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EAX - native vs alchemy

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Reply 20 of 32, by mirh

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BuckoA51 wrote:

Yes, of course I did. I have ALchemy working in other games just fine.

I don't understand why you're so shocked by this, ALchemy is a wrapper after all, what wrapper ever worked 100%?

Killing Floor is another game that only works fully on real EAX too.

What wrapper ever worked 100%?
Well, you know it's not like official wrappers are the norm out there. This is though.

And killing floor ALchemy explanation is all here. Including the proof it has been correctly tested with silent hill 2

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Reply 21 of 32, by BuckoA51

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Killing Floor is marginally better under XP, that site would seem to agree to this, but I can tell you for 100% certain that surround sound does NOT work properly in Silent HIll 2 Directors Cut using ALchemy. NOTHING comes out of the rear speakers AT ALL, and yes I did get my ear pressed right against them.

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Reply 22 of 32, by PhilsComputerLab

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I'd be happy to test the game but don't have it.

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Reply 23 of 32, by jonpol

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I was curious, and so I found my Silent Hill 2 discs and installed them.

(It turns out that Silent Hill 2 has audio problems on multi-core processors which require the process affinity to be set to use a single CPU. This is easy to do and there are lots of good resources online, but I wasted quite a bit of time figuring this out and it was only after I experienced the same bugs in Windows XP with my Sound Blaster X-Fi that I finally decided to ask Google 😊 )

My experience was that surround sound was natively supported in Windows 7 x64 without me having to do anything besides the aforementioned affinity trick. To confirm what I was hearing I used a debug version of IndirectSound and found that:

  1. The game doesn't use EAX at all
  2. The game creates "deferred" buffers even if no hardware acceleration is available which means that Microsoft's software 3D implementation is used

I don't have ALchemy installed in Windows 7 and so I didn't try that. BuckoA51, did you happen to try running without ALchemy? To my ears playing the first few minutes sounded pretty similar in both Windows 7 software and Windows XP hardware (i.e. same machine but different audio hardware).

Edit: My PC version of Silent Hill 2 doesn't appear to have the "Director's Cut" label anywhere that I can see. I don't know if there were different versions or not (it does contain "Born From a Wish").

Reply 24 of 32, by BuckoA51

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Yeah both software and hardware mode (only available if using ALchemy) gave me no sound out the back at all under Windows 8. Switching to XP on identical hardware everything worked great.

I was using Silent Hill 2 directors cut.

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Reply 25 of 32, by mirh

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BuckoA51 wrote:

Killing Floor is marginally better under XP, that site would seem to agree to this, but I can tell you for 100% certain that surround sound does NOT work properly in Silent HIll 2 Directors Cut using ALchemy. NOTHING comes out of the rear speakers AT ALL, and yes I did get my ear pressed right against them.

Indeed, there is lot of confusion between what settings should be used, since UT2.5 is quite old and since openAL has a fallback mode that uses DS3D.
I'd like to test that someday. Anyway, unless we can track the exact audio routing that's used this is all speculation.

jonpol wrote:
I was curious, and so I found my Silent Hill 2 discs and installed them. […]
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I was curious, and so I found my Silent Hill 2 discs and installed them.

(It turns out that Silent Hill 2 has audio problems on multi-core processors which require the process affinity to be set to use a single CPU. This is easy to do and there are lots of good resources online, but I wasted quite a bit of time figuring this out and it was only after I experienced the same bugs in Windows XP with my Sound Blaster X-Fi that I finally decided to ask Google 😊 )

I don't have ALchemy installed in Windows 7 and so I didn't try that. BuckoA51, did you happen to try running without ALchemy? To my ears playing the first few minutes sounded pretty similar in both Windows 7 software and Windows XP hardware (i.e. same machine but different audio hardware).

Edit: My PC version of Silent Hill 2 doesn't appear to have the "Director's Cut" label anywhere that I can see. I don't know if there were different versions or not (it does contain "Born From a Wish").

Next time just check PCGW 😈
Besides, if you want to try ALchemy check this

BuckoA51 wrote:

Yeah both software and hardware mode (only available if using ALchemy) gave me no sound out the back at all under Windows 8. Switching to XP on identical hardware everything worked great.

I was using Silent Hill 2 directors cut.

Are you using latest version?

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Reply 26 of 32, by jonpol

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BuckoA51 wrote:

Yeah both software and hardware mode (only available if using ALchemy) gave me no sound out the back at all under Windows 8. Switching to XP on identical hardware everything worked great.

I've always assumed that any audio hardware would work the same as mine in Vista onwards using DirectSound, but perhaps I'm mistaken. I've whipped up a simple cheesy test program, and I wonder if you'd be willing to try it and report your findings. It can be found here:

http://www.indirectsound.com/downloads/Software3d.exe

What it does is create a 3D buffer explicitly in software (using one of the "virtualization" modes provided by the user) and circles it around the listener's head.

When I run this in Windows 7 x64 (using my nVidia graphics card's HDMI out for audio) I hear sound in all 7 of my speakers (and the program reports that the two HRTF modes aren't available if I try to select #3 or #4).

When I run this in Windows XP (using my Sound Blaster X-Fi) I only hear sound in the front left/right speakers, but all virtualization modes work.

mirh wrote:

Besides, if you want to try ALchemy check this

I did use ALchemy back in the day, but I intentionally avoid it now (to the point of preferring to develop IndirectSound rather than having to use Creative's stuff any longer hehehehe). I'm afraid it's a case of not wanting to use it rather than not knowing how or being able to 😊

Reply 27 of 32, by mirh

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jonpol wrote:
BuckoA51 wrote:

When I run this in Windows 7 x64 (using my nVidia graphics card's HDMI out for audio) I hear sound in all 7 of my speakers (and the program reports that the two HRTF modes aren't available if I try to select #3 or #4).

When I run this in Windows XP (using my Sound Blaster X-Fi) I only hear sound in the front left/right speakers, but all virtualization modes work.

That should have been expected I guess and yes, this link was available on one of those megaposts on the wiki

jonpol wrote:
mirh wrote:

Besides, if you want to try ALchemy check this

I did use ALchemy back in the day, but I intentionally avoid it now (to the point of preferring to develop IndirectSound rather than having to use Creative's stuff any longer hehehehe). I'm afraid it's a case of not wanting to use it rather than not knowing how or being able to 😊

Oh crap it was you! I always forgot to check the username 🤣

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Reply 28 of 32, by BuckoA51

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Are you using latest version?

release 1.43.28, I can give that 1.45.02 a spin though.

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Reply 29 of 32, by PhilsComputerLab

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Has anyone managed to get surround sound going in Unreal II?

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Reply 30 of 32, by KainXVIII

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Has anyone managed to get surround sound going in Unreal II?

Yeah, after Unreal 1 sound in second part is shockingly flat and surround not working for me (sb x-fi and win10)

Reply 31 of 32, by Choum

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Has anyone managed to get surround sound going in Unreal II?

If I remember you have to use :

Use3DSound=true
UseDefaultDriver=False
Channels=128

Reply 32 of 32, by KainXVIII

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Choum wrote:
If I remember you have to use : […]
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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Has anyone managed to get surround sound going in Unreal II?

If I remember you have to use :

Use3DSound=true
UseDefaultDriver=False
Channels=128

Can't say its worked correctly for me, even if can hear now some sfx from rear speakers positioning is still wrong 😵