Restore 3D Positional Surround Sound

[jonpol]

I've been working on a project to restore positional audio in older games when playing them using Windows Vista or later. I call it "IndirectSound", and it can be found here:

http://www.indirectsound.com

I actually started working on it after playing F.E.A.R. and realizing that it no longer had surround sound with my new audio setup. Now that I have it working, though, I can finally play F.E.A.R. using all 7.1 speakers :)

If anyone has surround speakers that haven't been working with F.E.A.R. (or other older games) I'd be really interested for you to try it out and give me feedback if it works on other machines or not. I started it as a personal project, but I imagine there must be other people like me who still enjoy playing older games but miss the surround sound in some of them.

[ExcessiveGBH]

Originally posted by jonpol:

Originally posted by ExcessiveGBH:

IndirectSound also made Far Cry stutter as well (CPU hitching). Have a x299 i97900X @4.7

If you want to spend time trying to figure the stuttering out we might be able to find bugs that could be fixed. Feel free to email me using the address on www.indirectsound.com and we could do some troubleshooting.

FYI. DSOL stop working after my Win update 1903 (all greyed out) but yours is still working. Found out what caused the stuttering...turned off Hyper threading in BIOS, all silky smooth in FEAR & Far Cry.

[Penumbra1979]

I just found your post and wanted to say thanks for this. As long as I can remember the multiple times I have played this game. The "Enable HW Mixing, Enable EAX 2.0 and Enable EAX Advanced HD" have always been greyed out for me to use. I tried your .dll and I can now turn on HW Mixing. The other two EAX options are still greyed out. I do seem to notice a surround effect. I stood next to a air vent in the game and slowly spinning myself around in place. Before it sounded like the volume faded out as you centered your back to the sound. Now it sounds like it is panning around. My question is, do I need to be able to get all three options enabled for correct surround sound or is the HW Mixing being on now enough?

[jonpol]

Hi!

Originally posted by Penumbra1979:

My question is, do I need to be able to get all three options enabled for correct surround sound or is the HW Mixing being on now enough?

Short answer: HW Mixing is all that IndirectSound supports, so you are hearing it the best way possible until/unless I get EAX working.

Longer answer: If you look at the dsound.ini file that was part of the ZIP file you downloaded you can see how to make IndirectSound pretend to enable EAX 2. You could use that to trick the game so that you are able to select the option in the menu. There won't actually be any EAX effects, though, and so I don't recommend doing this. The way you currently have it configured is good for IndirectSound.

[jonpol]

Originally posted by Dot Matrix:

Now the strangest thing happened, for some unexplainable reason surround works now. =)

I had to turn EAX hardware mixing off as it played the music too loud and didn't react to the volume slider.

I'm glad it's working now, but the version reported in your log file is 0.10, which is pretty old. I don't know where you found that version of IndirectSound, but I would recommend downloading the most current version from www.indirectsound.com. It has many bug fixes that will help things to sound better.

[NTU]

I don't mean to endorse myself or anything, but I compiled dsoal and have the DLL files hosted here:

https://github.com/NTULINUX/dsoal/releases

Drop them in and you're good to go!

On my Razer Tiamat 7.1 V2 and HT Omega eClaro sound card (true 7.1 analog audio) I found enabling hardware mixing, EAX 2.0 and EAX advanced all together give the best results.

[SpaceYam]

Hi Jonpol, just wanted to say thanks for your work! I just recently started playing F.E.A.R. again and it's much better with surround sound!

[The Bright Side]

Hey guys, has anybody experienced cut-off sounds?

During gameplay, many sounds (e.g. item pickups, doors opening/closing, reloading) and in particular voice samples (answering machine messages, enemy barks) are cut off from the beginning until a few seconds in. So e.g. "One new message" isn't played at all, and then the message itself starts playing somewhere halfway through. This doesn't necessarily happen consistently, but very often, and it gets more frequent the longer I am into a session. Many times, I only know that enemies are nearby because of their subtitles.

Funnily enough, some sound effects don't seem to be affected at all, e.g. weapon fire or ambient sounds, also objects getting knocked over (cans, boxes...). They all play without a problem.

My config: 7.1 over HDMI from GTX 1080 Ti to home theater system

Things I tried:

Tinkered around with dsound.ini settings: hardwareBufferCount, EAX, surroundPanning, monoSourceBehavior, disabled3dBehavior, earlyStopFadeOutTime

This often caused crashes, where the game froze mid-action and I needed to kill it using Task Manager

Faux-enabled EAX 2.0 to switch that option on in-game (I know this doesn't actually work). Also caused crashes, game froze mid-action

I also tried installing Creative ALchemy, cracking it so it would work for any sound card, then enabling the game in ALchemy, but neither ALchemy nor DSOAL (tried 2 builds of that) yielded any kind of acceptable surround.

Do you have any idea what might be causing the sounds to be cut off?

Also wrote this to jonpol, if he answers and we find a solution, I'll be sure to post it here.

Hope you guys are doing well and keeping healthy and safe!

[NTU]

For those having problems with EAX, have you checked out my thread and followed the troubleshooting steps by setting up the environmental variables?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/21090/discussions/0/2872668471925965257/

[CheekyChan]

Originally posted by The Bright Side:

Hey guys, has anybody experienced cut-off sounds?

