EAX emulation without a Sound Blaster card is here

[djoye]

It has actually been a while, but you can now play most (all?) EAX-based games with a combination of OpenAL Soft and DSOAL without a Sound Blaster card.

Relevant sites:
https://openal-soft.org/ -- https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft
https://ci.appveyor.com/project/ChrisRobinson/dsoal <- DSOAL's binary is available here for 30 days after its compiled -- https://github.com/kcat/dsoal

For EAX1-3 games, you may be able to simply place the dsound.dll file into the same directory as the game's executable. For later EAX games, you'll need to place dsound.dll and dsoal-aldrv.dll (rename soft_oal.dll to dsoal-aldrv.dll) into the aforementioned directory. Some Unreal Engine games (UE 2.5?), Killing Floor for example, may require you to rename soft_oal.dll to DefOpenAL32.dll and place that into the <game_name>\System directory with DSOAL's dsound.dll to get the desired result.

I tried this on a handful of games, audio going through an RTX 3090's HDMI output, and I was surprised at how well it worked. DOOM 3 and Quake 4 sounded fine and Unreal and Killing Floor worked properly. The last game I tried was Soldier of Fortune 2 and it appeared to work very well. I had tried SoF2 on my X-Fi with ALchemy and it was a mess, using DSOAL was actually better with no noisy scratches or pops.

It sounded good to me. It might not be perfect, but it seems better than ALchemy.

 

[OFaceSIG]

I'm not following but very interested. So we download OpenAL and drop these .DLLs into legacy games and it just magically works?

 

[Phazer Tech]

I'm not following but very interested. So we download OpenAL and drop these .DLLs into legacy games and it just magically works?

Yes, apparently. It's an emulator so it replaces the hardware that was required before. CPUs these days are fast enough to do it all.

 

[NamelessPFG]

How did I miss this until now? 3D audio in older games is pretty important to me, and being able to kick Creative and their janky drivers to the curb would be nice.

I'm still using my X-Fi Titanium HD even on my latest 12700K/Win11 build, believe it or not, so I have a good point of reference for how the emulated EAX should sound! Just gotta rename some DLLs each time for some A-B testing.

The real tough test will be Battlefield 2/2142, in all likeliness; they have a specific X-Fi mode in the sound settings and likely use EAX 5.0, which the Github page mentions DSOAL topping out at just 4.0. Still, being able to use the "Hardware" option would likely be an improvement.

 

[OFaceSIG]

How did I miss this until now? 3D audio in older games is pretty important to me, and being able to kick Creative and their janky drivers to the curb would be nice.

I'm still using my X-Fi Titanium HD even on my latest 12700K/Win11 build, believe it or not, so I have a good point of reference for how the emulated EAX should sound! Just gotta rename some DLLs each time for some A-B testing.

The real tough test will be Battlefield 2/2142, in all likeliness; they have a specific X-Fi mode in the sound settings and likely use EAX 5.0, which the Github page mentions DSOAL topping out at just 4.0. Still, being able to use the "Hardware" option would likely be an improvement.

Please keep us informed. I'm trying to wrap my head around this process.