popping sound in thief and thief 2

Teddy Barnes on 20/4/2024 at 13:40

Hello community!

After installing tfix and tfix2 as well as the eax option for spacial sound, I am experiencing a constant popping sound while playing both games. I've tried to search this problem, but I am playing off steamdeck and the solutions I have found didn't really apply to me. I've also experimented with the various in-game sound options for eax like alsoft, but still have the issue. Anyone else have this problem? any way to resolve this?

Thanks in advance!

MayheM on 4/5/2024 at 02:10

I found this at : (https://www.protondb.com/app/211740)
"Audio:Crackling

Crackling can happen after installing T2Fix and enabling EAX. If you want to use EAX, you need to remove the file "OpenAL.dll" from the game folder (if you chose to install it during the installation of T2Fix in the first place)."

bernieraa on 14/5/2024 at 06:32

Quote Posted by Teddy Barnes

It's possible that tfix, tfix2, or the eax option for spatial sound might not be fully compatible with the Steam Deck or the games you're playing. Try searching online for "[tfix Steam Deck compatibility]" or "[eax option for spatial sound Steam Deck compatibility]" to see if there are any known issues.
Sometimes corrupted game files can cause audio issues. Try verifying the integrity of the game files on Steam. This process checks for any missing or damaged files and replaces them if necessary.
As a test, try disabling tfix, tfix2, and the eax option for spatial sound. See if the popping sounds disappear. If they do, then the issue likely lies with those options. You can then decide if the sound improvements from these options outweigh the popping sounds.

Aja on 14/5/2024 at 22:26

I have this issue as well. It was discussed in this thread:

(https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152511)

I managed to get the reverb working without popping, but I haven't yet figured out how to also enable positional audio.

I have the following note saved in my drafts with info on EAX from various sources. I've been intending to try it for a while, but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe it'll help you.

Quote:

Download the latest OpenAL Soft binaries from openal-soft.org and extract the archive somewhere, like into a folder on your desktop

Make a copy of bin\Win32\soft_oal.dll and put it in the same directory as Thief.exe/Thief2.exe

Open cam_ext.cfg in your Thief directory and set snd_oal_device OpenAL Soft, making sure to uncomment that line by removing the semicolon preceding it if it's there

Back to the extracted OpenAL Soft directory, open alsoft-config\alsoft-config.exe and select Stereo Mode: Headphones from the Playback tab. Click apply. OpenAL Soft will engage HRTF mode automatically if it knows you're using headphones.

Run Thief, open the audio options, and select Hardware Acceleration: OpenAL. You should now have HRTF working with Thief.

If HRTF is not working might need to play around with Windows' mixer settings. Make sure your output device is set to a stereo configuration. Additionally, and this might not be true any longer, but for a long time OpenAL Soft HRTF only worked with 44100Hz and 48000Hz so try setting your output device to one of those sample rates.

(https://gnd-tech.com/2020/08/how-to-enable-3d-audio-in-directsound3d-and-openal-games-without-a-sound-card/)

This solution still works if you have a Creative sound card, but nowadays it’s usually unnecessary thanks to the creation of DSOAL which is a wrapper for DirectSound3D games, converting them to OpenAL and using OpenAL Soft. It restores all DirectSound3D effects in those games without the need for proprietary hardware (sound cards). OpenAL Soft has been around forever, but for a long time was thoroughly outclassed by hardware acceleration via an actual X-Fi sound card and ALchemy, but this is no longer the case.

So if you’re playing a DirectSound3D game and want to get the most out of its sound, follow the procedure below:

Make sure OpenAL is installed on your computer. If not, download the Windows installer from here.
Download the latest release of OpenAL Soft
Copy OpenAL Soft’s soft_oal.dll file in bin\win32 into C:\Windows\SysWOW64
Copy OpenAL Soft’s soft_oal.dll file in bin\win64 into C:\Windows\System32
Download DSOAL and update its OpenAL Soft using the latest Windows binaries you downloaded in step #2. This is accomplished by making a copy of soft_oal.dll from the OpenAL Soft downloads under bin\Win32, renaming it to dsoal-aldrv.dll, and replacing DSOAL’s dsoal-aldrv.dll file with this renamed OpenAL Soft file.
Read the instructions provided with DSOAL
Copy dsound.dll, dsoal-aldrv.dll, and alsoft.ini into the directory where the game executable file is located, for every DirectSound3D game
If the game in question is 64-bit (don’t think there are any besides 64-bit S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods and Unreal Tournament 2004) then you’ll have to overwrite dsoal-aldrv.dll from the step above with bin\win64\soft_oal.dll (renaming this to dsoal-aldrv.dll and overwriting) from the OpenAL Soft downloaded in step #2
For surround sound users, extract the OpenAL folder from HARD_MODE_INSTALLATION.zip to %APPDATA% (which should be C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming)
For surround sound users, add the following lines to the bottom of alsoft.ini for every game:

[decoder]
quad=C:/Users/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/square.ambdec
surround51=C:/Users/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/itu5.1.ambdec
surround71=C:/Users/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/hexagon.ambdec
hq-mode=true
It may also be necessary to make the registry edits described here.

Now you should be able to enable things like EAX in-game and it should work. Positional sound should be noticeably better. If you can’t enable it, then you may have to copy DSOAL’s dsound.dll file to C:\Windows\SysWOW64.

Note: The default surround presets are all incompatible with speakers that have integrated powered subwoofers. They expect a dedicated subwoofer. If you don’t have one and want to send the full range audio spectrum to your speakers, you must make the following edits:

Navigate to %APPDATA%\OpenAL\presets
Edit the preset you’re using (defined in alsoft.ini) with a text editor, which is likely itu5.1.ambdec if using a 5 channel setup or 3D7.1.ambdec if using 7 channels
Set /opt/xover_freq to 0
Set /opt/xover_ratio to 0
Now these presets will work with full range speakers. I’ve uploaded my presets here for those who are too lazy to edit them.

