3D Sound disabled, worked in Beta

Turn it back on devs. Your reasoning for killing it off was not true then and it isn't true now.

I'd like for the game I've been playing with proper 3D sound for over 5 years, including during beta, to not sound like crap now that this has gone live.

Thanks.

EDIT: Yes, I'm running Windows 7. Yes, 3D sound worked on my rig last time I was logged into the beta server.

Hey, je_saist, your input means exactly nothing to me.

3D sound under Win 7 worked on MY rig prior to today's patch. All speakers were in use. Sounds moved from speaker to speaker as I turned around.

Now everything sounds like crap because the vast majority of the sound is being piped out my front center speaker while the rest are barely recieving any signal at all. And for what? Because the devs have arbitrarily blocked the game from functioning properly with MY sound card.

And I know I'm not the only person using a X-Fi Gamer card.

I'm confusing exactly nothing and you should cease spewing forth irrelevant garbage.


Developers, if nothing else, please provide a command line flag that will force enable the 3D sound option that you have broken. Thanks.

Interesting.

However it does not change the fact that 3D sound was working before today, and now it is only coming out of 2 of the 6 speakers.

Nothing else was changed.

EDIT: Ah, I wonder if it is a X-Fi thing. Guess I'll do some more digging. I'm also running Win7 (x64).

EDIT AGAIN: Looks likes there's a somewhat recent driver release. I'll post again after I've got it down and installed.

Creative's workaround for the idiocy that Microsoft pulled was Alchemy. It restored functionality that vista/7 screwed up. (As Necrotron just posted.)

It's been working just fine until today.

The June 2010 drivers from Creative Labs, along with a new install of Alchemy seems to have restored 3D sound.

The option isn't there, but it is back to actually behaving as it did before the patch.

I'd suggest trying things out and seeing for yourself.

Will do shortly. Thanks, Chaotic.

The Xonar D2X (which I have) also has a driver-based solution for running DS3D games in Vista/7, which worked well enough in City of Heroes, but I cannot enable the option in-game anymore.

Fully updated all Creative software using their updater, option in game is still set to N/A, but I do have sound working through all speakers again. Except it's still non-directional. It's all frontloaded.

Please devs, reverse this. Having me play without surround sound is no different than having me play without any antialiasing. It's not worth it.

Just for giggles, I launched CoH in XP SP3 compatibility mode, and was allowed to enable 3D sound. It seemed to be working correctly as well. Give that a try.

Was a good thought, and I was able to turn on 3D Sound in game, but I still have no directional sound and it appears to cause something of a performance hit when I set it to XP compatibility mode.

I reported this in Beta as well. Right now to get it enabled I'm setting the registry flag "enable3dsound" to 1 and it works until the the options menu is opened / saved.
Windows 7 professional 64 bit
SB X-Fi Xtreme audio card
Creative Driver version 5.12.1.2018 (Date: 8/3/2009)

I'm running the "I actually paid money for this?!?" card that is the X-Fi Xtreme Audo PCI Express, and I too have lost the option to enable 3D sound. I did, however, manage to "fudge" 3D sound by downloading and installing the Creative Console Launcher, which for some reason is NOT part of any drivers or packages for my card. It allowed me to enable Surround Sound using Stereo Surround (as opposed to Stereo Xpand, which sucks), and that has given me passable, moving surround sound.

I actually had the opposite problem to that of Bubba - rather than all sound being piped through my centre speaker, all sound was being pumped through my side speakers and much less from centre. I kind of fudged a solution to this by boosting my centre speaker's volume considerably, to a point where they evened out. I do not have Alchemy installed.

As a result, I have surround sound, but what I still lack with the inability to enable 3D sound in Options is the "doppler" effect that 3D sound has, which I'd grown accustomed to.

On the flip side, 3D sound has been total *** for some time for me. It had a VERY sharp falloff both in distance and off centre vision, such that I couldn't hear glowies at all unless I was 10 feet away from them and actually looking at them. With 3D sound as it is now, the massive falloff is gone, and actually reversed, such that I will hear sounds far away from me very loud off my surround speakers. For instance, I'll hear enemies moving around 50 feet behind me as though they were much closer, giving me a few unnecessary jump scares.

I'd still like to see proper 3D support returned to the game, however.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Anybody got any tips? Started tackling this last night and wasn't able to get it to work. I suppose it doesn't help that ALchemy has the least intuitive user interface known to man.

Also filed a GM report... they told me to turn down my video settings. Guess they couldn't be bothered to read that whole thing I wrote about 3D SOUND They did ask me to run the Game Advisor though, which is a plausible step towards finding a solution, so I'll be doing that. If nothing else, I'll be one more person bugging them about why this now doesn't work (when it worked pretty well in I17).

I've PMed the appropriate devs including a link to this thread. So far, no response at all. I can't tell you how pissed off I am about this. I've got it to the point that I've got *some* positional sound working on my front speakers, but I get zilch from the back speakers.

Have you tried manually changing the registry entry for enable3DSound from 0 to 1?

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Found that Alchemy produces a noticeable FPS hit when enabled.


Also, prior to this, 3d Sound works even WITHOUT Alchemy. But I don't know the quality between with or without Alchemy with 3d sound enabled.

Well, I've tried every single suggestion, including ALchemy and altering the registry manually, and still have no 3D Sounds. I am starting to understand how Bill feels about this subjected. I've wasted hours of my time trying to fix something that was never broken and therefore should have never been "fixed."

I've updated my support ticket accordingly. Will be morbidly curious to see where this takes me.

Edit: it's being escalated.

Support wants me to try XP Compatibility Mode. Will I take a performance hit if I do so?

Also, I'm halfway tempted to switch to my mobo built-in sound device (Realtek ALC883). Would that make a difference, rather than using my SB Audigy SE?

Edit: they also referred me here for the "patch notes" for Issue 18. Laughable. The real patch notes here and here don't even list this change, clearly for the sake of Marketing to keep the game nice and shiny, when it seemingly looks like they dropped DS3D without any OpenAL substitute.

Their suggestion, and the only one that works for my particular scenario, is to run CoH in WinXP Compatibility Mode. Unfortunately, nearly every time I close the game when running in Compatibility Mode, the game crashes, and does a darn good job of nearly locking up my system in the process.

I'm basically damned if I do and damned if I don't.

I did get this to work last night, but only after running XP Compatibility Mode AND using my mobo's Realtek option (I physically removed my SoundBlaster Audigy SE to ensure no IRQ conflicts, to ensure no crashes between CoH and sound driver hooks, etc.).

So the crashing when using Compatibility Mode may be related to the SoundBlaster drivers. OTOH, CoH doesn't really support Windows 7 anymore, at least not when it comes to advanced sound features. Which is funny considering what they've done with Ultra Mode. They removed DS3D for Win Vista and Win 7 without any OpenAL alternative, leaving a lot of players in a lurch.

My 3D Sound quest with my SB Audigy SE, I think, is a lost cause. Although the new SB drivers that work with ALchemy and in Compatibility Mode will work with other Audigy cards, they don't work with mine. Without new drivers, the game crashes in XP Compatibility Mode. But since the drivers for my particular card haven't been updated by Creative since April 2009, I can't update them on my rig.

It seems I'll be using WinXP Compatibility Mode with my RealTek ALC883 on my mobo instead, and move my sound card into the e-cycle bin :/ It's the only way I can get 3D Sound to work on CoH post I18.

Reference: Support Ticket #100824-001018

Well, at least I'm sort of comforted that we're not the only one with this problem. Here is one other post on the topic, and another.