During gameplay, many sounds (e.g. item pickups, doors opening/closing, reloading) and in particular voice samples (answering machine messages, enemy barks) are cut off from the beginning until a few seconds in. So e.g. "One new message" isn't played at all, and then the message itself starts playing somewhere halfway through. This doesn't necessarily happen consistently, but very often, and it gets more frequent the longer I am into a session. Many times, I only know that enemies are nearby because of their subtitles.

Funnily enough, some sound effects don't seem to be affected at all, e.g. weapon fire or ambient sounds, also objects getting knocked over (cans, boxes...). They all play without a problem.

My config: 7.1 over HDMI from GTX 1080 Ti to home theater system

Things I tried:

Tinkered around with dsound.ini settings: hardwareBufferCount, EAX, surroundPanning, monoSourceBehavior, disabled3dBehavior, earlyStopFadeOutTime

This often caused crashes, where the game froze mid-action and I needed to kill it using Task Manager

Faux-enabled EAX 2.0 to switch that option on in-game (I know this doesn't actually work). Also caused crashes, game froze mid-action

I also tried installing Creative ALchemy, cracking it so it would work for any sound card, then enabling the game in ALchemy, but neither ALchemy nor DSOAL (tried 2 builds of that) yielded any kind of acceptable surround.

Do you have any idea what might be causing the sounds to be cut off?

Also wrote this to jonpol, if he answers and we find a solution, I'll be sure to post it here.

Hope you guys are doing well and keeping healthy and safe!

Have you tried right clicking the speaker icon in your task bar, go to speaker setup and setting it to 5.1 instead of 7.1? Try it at 5.1 and see if it makes a difference.

[Weeb Cowboy]

Here I am, 7 years after the original post.

I just got F.E.A.R. thanks to a GOG Sale; never played it. But I always had it in my "list to get games". It's admirable how the community keeps alive some of this classics on console and PC. The console version should be more accesible in regard of hooking up a nice TV/monitor and HT without much problem, I see here on PC there is a texture pack also to make the game more enjoyable.
I was looking for some mods on how to fix the Low FPS bug and also to make the HUD a little bigger for 2K displays, and then I found this post.

Thanks jonpol.

I've used some audio mods before to get EAX working again on newer hardware/systems, your solution has been the easiest and less convoluted yet for me. I don't have quite the high end audio hardware as some of you say in your comments but my old LG receiver has been doing wonders since I first set it up for my PS2 more than a decade ago.
I can definitely hear a difference now. I've been playing mostly with a nice pair of Beyerdynamic headphones and the most striking difference was when I was able to hear the position of a granade the AI threw at me. Some times I feel it unnatural, but I will get used to it.

No issues, crashes or bugs so far.
My game froze once but that was before your audio dll.

Hope you all are doing well during this pandemic times, and hoping for a 0.30 version for this mod.
Cheers ~

[NTU]

Am I the only one here with DSOAL working??

[jonpol]

Originally posted by Joksel Ozvilla:

Here I am, 7 years after the original post.

Thanks jonpol.

Hope you all are doing well during this pandemic times, and hoping for a 0.30 version for this mod.
Cheers ~

Hey, great to hear that it's working for you!

There aren't as many bugs reported nowadays as there used to be, but I'm sure there will still be future versions... Maybe even a version 1.0 someday if I ever finish the major change I've been working on to get EAX working properly. I imagined that I would get a lot done on the big 1.0 features during the pandemic lockdown, but it hasn't really happened haha.

Good luck against Alma!

[elviscq]

I LOVE YOU.
FINALLY FEAR IN 5.1 !!!

[Axl]

Originally posted by jonpol:

Originally posted by Joksel Ozvilla:

Here I am, 7 years after the original post.

Thanks jonpol.

Hope you all are doing well during this pandemic times, and hoping for a 0.30 version for this mod.
Cheers ~

Hey, great to hear that it's working for you!

There aren't as many bugs reported nowadays as there used to be, but I'm sure there will still be future versions... Maybe even a version 1.0 someday if I ever finish the major change I've been working on to get EAX working properly. I imagined that I would get a lot done on the big 1.0 features during the pandemic lockdown, but it hasn't really happened haha.

Good luck against Alma!

Pardon me for an indiscreet question, but why does your website say "Slava Ukraini!" ??? If this is really a fan site, not commercial and not related to politics, especially on quality sound in quality games, why leave such a thing on the site? It is certainly not my business, but I as a resident of Russia is unpleasant to see such a thing, especially if you remember that EAX and creative is very popular in our country, in addition, it is a bit scary (I would even say dangerous) to download any software from such a resource.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[jonpol]

Originally posted by Axl:

Pardon me for an indiscreet question, but why does your website say "Slava Ukraini!" ??? If this is really a fan site, not commercial and not related to politics, especially on quality sound in quality games, why leave such a thing on the site? It is certainly not my business, but I as a resident of Russia is unpleasant to see such a thing, especially if you remember that EAX and creative is very popular in our country, in addition, it is a bit scary (I would even say dangerous) to download any software from such a resource.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

I don't think that this thread is the best place for me to discuss this, but if you email me at the address on the website I will be happy to respond in more detail.