That's the sound Unreal plays at the splash screen when it "finds" the a3d.dll file in your PC.

Do you have either an Aureal Vortex or Soundblaster PCI sound card installed by any chance?

I'm unable to reproduce that sound.

Also using the Gold version, got a Vortex 2 with 2041 drivers and don't get this sound. I do get a different A3D sound + screen in other games such as Incoming.

j7n what version do you have? Mine is from GOG.com but I also got the version from the Anthology DVD.

Oh and I have made the changes in the preferences to enable hardware3DAudio.

JayCeeBee64 is spot on! This sound file is contained within a3d.dll "Sensaura Audio3D API for DirectSound3D" as a resource. Maybe other versions of this file have a different sound. Use3dHardware is set to false in my vanilla Anthology version 226.

I've seen the "Sensaura" logo before elsewhere. What does this component do exactly? I don't expect it to create an actual "3D" sound, since I only have a Yamaha YMF724 stereo sound card.

I had to answer a question like that on Youtube 3 years ago

@j7n: Ah yes, I forgot that other PCI sound cards from the late 90's also had the a3d.dll file as well (ESS, Crystal \ Cirrus Logic, C-Media, Yamaha, etc.). I also managed to extract the sound file from my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz driver package, and it's almost identical to yours:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/efpktybpj3ku238/TBS … Splash.mp3?dl=0

Sensaura was just another provider of 3D audio technology and software in the late 90's (I remember QSound as well). Most sound card makers used it to essentially translate A3D calls to DirectSound3D. The only reason for the splash sound is to let you know that the 3D audio software is active and ready, you still have to enable it if you want to actually use it (or just leave it off if you don't).

@Phil: Aureal-based sound cards do indeed have a different splash sound - 2 of them in fact. I downloaded the 2041 drivers from the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library and found them inside the zip file right away:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/af3gzk3uqkgaamn/A3DSPLH.MP3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/co2nos6ezjh0sja/A3DSPLS.MP3?dl=0

You should hear one of these when Unreal Gold starts.

@leileilol: Geez, that SoundMAX card plays the splash sound really loud! That would scare me half to death if I played Unreal late at night in the dark 😅

400 Mhz should be more than enough for Unreal man. The problem is probably your videocard. And yes, this is the A3D sound and has nothing to do with the slowness of your PC.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

@Phil: Aureal-based sound cards do indeed have a different splash sound - 2 of them in fact. I downloaded the 2041 drivers from […]
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@Phil: Aureal-based sound cards do indeed have a different splash sound - 2 of them in fact. I downloaded the 2041 drivers from the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library and found them inside the zip file right away:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/af3gzk3uqkgaamn/A3DSPLH.MP3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/co2nos6ezjh0sja/A3DSPLS.MP3?dl=0

You should hear one of these when Unreal Gold starts.

Interesting. I take it one is for headphones and the other one for speakers? I never noticed a difference 😊

I mucked around a bit with the Vortex 2 card. It's a Turtle Beach Montego II and using the 2041 drivers as everyone tells me the are the best ones 😀

In some games I get the A3D splash sound, Incoming for example and also in Half-Life.

In two other games I can clearly hear A3D working, but no splash sound: Unreal Tournament (just tick the box) and Quake 3 Demo (Set A3D to on).

In one game I'm not convinced that A3D is fully working and that is Unreal Gold. I typed "preferences" to open the advanced config, enabled Use3DHardware=True. It sounds "different" compared to Use3DHardware=False, but not as good as the other games. In the scene at the beginning where a solder gets attacked by something behind the closed door you can hardly make out the sounds.

philscomputerlab wrote:

In one game I'm not convinced that A3D is fully working and that is Unreal Gold. I typed "preferences" to open the advanced config, enabled Use3DHardware=True. It sounds "different" compared to Use3DHardware=False, but not as good as the other games. In the scene at the beginning where a solder gets attacked by something behind the closed door you can hardly make out the sounds.

It's easy to tell if its working, just look in unreal's log files. An example:

Init: Galaxy is using DirectSound
Init: Aureal A3D 1.x 3D sound hardware found!
Init: Galaxy initialized

Yes there is also a console command s_wavetracing which configms A3D 2.0 being used or not.

I use the settings of YouTube user Hira who has tons of A3D videos.

Basically 2041 driver, enabled Hardware3DSound and then disable filters and spatial.

Vogons user swaaye also has a Unreal A3D video but he plays it on an older version of Unreal which seems to give you A3D 1.0.

I see how the splash screen and sound can be enabled and disabled.

1REGEDIT4
2
3[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Sensaura\Audio3D\Settings]
4"SplashScreen"=dword:00000001

I have only one program that shows the splash: the first demo version of Rally Championship 99.

If I enable "use3dhardware" in Unreal, I get "EAX 1.x" working, which gives a lot of metallic Half-Life-esque reverb in the ship. Sounds seem to have lower radius where they can be heard very loud, and when I pass a certain threshold, the loudness drops to nothing very suddenly. In the area where the Skaarj kills a person behind the closed door, the fighting sound can get overwhelmed by an electrical buzz emanating from lamps on the wall to the left of me, which doesn't happen using basic "Galaxy".

The splash screen and sound used to happen for me. Still does in Half-Life. Any ideas why it no longer does for me in Unreal? Retail disc and 226 patched.

s_wavetracing shows Enabled.

I run Win9x. I did uninstall a Diamond MX300, and replace it with a SQ2500. I ran the uninstallers before removing the old card.

m1so wrote:

400 Mhz should be more than enough for Unreal man. The problem is probably your videocard. And yes, this is the A3D sound and has nothing to do with the slowness of your PC.

I was thinking the same. I've used 2 different systems and played Unreal on both of them (400MHz K6-III and 400MHz Celeron) and don't remember it being unplayable. It did lag a bit during the campaigns but iirc it never turned into a slideshow.

Perhaps it would be a good idea if j7n (or anyone else for that matter who has some problem with their retro rig) would give some additional specs of the hardware they're using.