3D Audio (EAX)

[Rumble]

I'm curious if anyone's been able to get the 3D Audio option working in the game. I thought I remembered it being supported by ALchemy Universal (or maybe it was Open AL), but I haven't been able to get it working yet. Anyone with sucess stories and how they went about it?

 

[ZemX]

I assume since nobody in two years ever responded to this the answer is probably no, but I figured I might as well ask.

 

I keep playing around with audio.  I have tried Alchemy as well as several registry hacks related to it found for other games, and can't get the 3D Audio option to un-grey.  Anyone else have the magic solution?  I otherwise just set Windows to stereo and get at least some left/right separation of sounds in the world.

 

It's not a super big deal but there are certain sounds that are tremendously annoying.  Like they are implemented without location at all so if you are in range of the sound it is just blasting max. volume into both ears (I game on headphones).  Rushing water in sewer maps, the giant PI teleportals, and the overhead monorail are a couple examples.  I just started an Ice Melee character and literally feel brain-freeze when I draw the Ice Sword, it's so damned loud.  I can't just turn down overall volume or else everything else is too quiet.  I guess I will play with dynamic range in the sound drivers or something.

 

Anyone else with similar problems or is it just me?

[Number Six]

31 minutes ago, ZemX said:

I have tried Alchemy as well as several registry hacks related to it found for other games, and can't get the 3D Audio option to un-grey.  Anyone else have the magic solution?

 

The only "solution" is to downgrade to windows XP, which isn't much of a solution at all. Microsoft removed DirectSound's 3D audio support in Windows Vista, both the hardware support and the software emulation.

[WanderingAries]

IDK if it even would work, but I suppose you Could identify the sound files, extract them, use some sort of sound editor to reduce their standard output volume, place the altered files into the corresponding /data subfolder.

 

For reference (I think)

 

[_NOPE_]

On 4/30/2021 at 7:51 PM, WanderingAries said:

IDK if it even would work, but I suppose you Could identify the sound files, extract them, use some sort of sound editor to reduce their standard output volume, place the altered files into the corresponding /data subfolder.

 

For reference (I think)

 

I think this could work, actually. What I suspect is that not all of the sounds are at appropriate volume levels for the type of sound that they are. "localized sounds" (sounds that travel "with you", like your powers), should be at a different level than "ambient sounds", and BOTH categories of sounds should be "normalized" to have the same maximum and minimum "peaks and valleys" (dBs).

 

I wonder if anyone has ever taken all of the sound files in the game, ran them all through a program like Audacity, pulled out their peak, minimal, and average decibal levels and put them all on a spreadsheet to compare them.

 

Or has sound design in the game always just been "slap-dash"?

 

Hmmmmm.....

[WanderingAries]

13 hours ago, The Philotic Knight said:

I wonder if anyone has ever taken all of the sound files in the game, ran them all through a program like Audacity, pulled out their peak, minimal, and average decibal levels and put them all on a spreadsheet to compare them.

 

That's basically what I was thinking of. Like, when I use WMP to "balance" all the music to the same range so that I don't have to go deaf when I move from one genre to another in the car with my digital library (extremely wide range of genres). Yes, I know that different types of balancing can have a negative effect on quality, but for the types of sounds we're talking about, I don't think it would be a big issue.

[ZemX]

On 4/30/2021 at 4:21 PM, Number Six said:

 

The only "solution" is to downgrade to windows XP, which isn't much of a solution at all. Microsoft removed DirectSound's 3D audio support in Windows Vista, both the hardware support and the software emulation.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but solutions like Creative's Alchemy or IndirectSound were supposed to wrap those APIs and redirect them through their own implementation.  And it works for a lot of old DS3D games, but not this one apparently.  You can install the Alchemy DLLs in the game directory but it still doesn't "detect" the capability.  It must be doing something non-standard to decide that 3D audio isn't available and so it leaves the 3D Audio selection grayed out.

 

Ah well, It's not a huge issue.  Just one I was curious about.  I'm playing around with the Creative sound control panels to try to tone down the peaks a little and made some of the sounds less annoying without having to dive into individual wave files.  It's a little better.

 

Thanks everybody!

[Marine X]

On 4/30/2021 at 5:21 PM, Number Six said:

The only "solution" is to downgrade to windows XP, which isn't much of a solution at all. Microsoft removed DirectSound's 3D audio support in Windows Vista, both the hardware support and the software emulation.

This is probably the culprit for the Glowie Audio issues, which happened way back on Live. All newer 3D sound options seem to be incompatible with COH.