DSOAL [surround-sound-addon-thing] not working?

[TiredEyesThomas]

Apparently you can use dsoal to get eax going, but extracting everything from its .rar doesn´t do anything, eax still greyed out and no surround sound.
Indirect Sound [another add-on-thing] does work, but you can´t enable Eax Advanced HD, besides I´m having huge problems with it.

[JZStudios]

I'm fairly certain I have DSOAL installed properly and it works in Halo CE, but not giving anything other than stereo in FEAR.
Just dropping in Indirect Sound gets it working without advanced HD. What problems are you having? I have none with IS...

[TiredEyesThomas]

With Indriect Sound the sound starts to crackle for me after a while of playing+the game starts to lag. Already tried every known fix for the crackling, also tried the Logitech-fix-thing. I might have this problem because I have a special soundcard [Logitech G35, external]. I don´t have that problem in other games, just F.E.A.R., shame dsoal isn´t working, maybe someday

[JZStudios]

Yeah I'm not sure. I'm using the HDMI out on my GPU and have zero issues with Indirect Sound. I don't know enough about it since it just works for me.
There's I Drink Lava on Youtube who has a video demo of FEAR working with DSOAL, but another guy in his comments tried a bunch of troubleshooting to no avail. Also the guy who makes DSOAL seems to be pretty hard to get in contact with.

[MuscularMelvin]

@EmoTheKid
I have been informed by a user on my 3D Game Audio server on Discord that DSOAL not working out of the box is caused by your PC not having dsound.dll registered. He was able to fix it by installing this Creative ALchemy restriction remover on his new Windows 10 partition before copying DSOAL to the game directory.
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18249-tutorial-how-to-setup-eax-for-tdm-on-any-soundcard/
So far, this has fixed DSOAL not working for at least 3 people.

[TiredEyesThomas]

Wow thanks, I will try that!

[JZStudios]

İlk olarak Cucurbito tarafından gönderildi:

@EmoTheKid
I have been informed by a user on my 3D Game Audio server on Discord that DSOAL not working out of the box is caused by your PC not having dsound.dll registered. He was able to fix it by installing this Creative ALchemy restriction remover on his new Windows 10 partition before copying DSOAL to the game directory.
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18249-tutorial-how-to-setup-eax-for-tdm-on-any-soundcard/
So far, this has fixed DSOAL not working for at least 3 people.

Hmm. I feel like I already have EAX and/or something Creative audio already installed but will give it a try.

Edit*
It mostly works pretty well, and runs independently of DSOAL and IS. It does add reverb to help spatialize things, but the assault rifle in particular is now very muddled, same issue I had with DSOAL in Halo. The reverb can also get... seemingly confused, but I think anyone using headphones would be fairly happy with it

[TheHat]

Taking a crack with DSOAL to get EAX restored in KOTOR & Rainbow Six 3; does anyone have any details on the dsound.dll registration fix? So far I've been dumping the DLLs in the same directory as the executables with no effect.

[JZStudios]

İlk olarak TheHat tarafından gönderildi:

Taking a crack with DSOAL to get EAX restored in KOTOR & Rainbow Six 3; does anyone have any details on the dsound.dll registration fix? So far I've been dumping the DLLs in the same directory as the executables with no effect.

The best I could tell you is to ask I Drink Lava on Youtube. He really likes it and tries it in a whole bunch of games.

[MuscularMelvin]

İlk olarak TheHat tarafından gönderildi:

Taking a crack with DSOAL to get EAX restored in KOTOR & Rainbow Six 3; does anyone have any details on the dsound.dll registration fix? So far I've been dumping the DLLs in the same directory as the executables with no effect.

You need to install Creative ALchemy, run it once, and then all your games will work. I can confirm this as being the case; I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and had to run ALchemy once before DSOAL worked. A free version that doesn't require a soundcard should still be up here:
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18249-tutorial-how-to-setup-eax-for-tdm-on-any-soundcard/
Don't forget to activate any Hardware Mixing or EAX options in the in-game menus or launcher. Not every game uses DSOAL by default.

[TheHat]

İlk olarak JZStudios tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak TheHat tarafından gönderildi:

Taking a crack with DSOAL to get EAX restored in KOTOR & Rainbow Six 3; does anyone have any details on the dsound.dll registration fix? So far I've been dumping the DLLs in the same directory as the executables with no effect.

The best I could tell you is to ask I Drink Lava on Youtube. He really likes it and tries it in a whole bunch of games.

Thanks JZ, that's a good lead.

You need to install Creative ALchemy, run it once, and then all your games will work. I can confirm this as being the case; I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and had to run ALchemy once before DSOAL worked. A free version that doesn't require a soundcard should still be up here:
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18249-tutorial-how-to-setup-eax-for-tdm-on-any-soundcard/
Don't forget to activate any Hardware Mixing or EAX options in the in-game menus or launcher. Not every game uses DSOAL by default.

I've installed Alchemy already, & enabled those games in it, but no joy. EAX still stay greyed out; it's like it's not even seeing the new DLL, because I've replaced it with a bogus file & expected a crash and got nothing, so I'm wondering if it's even trying to load it.

Thanks for the posts guys, I'll update if I find anything.

[TheHat]

The good people at the 3D Game Audio discord helped me out - I was using a USB headset. Apparently that messes with DSOAL somehow; switching to a 3.5MM jack on my Asus Xonar allowed me to enable it in games again.
(Edit: this was not the true root cause. Full explanation further downthread)

[ExcessiveGBH]

İlk olarak Cucurbito tarafından gönderildi:

@EmoTheKid
I have been informed by a user on my 3D Game Audio server on Discord that DSOAL not working out of the box is caused by your PC not having dsound.dll registered. He was able to fix it by installing this Creative ALchemy restriction remover on his new Windows 10 partition before copying DSOAL to the game directory.
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18249-tutorial-how-to-setup-eax-for-tdm-on-any-soundcard/
So far, this has fixed DSOAL not working for at least 3 people.

Link not working for me...error 404

This link changed my Home page!!!!

[ExcessiveGBH]

İlk olarak JZStudios tarafından gönderildi:

I'm fairly certain I have DSOAL installed properly and it works in Halo CE, but not giving anything other than stereo in FEAR.
Just dropping in Indirect Sound gets it working without advanced HD. What problems are you having? I have none with IS...

This was working for me in FEAR (windows 10 version 1809), until I did a clean install of Win 1903. Its all greyed out now.

[MuscularMelvin]

If the Dark Mod forums are registering as 404 errors, then try this instead.
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/28-creative-alchemy-universal/

I don't like to link to this one because 25 warnings pop up on VirusTotal due to something inside it. Also, that 404 page shouldn't change your home page unless you already have a suspicious plugin for your web browser in the first place.

[ExcessiveGBH]

İlk olarak Cucurbito tarafından gönderildi:

If the Dark Mod forums are registering as 404 errors, then try this instead.
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/28-creative-alchemy-universal/

I don't like to link to this one because 25 warnings pop up on VirusTotal due to something inside it. Also, that 404 page shouldn't change your home page unless you already have a suspicious plugin for your web browser in the first place.

Link works...thanks