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EAX/SURROUND SOUND FIX (EAX 1 - 4)

By Thumper

A Universal EAX 1-4 and Surround Sound fix for many games.

IMPORTANT: If you're using a Creative Soundcard + Creative Alchemy, you DO NOT need this fix.

(Creative soundcards + alchemy have EAX support built in, although not for everything.)
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_EAX

Award

Created by

Thumper
Offline

Category: Gameplay Basics, Modding or Configuration, Walkthroughs, Workshop

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

19 Nov, 2020 @ 3:59pm

3 Apr, 2024 @ 8:39pm

3,821	Unique Visitors
104	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

INTRODUCTION

INSTALLATION

NOTES AND CREDITS

Comments

INTRODUCTION

Windows Support for EAX has been lost for years now and most modern games have moved to OPENAL. Unfortunately what this means for a whole generation of older games, is that if you want to go back and play a classic; you'll have to deal with downgraded audio because modern systems do not offer support for EAX 1-5.

For a long time there was little to no solution outside of installing Creative Alchemy, unfortunately this only works with Creative based soundcards, so if you're using Realtek or anything else you're out of luck.

Fortunately there is a fix!

Original New Vegas mod link:

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/65094?tab=description

Up to date DSOAL build:

http://vaporeon.io/hosted/dsoal-builds/

DSOAL GITHUB:

https://github.com/kcat/dsoal

This DSOAL plugin will essentially emulate EAX 1-4 support with help from an unobtrusive .DLL wrapper and .ini file, the beauty of this little plugin is it works with almost everything i've tested that uses EAX 1-4.

(It not only restores EAX, but often restores surround sound support for many games as well!)

INSTALLATION

Download DSOAL and make a backup, keep in mind you can use this same plugin to restore EAX to just about anything so keep a copy on your desktop!
Drag and drop the contents to your main Thief directory.
(MOST GAMES INSTALL TO THE DIRECTORY WITH THE MAIN .EXE FILE)
You can drag and drop everything if you like, but the only 3 files you need primarily are dsound.dll, dsoal-aldrv.dll and alsoft.ini.
Right click on alsoft.ini once it's in your primary directory and click edit.
Once you're done editing alsoft.ini to your liking, SAVE the .ini file and launch Thief.
Go to Thief's Audio settings, after editing alsoft.ini. (As seen above.)

You should now see the combination of Hardware Acceleration: ON - EAX :ON that was previously greyed out (unavailable) is now available to use. (As seen above.)
- Audio Channels: 48
- Hardware Acceleration: On
  (We are now emulating DirectSound, that's why we are able to set this ON and activate EAX at the same time.)
- EAX: ON
- These 3 settings allow you to bring back Surround Sound audio and EAX to Thief.
  (And many other games!)

NOTES AND CREDITS

UPDATE 2024-01-14: For anyone else that has this issue, i noticed you'll be missing certain audio channels unless you enable "Channel Phantoming" in your Sounds/Playback/Speakers/Properties. This should fix the missing center channel mentioned by people in the comments.

Enable: Sounds/Playback/Speakers/Properties/Enhancements "Channel Phantoming" ON.*

UPDATE 2024-01-15: Here is a link to Hexaee's guide, using the same DSOAL process for Thief: Deadly Shadows. (Can help with troubleshooting.)
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2291848228

This same basic installation guide should work for just about any game that uses EAX 1-4, that you want to use this plugin with.

Thanks to Kcat for creating - and IDrinkLava for uploading this excellent audio tool. I take no credit for this plugin.

Any questions or comments are welcome.

69 Comments

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BlastARENA 5 Nov @ 12:25pm

For some time, I had problems with Thief:Gold even booting up properly. I did things such as lowering the anistrophic filtering, getting a new D3DX9_43 into the game files, and other sorts of tinkering in the alsoft.ini and Cam_ext.cfg files, such as editing gamma, and dither levels in response, Still nothing. After a little more tinkering, I tried my hand at right clicking main game game symbol in Steamapps>common>thief_gold, and choosing the "Run as administrator" option. THEN the game worked; it even had the Eidos title screen at the beginning! IDK exactly whats going on here.

Corrinoscopy 6 Oct @ 7:16pm

I don't think it would carry over to another computer

BlastARENA 20 Sep @ 2:26pm

OK, now I have a new question: What would most likely happen to said fixes to games such as Thief: GOLD, Thief 2, and SS2 (OG version) on Steam, if one were to go and install the Steam application on another computer and then login? (especially when comes to Thief: GOLD, I already set up the game on my account on Steam). I actually plan on doing a major move via a different laptop on the way, regards to primary use of Steam, GOG, & EA desktop. What can be expected?

BlastARENA 16 Jun @ 3:37pm

Thank you very much for this! I installed OAL, did most if not all of the recommended tweaks to the alsoft.ini file post-drag n' drop into the Thief Gold directory, and made use of TFix 1.27.
The cut-scenes work as they should, so far. Now if only they would add native support for Linux distros for not only Ubuntu and Manjaro, but also Linux Mint, Debian, Gentoo, Void, and Arch, along with getting a Proton compatibility layer for this game.

Vang 23 Apr @ 5:09pm

Hello, trying to install your fix but Im a real noob at this. Im kinda stuck at the editing of the alsoft.ini . In the decoder sections there are open AL files that are refered but I don't have those. I went to the website of Open AL to install it but still nothing. I think I'm missing something x) can you please help me ? :p

MF_Danyu 22 Feb @ 4:59am

For anyone who wants to copy and paste:

[General]
channels=
frequency=44100
stereo-mode=
cf_level=0
sources=256
slots=64
sends=16
sample-type=float32
resample=linear
default-hrtf=Built-In 44100hz
hrtf=true
drivers="-dsound,"
period_size=1024
periods=3

[reverb]
boost=2

[decoder]
quad=C:/Users/yourusername/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/square.ambdec
surround51=C:/Users/yourusername/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/itu5.1-nocenter.ambdec
surround71=C:/Users/yourusername/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/hexagon.ambdec
hq-mode=true

Thumper [author] 31 Jan @ 12:13pm

Thanks! I'm glad it still works for so many people. Real surround sound makes a big difference.

Xiaopang 31 Jan @ 4:46am

Thanks for this great guide! I do have an EAX-capable Creative sound card, but all I get is stereo, so I used your guide to run Thief with DSOAL instead for some 5.1 surround goodness :)

Thumper [author] 27 Jan @ 12:42pm

Hmm i see, looks like OpenAL Soft has improved quite a bit over the years. That might be a better option these days, I haven't tried recent versions myself. This guide is from when DSOAL was the only option and everything else was quite primitive.

᠌󠀡󠀡 27 Jan @ 7:43am

"This project(OpenAL Soft), on the other hand, looks much more mature, with an implementation that seems to know what it's doing, instead of being a mess of tweaks and hacks built on top of each other. It even gets EAX5 which DSOAL hasn't touched yet. Presuming there's no hidden pitfalls to map DSound EAX to OpenAL EAX (which I doubt, since it seems to be what Alchemy does), and this implementation holds up with various games, it would make sense to drop DSOAL's EAX and use OpenAL Soft's. The alternative would be to copy it out of OpenAL Soft and into DSOAL, but that seems like unnecessary duplication and extra work since DSOAL basically relies on OpenAL Soft at this point anyway." [github.com]

BTW Using DSOAL creates extra layers between OpenAL Soft and the output, which cause extra latency and overhead. It's just unnecessary to use it on NewDark Engine games unlike Thief 3 which uses DirectSound3D.

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