I think it is worth noting that with one small change this also makes SS2 work with surround speakers (this thread is also one of the first results on google search for thtat).

In the alsoft.ini remove the headphone and hrtf lines and change the

channels=stereo

to

channels=surround51

to make the audio into 5.1 surround.

I updated the main post with information from @GuyFawkesGaming , thanks again!

This guide's pretty good, but I think it could use some updating now. First, pre-compiled HRTF tables can now be found on the web, so you don't really need either makehrtf.exe nor the hrtf_defs folder. A video to speed run the table selection process can also be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCXQp7swp5k. Second, the first post mentions that bsinc24 is best, actually though it's cubic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62U6UnaUGDE. Lastly, this isn't required but something I just recommend, make a shortcut to alsoft-config in \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs so it appears in the start menu.
Also, this isn't exactly relevant to SS2, but since I've seen many OpenAL guides out there use this one as a base I should probably mention it anyways. You can use a program called DSOAL to remap EAX effects and directsound 3D to ALsoft's EFX. It also includes the HRTF tables in the hard mode installation zip. There is also A3D Alchemy which uses a modified A3D to directsound wrapper combined with indirectsound; you can however make it use DSOAL with it's HRTF by copying DSOAL's dsound.dll over A3D Alchemy's a3dsnd.dll (indirectsound) in sysWOW64 or system32. Also you may want to keep Creative Alchemy with restriction remover for those few EAX 5 games like Bioshock since DSOAL doesn't do that yet. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

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Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but I think there are dev tools for the A3D 2.0 API.  A3D 2.0 allows "physics based" sound propagation, as it takes the level geometry and simulates how the sound bounces off the surfaces.  Sensaura did this too to an even more advanced degree (higher level reflections and more dimensions for the HRTF).  If you had the old hardware and the dev tools, it might have been possible??

Back from my slumber - sorry for the late reply.

Actually, this is something I wanted to test for some time now, and lo and behold, you don't have to change anything outside of the SS2 folder anymore:
1) The alsoft.ini file can be read from the same place that the DLL resides in. If both are placed in the SS2 folder, the options will be parsed from there as well. However, the OALS config tool naturally won't find it, so if you're not a novice user, the global installation is still the recommended one (although having local options for each Dark engine game for example is nice to have).
2) If OALS, for any reason whatsoever, cannot find or parse the HRTF file you're providing (or forgetting to provide), it will default to its built-in KEMAR table. So if you're in 48KHz mode, which probably everyone is nowadays, and you're only provoding a hrtf=true option, then OALS will just use its built-in 48KHz table and upsample the game's sound to that frequency. Not the prettiest solution, since I would still recommend every expert user to use a custom table (upsampling artifacts should be neglible, so just use 48KHz for the future). But it works, and definitely much better than the default stereo sound.

Those changes were introduced in 19.0. I updated the quick-install and the ini file, both of which you can use for the SS2 Tool.

The only caveat is that you have to have headphones enabled in Windows. But if you're dense enough to have 5.1 enabled while using headphones, you sort of deserve the garbled game sound you'll be getting, I guess.

I have to say, I was expecting a subtle difference, but the improvement here is immediately apparent. Very impressed, and thanks!

Sure it's supported, just not with HRTF.

1) Afaik not, you need stereo sound.
2) It will, OALS has 44 and 48kHz HRTF tables built-in. Game sound will be upsampled accordingly.

I have 2 questions:

1) Does HRTF still work with 5.1 systems?  I selected 5.1 in my cam_ext.cfg but installed this driver.  Will it still give me 5.1 because I would like to try that.  Will it be any better than the OpenAl that was available before installing these files?

2) I can't seem to pick 44kHz on my X-Fi Titanium in Game Mode.  It only allows 48kHz and 96 kHz.  Will it not work unless it's set to exactly 44 and if so, any idea how to change it?  The normal options don't seem to be exposed through the control panel since creative has its own.

The HRTF table complier updated in 1.19.0. See The PCGamingWiki page for updated instructions.

Sound improvement (positioning sources) works great.
But since the original download link for the openal-soft-1.18.2-bin.zip is dead, I provide You with a mirror:

link

So I ran through the directions and everything seems to be working fine. It's still nowhere near as good as a proper, multi-speaker setup, but it works a lot better than any other 2-speaker surround I've ever tried.