As for the caveats of DSOAL, well you can always take a look at the Issues page on Github for both OpenAL Soft and DSOAL and you’ll see some reports for some games. It doesn’t work in some games, at least in some OS versions – right now in Windows 10 20H2, the only way for me to get surround sound in Quake IV is by using my actual sound card. Nothing is perfect, I still like having my X-Fi Titanium HD as a backup since OpenAL Soft doesn’t work with some games that use customized OpenAL implementations (e.g. Unreal, System Shock 2, some S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modifications, don’t think I’ve seen anything else yet however). Therefore I still need the sound card.

Also note that DSOAL and Creative ALchemy don’t like to coexist. ALchemy detects “dsound.dll” in any game’s folder and will take control of it if using your sound card as the output device.

OpenAL Games
The process for enabling 3D HRTF in OpenAL games is similar:

Make sure OpenAL is installed on your computer. If not, download the Windows installer from here.
Download the latest release of OpenAL Soft
Copy OpenAL Soft’s soft_oal.dll file in bin\win32 into C:\Windows\SysWOW64
Copy OpenAL Soft’s soft_oal.dll file in bin\win64 into C:\Windows\System32
Now check to see if the game lets you select “OpenAL Soft” as the sound device. If not, it may require copying soft_oal.dll into the game folder where the executable file is, and then renaming it to OpenAL32.dll, but if the game already has an OpenAL32.dll file then back it up since this doesn’t work for every game. I have to do this with most games since they seem to be unable to find OpenAL Soft on their own.
For surround sound users, copy OpenAL Soft’s presets folder to %APPDATA%\OpenAL (which should be C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\OpenAL). If the OpenAL folder doesn’t exist here, then create it.
For surround sound users, create an alsoft.ini file or just use the one from DSOAL and then add the following lines to the bottom of it for every game (place the file in the folder where the game executable file is):

[decoder]
quad=C:/Users/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/square.ambdec
surround51=C:/Users/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/itu5.1.ambdec
surround71=C:/Users/YourUserName/AppData/Roaming/OpenAL/presets/hexagon.ambdec
hq-mode=true
Note the necessary preset edits mentioned above under DSOAL for those using full range speakers, they’ll apply here too.

So there are the procedures. These open source, free methods are excellent alternatives than paying money for a discontinued sound card or paying money for Rapture3D which has since been left in the dust by OpenAL Soft.

bigrichard on 12/9/2024 at 02:32

Sorry to reply to this old thread but I also had this issue on the steam deck, and solved it but I wasn't able to find anyone else that did. I assumed it had something to do with the audio resampling or bitrate so I found how to change some settings in openal with an ini file.

Someone smarter than me would have to explain why it fixes it (audio buffering? bandwidth? wrong bitrate? cubic resampler?) but I'll upload the openal32.dll and alsoft.ini that got eax working for me with no audio crackling.

I just tested this on steam deck on a fresh install of thief and thief 2 with their tfix patches. The two files in the zip go in the same folder as thief.exe or thief2.exe.

Hopefully this helps someone;

(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UvH5ZrqwarSpvXuOxKxsNusn1e_dR92i/view?usp=sharing) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UvH5ZrqwarSpvXuOxKxsNusn1e_dR92i/view?usp=sharing

dexod on 23/1/2025 at 19:29

Quote Posted by bigrichard

Thank you for your help. It is an issue not just on steamdeck, but on linux overall. I did some experimenting and figured out that the last properly working version of openal32.dll for thief1&2 is 1.22.2 released on June 27, 2022. I think there were some big changes ((https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/blob/master/ChangeLog) like routers) in 1.23 that broke something in thief games. Also, you can still use hrtf on pre 1.23 dlls and I recommend doing so.

TLDR:
- Download openal-soft-1.22.2-bin.zip from (https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/releases/download/1.22.2/openal-soft-1.22.2-bin.zip) here or (https://www.openal-soft.org/openal-binaries/openal-soft-1.22.2-bin.zip) here and extract it somewhere.
- Rename bin/win32/soft_oal.dll to OpenAL32.dll and copy it into the thief main folder.
- Create a new txt file in the thief main folder with this inside:

Code:

[General]
channels=stereo
resampler=cubic
stereo-mode=headphones
hrtf=true
frequency=48000

and save it as "alsoft.ini"
- Download the (https://kutt.it/FindOpenALSoftHRTF) HRTF/3D audio profile (xxxx-4800.mhr) that sounds most positionally accurate to your ears and copy it to the thief main folder.
- Settings in game: audio channels - 48 ; Hardware Acceleration - OpenAL ; EAX Setting - on
- That's it, there is no need to install OpenAL system/prefix wide.

PS There is a lutris installer "thief-gold-gog-newdark" that uses OpenAL 1.23.1 but for some reason it moves soft_oal.dll into the folder of the same name instead directly into the game folder (I think it some bug/mistake in installer) which obviously doesn't work and then relies on default gog installer OpenAL 2.0.7.0(which sounds awful). Even when you fix it and move soft_oal.dll where it should be, you get back to zero with popping audio again...
TLDR: Don't use it.

Aja on 8/3/2025 at 17:47

Quote Posted by dexod

Thank you so much! I didn't think I'd ever get OpenAL working correctly on Steam Deck, but now I've got EAX and surround sound with no popping. The EAX sounds a lot more natural than I'm used to, without the overprocessed footstep sounds it always seems to have.

Anyone looking for HRTF profiles, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCXQp7swp5k) here's a useful video with 50 or so and demos of each, so you can pick the one that sounds most natural to you.