Bad audio in AOS with EAX enabled

[Bogdan]

Hi Mona,

It seems that enabling EAX in EE AOS is causing some issues with sound, at least for me.
I tried to show this on video, not sure if it can be clearly heard though:
https://youtu.be/BClod2Df6R0?si=6S2lb4ihxKyYRdoW

So what I hear is a constant background hum which is similar to... I don't know, a vacuum cleaner.
My audio recording is of bad quality by itself, but on 00:52 you can hear a 'vacuum cleaner'.
Also, sounds of explosions are obviously distorted.

After I disabled EAX it seems like issues are gone. Is it a known issue?

[Dr.MonaLisa]

It's not an issue. This is how "EAX" was supposed to work.

Back then, I think it possibly required some special hardware to work:

Screenshot 2024-07-19 203401.jpg (209.87 KiB) Viewed 4162 times

This option in EE2: AOS was never working. I think they removed it before EE2: AOS release because it... sounded this way? But they forgot to remove the checkbox from the Game Settings -> Audio. So even if you changed the status of this checkbox, it was reset to unchecked the next time you re-visited settings.


In some UP1.5 update I found a way to "enable" EAX to function, and since I couldn't fix the checkbox directly in game, it was moved to the Maximization Helper window. However, it sounds weird. Maybe it requires some old, dedicated sound card, but I can't test it. Maybe it works correctly for someone, but for us it's just a bad option to check.

[Bogdan]

Oh, got it. But it would be nice to have a small warning for this checkbox then

[Dr.MonaLisa]

I don't know what warning? I can't add warnings for the issues I don't understand. Maybe it works correctly for someone? Maybe it works correctly on older Windows versions? Maybe someone has the EAX supporting hardware? I am not interested in making a research or providing false information in the tooltips, because I'm simply not in this subject, so anything I would write would be misleading people.

The option is unchecked by default. If someone checks it and hears how it sounds like, then will most likely uncheck it and the issue is solved. In the worst case can also Restore Default Config in UP1.6 Settings.