One thing I've often lamented about traditional 5.1 and 7.1 setups is the lack of vertical localization; everything always sounds like it's on the same plane as you, even if it's above or below you. I imagine a good solution would be an 8-speaker system with 2 upper-front, 2 lower-front, 2 upper-rear, and 2 lower-rear speakers to give total sound immersion, but I've yet to find a game or option in Windows that allows changing the apparent direction of arbitrary speakers on arbitrary channels. So the HRTF-style surround seems like it could be pretty awesome for not only giving surround without disturbing others in the house, but also for giving vertical surround where standard speakers don't have any.

But I'm not getting any kind of vertical effect from the OpenAL stuff.

I can see that neither IRCAM nor CIAIR even try to do vertical (everything is on a horizontal plane), while KEMAR is supposed to have data from -40 to +90°. But if I delete the openal\hrtf folder with the IRC_1059.mhr file in it (which I assume goes back to the default of KEMAR), I'm still not getting anything that sounds remotely like it's above or below me, even in the cargo bays on Engineering. Does anyone else get any kind of vertical effect? Or is it possible the game doesn't even try to localize sound except in 2D?

doesnt using OpenAL Soft disable EAX? OALSoft uses EFX, but are you sure that it translates EAX calls to EFX?

last i read that OpenAL Soft never supported the EAX extension.

https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/issues/62

https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/issues/30

That was quick, and you don't need to apologise for your English, native speakers are actually in the minority here I think.

If you can describe the problem, could you post it to the project's bug tracker? Maybe it will be fixed eventually. I'll keep linking to the older 17.2 version for now.

> In what way, do you know why
Maybe it's OpenAL bug like memory leak or something (because 1.18 implements many features) or bug in NewDark audio subsystem. Who knows~

I can try to make git bisect on OpenAL codebase and see what's the commit breaking the game.

Warning: latest OpenAL Soft 1.18.0 breaks the ghost despawn.

It's more close to A3D than to EAX.
What A3D did was to get (a simpler version of) the world geometry and simulated the sound playback relative to your position.
So when a sound was played around the corner, it was in lower volume.
EAX simply added effects on the sounds, disregarding your position in the world.
(later EAX was better, but let's just stay at the time of SS2).

Back to Battlefield (or the Frostbite engine). If you have a Tank there are somewhat like 20 or more sound generators on the tank itself.
Now if a tank drives by from behind, you can hear it coming from behind and driving past you.
It even sounds different if you are standing up or laying down as some of the sound generators are now closer to you and some other get obstructed by the tank itself. Now if there are walls around or the ground is made of a special texture, you even hear the echo comparable to the materials surface.
The sound engine is really rich in features when it comes to 3d emulation.

No.
Whatever produces sound does have one or several (like tanks) sound generators attached to them. You hear the sound relative to your position. Additionally obstruction of geometry and reflection of sound depending on the material is also calculated.

There was some feature video from the developers where they showed of and described a little bit about it. Sadly I can't find it anymore.

Yeah, A3D2. 0 is still ahead of anything we have today.

When it comes to an interface or sorts, yes.
Nowadays the good games have 3d surround for headphones built in.
As example, Battlefield 3 and the following titles have pretty neat sound atmosphere going on.

Another happy customer,thanks. 
Yeah, A3D2. 0 is still ahead of anything we have today. I'm confident however that headphone sound will see a lot of attention soon thanks to VR.

I added this thread to MOTHER's collection of SS2 Help Guides and changed the icon of the first post to the same lamp symbol all guides have.
I will not move it to the Helpdesk where the other guides are that deal with immediate installation problems etc, since I feel this is more of an advanced topic.

I see.
Does it mean the KEMAR MHR has a better "resolution", more detailed table, thus sound localization should objectively be better as OALSoft needs to "interpolate" the IRCAM samples more?
I did not hear much of a difference between the custom and the default MHR, just created it "because I could" - may as well revert back to the original.
Thank you!

Marvin, thank you very much for this post and the detailed install/setup guide, got it working with my custom HRTF table (IRC 1020 works best for me).

One note - my MHR is considerably smaller than the in-built default ones:

53,853 default-44100.mhr
53,853 default-48000.mhr
13,417 irc_1020_44100.mhr

The built process finished without errors:

c:\Users\citadel\AppData\Roaming\openal\hrtf_defs>makehrtf.exe -m -r=44100 -d=sphere -i=.\IRC_1020.def -o=.\irc_1020_44100.mhr
Reading HRIR definition...
Calculating diffuse-field average...
Performing diffuse-field equalization...
Performing minimum phase reconstruction...
Truncating minimum-phase HRIRs...
Synthesizing missing elevations...
Normalizing final HRIRs...
Calculating impulse delays...
Creating MHR data set file...
Operation completed.


Ok, thanks for your time. I will try different hrtf presets if problems persist.