Thief and emulated surround

Le MAlin 76 on 6/5/2016 at 11:23

I have a small issue:

i have a a Sound Blaster ZxR card.

It use Pro Studio audio controler of Sound Blaster.

I have 2.1 speakers. In the audio controler i set on the emulation of surround, it's work nice. But when i play Thief, the audio controler is automaticly setting in "off". And when i exit Thief it's set on again.

There is a possibility to have the emulated surround on Thief ? (i have last version 1.24. and in cam_ext, the line:

Quote:

; set a non-default speaker configuration (not all devices support this, especially with OpenAL only the
; "OpenAL Soft" (soft_oal) device driver currently supports it.
; (0 = default, 2 = stereo, 4 = quadraphonic, 5 = surround, 6 = '5.1', 7 = '6.1', 8 = '7.1', 9 = '5.1' side,
; 10 = '7.1' center l+r)
snd_speaker_config 2 [or other]

don't change anything to this).

Yandros on 6/5/2016 at 12:35

Have you tried changing the last line to

Quote:

snd_speaker_config 5

and then trying to see if it works?

Le MAlin 76 on 6/5/2016 at 13:47

Yes i tried, and it is the same. I think that "snd_speaker_config 5" must be used to a surround hardware misfortunaly.

partol on 7/5/2016 at 01:29

I have a Creative Titanium HD sound card and use creative alchemy to enable audio hardware acceleration openAL in windows 7.
In Creative console, I never use game mode and EAX is off. Instead, I use entertainment mode and enable surround sound.
My guess is you need to setup Thief in creative alchemy. or search Creative's website for different audio drivers.

Daraan on 7/5/2016 at 08:42

Quote Posted by Le MAlin 76

I have 2.1 speakers. In the audio controler i set on the emulation of surround, it's work nice. But when i play Thief, the audio controler is automaticly setting in "off". And when i exit Thief it's set on again.

Uhh never realized that. Your using OpenAL?
Best to check all the versions first.
SoundBlaster stuff, OpenAL32.dll;wrap_oal.dll

Quote Posted by partol

Hmm this will be interesting.
Alchemy is only necressary when there is no OpenAL supports as it's beeing a wrapper - using OpenAL in the menu(since NewDark supports it) will ehm use an OpenAL wrapper. But using alchemy might do the trick and tricks the Pro Studio. Did you perhaps research why it does that?

Using snd_oal_device Generic Software leaves the sourround value checked.
You could test it and write about your impressions.

-----
As we are talking about this stuff there is also another command:
Short uses EFX reverb instead of EAX reverb. Might give a different ambient feel, didn't really test it.

;when using a EAX capable OpenAL device and reverb is enable (EAX option in options menu), the sound driver
; will use EAX reverb instead of AL's EFX reverb. Specifying this option will suppress the usage of EAX
; reverb and only use EFX reverb.
; NOTE: the menu option EAX does not specifically mean EAX, it only means reverb in general

;disable_oal_eax_reverb

partol on 7/5/2016 at 19:21

Quote Posted by Daraan

The OpenAL option in the menu is described as "hardware acceleration openAL".
My understanding is that Windows Vista,7,8,8.1 do not support hardware sound processing ("hardware acceleration").
Creative made a software called "Alchemy". Alchemy puts some .dll files into the game directory in order to re-enable hardware sound processing (such as openAL).

I read internet rumors that Windows 10 has built-in support for hardware accelerated sound, but don't know if it actually works. I use windows 7.