Check to make sure all of the settings are aligned - Windows speaker settings, sound card settings (Creative AudioHQ) and game all set to stereo. The effect is attributed to the game rendering positional audio to speakers that don't physically exist.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-04, 03:49:

Check to make sure all of the settings are aligned - Windows speaker settings, sound card settings (Creative AudioHQ) and game all set to stereo. The effect is attributed to the game rendering positional audio to speakers that don't physically exist.

Okay, thanks. I'll check when I next boot it up. I'm guessing though that everything is set to stereo, but I could have missed an option in the Creative options somewhere. Just seems a bit strange for them to render positional audio to speakers that don't exist, especially if everything is set to stereo.

The other thing you can do is use a pair of earphones or similar to check if the missing sound is coming out of the black (rear) jack

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-04, 10:52:

The other thing you can do is use a pair of earphones or similar to check if the missing sound is coming out of the black (rear) jack

Hmm. None of my speakers appear to have a headphone jack and the sound card I'm using - the CT4670 - has four 3.5mm jacks (red, blue, green and black) and the speakers/subwoofer are plugged into the black.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2026-09-04, 11:27:

Hmm. None of my speakers appear to have a headphone jack and the sound card I'm using - the CT4670 - has four 3.5mm jacks (red, […]
Show full quote

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-04, 10:52:

The other thing you can do is use a pair of earphones or similar to check if the missing sound is coming out of the black (rear) jack

Hmm. None of my speakers appear to have a headphone jack and the sound card I'm using - the CT4670 - has four 3.5mm jacks (red, blue, green and black) and the speakers/subwoofer are plugged into the black.

They should be plugged into the green (front), not black (rear). I imagine you had to mess around with the speaker setting to get sound to come out of the black output because it's the rear. Once the speakers are in the green output and the creative speaker selection is plain 2 speakers it should work normally.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-04, 13:33:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2026-09-04, 11:27:

Hmm. None of my speakers appear to have a headphone jack and the sound card I'm using - the CT4670 - has four 3.5mm jacks (red, […]
Show full quote

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-04, 10:52:

The other thing you can do is use a pair of earphones or similar to check if the missing sound is coming out of the black (rear) jack

Hmm. None of my speakers appear to have a headphone jack and the sound card I'm using - the CT4670 - has four 3.5mm jacks (red, blue, green and black) and the speakers/subwoofer are plugged into the black.

They should be plugged into the green (front), not black (rear). I imagine you had to mess around with the speaker setting to get sound to come out of the black output because it's the rear. Once the speakers are in the green output and the creative speaker selection is plain 2 speakers it should work normally.

My mistake. Looks like they were already plugged into the green. Though the green rear, as in - the back of the sound card.

It would still be good to know if you plug headphones into the black connector on the sound card, is the missing sound there

Did you get a chance to check the windows speaker setting and the audio HQ setting?

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-06, 01:55:

It would still be good to know if you plug headphones into the black connector on the sound card, is the missing sound there

Did you get a chance to check the windows speaker setting and the audio HQ setting?

I was going to mention the settings and started taking screen grabs of the various options, but became incredibly tired and couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, so had to retire for the night. I’ll continue getting those later and post them here. I’ll also try plugging the headphones into the black connector, too.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-06, 01:55:

It would still be good to know if you plug headphones into the black connector on the sound card, is the missing sound there

Did you get a chance to check the windows speaker setting and the audio HQ setting?

I thought I'd stumbled on the solution, but sadly not. For some reason the speaker set up was set to Surround Sound instead of Stereo. But alas, it didn't make any difference. Also, plugging the headphones into any of the sound card's ports doesn't do anything. I had to plug it into the right stereo speaker. Sadly, the same issue happens with headphones.

These are the only main audio controls of interest. Not sure what, if anything, would help:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2026-09-07, 00:10:

I thought I'd stumbled on the solution, but sadly not. For some reason the speaker set up was set to Surround Sound instead of Stereo. But alas, it didn't make any difference. Also, plugging the headphones into any of the sound card's ports doesn't do anything. I had to plug it into the right stereo speaker. Sadly, the same issue happens with headphones.

Normally that would have been the culprit, the other common one is AudioHQ being set to 4 speakers. In the affected games, if there is a hardware acceleration option for audio (also sometimes shown as a DirectSound3D/EAX setting) does turning it off "fix" it?

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-07, 00:47:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2026-09-07, 00:10:

I thought I'd stumbled on the solution, but sadly not. For some reason the speaker set up was set to Surround Sound instead of Stereo. But alas, it didn't make any difference. Also, plugging the headphones into any of the sound card's ports doesn't do anything. I had to plug it into the right stereo speaker. Sadly, the same issue happens with headphones.

Normally that would have been the culprit, the other common one is AudioHQ being set to 4 speakers. In the affected games, if there is a hardware acceleration option for audio (also sometimes shown as a DirectSound3D/EAX setting) does turning it off "fix" it?

In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, sadly not. There’s barely anything to change apart from three audio sliders and audio sample rate. Not unless there’s a hidden option in a config file.

Half-Life does have an EAX option, I believe. I can’t remember if I tried changing that already or if it made a difference. I’ll have to give it another go.

I have come across these patches and mods for RTCW that aim to improve the audio and music quality, so I'll give these a try and see if there's any improvement.

https://github.com/iortcw/iortcw

https://www.moddb.com/games/return-to-castle- … usic-soundtrack

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-07, 00:47:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2026-09-07, 00:10:

I thought I'd stumbled on the solution, but sadly not. For some reason the speaker set up was set to Surround Sound instead of Stereo. But alas, it didn't make any difference. Also, plugging the headphones into any of the sound card's ports doesn't do anything. I had to plug it into the right stereo speaker. Sadly, the same issue happens with headphones.

Normally that would have been the culprit, the other common one is AudioHQ being set to 4 speakers. In the affected games, if there is a hardware acceleration option for audio (also sometimes shown as a DirectSound3D/EAX setting) does turning it off "fix" it?

Yeah, disabling EAX/DirectSound3D doesn’t help, sadly. Also, I noticed SFX drop out as well as voices.

With RTCW, the mod doesn’t work under 98, which is no surprise, so going to try it under XP. I need to find a patch for it first though. Running RTCW normally under XP produces the same issue with speech, so it’s not exclusive to an operating system or anything.

Any chance of getting a video of it happening recorded on your phone?

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-09-08, 00:33:

Any chance of getting a video of it happening recorded on your phone?

My phone is shockingly bad. Couldn't even hear the audio after recording, so I recorded using my handicam. I've recorded both RTCW and Half-Life.

You should hopefully be able to download them from here: https://gofile.io/d/hg0aO2LU

I'm wondering - could this be a sound card related issue? I mean, the sound card I'm using in this second retro PC is a Sound Blaster Live! Value from 1998. Maybe there's some drawback when dealing with spatial audio in later 3D games...?

The videos are pretty much what I had imagined, no revelations there unfortunately

No problem with the card that I know of, I have a sound blaster live value in my K6-2+ system and it didn't exhibit any of these issues. I can force it to have the issue by setting windows and the sound card to 4 channel and only have 2 speakers plugged in.

Only other thing I can think of is that it's driver related