediocre, but were i impressed by its potential in manual tuning of its DSP... tbc