Force soundcard hardware acceleration? 3D sound?

[zeep 3]

Is there a way to force ARMA2 to use audio hardware acceleration? Or to force use of 3D sound at all for a 2 speaker setup?

Right now ARMA2 is plain stereo.. I don't have any audio directional awareness other than left and right, it's not good enough.

My soundcard (Audigy) isn't the youngest on the market but it does its job in all other games. For instance, in ARMA demo i've enabled audio HW acceleration and it works fine there. I can hear what's in front of me, and what behind me very clearly.

[private plowjoy 0]

Is there a way to force ARMA2 to use audio hardware acceleration? Or to force use of 3D sound at all for a 2 speaker setup?

Right now ARMA2 is plain stereo.. I don't have any audio directional awareness other than left and right, it's not good enough.

My soundcard (Audigy) isn't the youngest on the market but it does its job in all other games. For instance, in ARMA demo i've enabled audio HW acceleration and it works fine there. I can hear what's in front of me, and what behind me very clearly.

I have positional audio working without a problem.

Try checking your Windows sound settings and make sure you have surround enabled and not two-speaker. Also try running the Creative tests to make sure surround is working out-game.

[zeep 3]

Hi. Well the surround sound works in like ARMA, Unreal- and Quake engine games so i'm sure on the driver level all is as it should be. The Direct3D driver aswell as the Creative driver both give me perfect locational audio using 2 speakers.

*Edit*

Ok i've learned that ARMA2 uses xAudio2. Now all i need to find out it how to get xAudio2 to produce 3D sound on WinXP. Anyone?

Edited August 8, 2009 by zeep

[bangtail 0]

Hi. Well the surround sound works in like ARMA, Unreal- and Quake engine games so i'm sure on the driver level all is as it should be. The Direct3D driver aswell as the Creative driver both give me perfect locational audio using 2 speakers.

*Edit*

Ok i've learned that ARMA2 uses xAudio2. Now all i need to find out it how to get xAudio2 to produce 3D sound on WinXP. Anyone?

It's a software only audio engine. There is no DS3D.

Eth

[zeep 3]

Yes i just need to find out how to get 3D sound going on my system.

I read some posts on the web of similar issues where xAudio2 somehow didn't produce 3D sounds on XP systems so maybe there's a cure.

[Suchy_ 10]

Sorry for thread necromancy... but did you have any success?

As far as I know in Windows XP xAudio2 is mapped to only 2 DirectSound channels, so I think this would require some kind of override, like a DirectX hook software, but so far I haven't found anything.

I'm not going to buy/install a system I don't need, for only one game.

WTF was the idea behind implementing xAudio2 instead of DirectSound in DX10? It's in every way inferior to proper hardware mixing...

[zeep 3]

No still no 3D audio. User oktane was kind enough to help me do some test with an XAudio2 app. Even though the 3d sound is much more apparant in the app, in-game it's still bad.

I think the worse thing about the sound is that when i.e. a heli flies somewhere, i can hear it louder if it's directly to my right or left and i hear it much softer when i'm facing it or have my back towards it.

I've tried 2 soundcards, one Audigy and on board sound. I also went to a friend who has an xfi-fatal1ty card, he said he had good 3D sound with it. After some testing there i found out he also didn't, it may seem 3D but it's plain stereo. I couldn't hear the difference between what's in front and what's behind.

I'm hoping BIS can fix this sometime. It's such a letdown to have audio quality near DukeNukem3D instead of real 3D sound.

If you find a solution, please share it here.

Yes A2 uses a new sound engine which is called XAudio2

It is misleading sometimes, because other games may use different ways of 3d audio. But to test this case, I made an app here http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6831

With that you should be able to move around the sound with WASD and it will go to all your speakers. If it doesn't work there, there's no reason it would work in the game.

Have you got your settings in control panel/sounds set to 5.1 or whatever number of speakers you have? Do you have CMSS and all creative enhancments disabled?

[Suchy_ 10]

I tried that app earlier. Just simple stereo, even on true 5.1 speaker setup.

[maddogx 13]

So this is a Windows XP only problem? Personally, I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that positional audio in Arma2 works fine under Windows Vista and 7.

[zeep 3]

Thanks for confirming.

Apart from not having 3D sound, the worst thing is in-game sounds are louder to the sides than in the center. Still, i believe BIS can fix it all by simply programming the audio engine to be more compatible. Maybe add more drivers to it or something.

ARMA2, since i've aquired it, has made me purchase another CPU and at the moment i'm saving up for a new GPU and PSU to go with that. I'm not going to switch OS too.. that's just too much of a man to ask ;)

[thr0tt 12]

Works fine on my XP Pro system. 5.1 surround, all positions work. Also works fine in Windows 7.

[-bsm--sniper 10]

Thanks for confirming.

Apart from not having 3D sound, the worst thing is in-game sounds are louder to the sides than in the center. Still, i believe BIS can fix it all by simply programming the audio engine to be more compatible. Maybe add more drivers to it or something.

ARMA2, since i've aquired it, has made me purchase another CPU and at the moment i'm saving up for a new GPU and PSU to go with that. I'm not going to switch OS too.. that's just too much of a man to ask ;)

You are right zeep.

Arma 2 has a strange sound behavior.... my x-fi titanium both in xp 32b and 7 64b don't work very well with 5.1 config.

3d sound effects are so bad that i can't clearly understand where the source of sound is. I can hear left and right sounds but not from the center (the sounds in centre channel seems to be almost off) !

arma 2 seems a true stereo game and i hope that BIS can implement true positional audio sound like eax or openal or somewhat they want!