Deus Ex: Revision | A3D 2.0 + A3D-Live! + DSOAL + OpenAL Soft Headphone Spatial Audio + EAX
Turns out this game (and mod) is a bit more complicated to set up than I initially though. Apparently, if using Galaxy audio subsystem with Hardware 3D audio enabled and there are any A3D wrappers installed, the game will try to use them, which means if someone installed A3D Alchemy, they'd just get EAX "support" (game thinks it's present but doesn't get emulated) and no 3D audio even if they installed DSOAL. So the solution is to just install A3D-Live!, which adds/overwrites the proper A3D DLLs in the system folder to wrap A3D calls to DirectSound3D, so then DSOAL can take care of 3D audio and EAX reverb.
I should point out though, that this method hasn't been thoroughly tested so I'm still not sure if this is recommended over using DirectSound3D directly (without A3D wrappers) or using ALAudio, the second audio subsystem available either as a plugin for the base game, or built into Revision.
As soon as we find the best method, the Instructions (guide) link below will redirect to it.
***** UPDATE *****
Turns out A3D wrappers unsurprisingly introduce bugs, so it's better to uninstall all A3D wrappers so that the game falls back to native DirectSound3D/EAX mode
Unfortunately, the game thinks wrappers are actually A3D sound cards so it prioritizes that over DS3D/EAX which used to make sense back in the '90s/'00s since A3D was astronomical units ahead of EAX, but nowadays, ironically, EAX works better because it can be emulated more consistently)
A few observations about native DirectSound3D (without A3D wrappers):
- It still requires flipping the Y axis in alsoft.ini
- It seems more positionally accurate: sounds directly underneath relative to head orientation sound like they're all over the place
- Reverb is quieter and different (though I'm not sure if it's better per se) and A3D's reverb seems to make positioning noticeably more diffuse, though even when setting it to -24, positioning doesn't seem as good as no A3D with regular (quiet) reverb volume
- Doesn't hang momentarily at the main menu like with A3D
Binaural Audio | ⭐⭐⭐⭐
⚠️Axis inverted. Fixable via alsoft.ini
⚠️It seems there's some sfx missing/getting cut off
⚠️Some ambiance sounds seem to cut in and out
Instructions/configuration: https://airtable.com/shrtTsUtiAJQ7wFGI/tblNOTdmp5nHXfFGU/viwjDPuKOjBnIQunv/rec7jZFepzpAZl6ti
More info: https://kutt.it/Binaural
Discord server: https://kutt.it/BinauralDiscord
ceski's tests and observations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZUMfKDUcYY
1. DSOAL + OpenAL Soft: getting better each time I check it out
2. ALchemy + X-Fi Titanium: still the benchmark
3. ALchemy + Host OpenAL: pretty close to the real thing
4. ALchemy + Creative Software 3D Library: too much reverb
5. ALAudio + OpenAL Soft: clicks and pops when panning, and EAX is applied incorrectly (voices, etc.)
Other Videos By 3DJ
Other Statistics
Deus Ex Statistics For 3DJ
At this time, 3DJ has 323 views for Deus Ex spread across 2 videos. Less than an hour worth of Deus Ex videos were uploaded to his channel, less than 0.25% of the total video content that 3DJ has uploaded to YouTube.