How-to: Correct settings to ensure positional surround sound over headphones

[Little Man]

Originally Posted by lithos

That's fine. Try with "War Tapes" as well; it's still 5.1.

Oh now i understand what you mean by war tapes.

Sounds must more realistic, more crisp.

Haven't listened for poisitional audio though yet, what is it exact? 5.1?

What are all the others? Why can't they just have 2.0 and 5.1 options?

[lithos]

Running Borderlands 2 through Hardware OpenAL - For X-Fi users only.

Obviously, back up all files to be edited first in case you screw up! 'Course, INI editing is a piss of piece, but I've seen some people do it...

You will also need ALCapsViewer, which lets you see the name and number of your X-Fi, which is important.

1) Launch the game once to create the necessary files.

2) Go to Documents\my games\Borderlands 2\WillowGame and open WillowGame.ini.

3) Search for the line "WinDrv.WindowsClient". No quotes. You'll note it says "Xaudio2.Xaudio2Device". That means the game is rendering sound through Xaudio2 - software, no real 3D - by default.

4) Delete "Xaudio2.Xaudio2Device", and replace with "ALAudio.ALAudioDevice". No quotes, of course. This tells the game to output via OpenAL, but so far only in software mode (next steps puts it in hardware).

5) Scroll down to [ALAudio.ALAudioDevice], just two blocks below it. This holds the settings for the OpenAL output (as [Xaudio2.Xaudio2Device] does for Xaudio2).

6) Here's the hardware bit: replace "MaxChannels=32" with "MaxChannels=128". "Channels" here means "Voice Count", the number of sounds which can be played simultaneously. The default 32 is a piss-poor amount; that's the same number of voices typically used in games from 2000.

7) Run ALCapsViewer64 (from the ZIP linked to above), and under "OpenAL Devices" on the left, you'll see your soundcard: "SB X-Fi Audio" followed by four digits in square brackets. On my systems it says "SB X-Fi Audio [0001]" but it may be different on others'.

8) Again, under the [ALAudio.ALAudioDevice] text block in the INI, change the line "DeviceName=Generic Software" to "DeviceName=SB X-Fi Audio [XXXX]" - where [XXXX] is the number set you got from ALCapsViewer in step 7. Mine reads "DeviceName= SB X-Fi Audio [0001]".

9) Search for a line in the INI called [ALAudio.ALAudioWrapper]. Again, as in step 8, replace "Generic Software" with "SB X-Fi Audio [XXXX]".

10) Done! Sorry if it's a bit involved, but I also wanted to explain the why as well as the how of setting it up. Hopefully, this should also apply to future XAudio Unreal games, like Dishonored.

TROUBLESHOOTING: Check the INI file after you've played and quit the game for a while. If you find it's been reset to Xaudio2 (by looking at the "WinDrv.WindowsClient" line), you'll have to re-edit master INI files in the game directory itself - these are the files the Unreal Engine copies from if the My Games INI gets corrupted or otherwise screwed.

These files are both called "DefaultEngine.in" and one is in Steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\WillowGame\Config, the other is in Steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\Engine\Config.

Simple edit as above.

Note that if you edit these, and then "Verify Integrity of Cache" through Steam, they may get rewritten to the default settings...so back up these files, people!