[Openal-devel] Re: Help. 5.1 was working, but...

[Chris Robinson]

On Monday 23 February 2009 4:31:44 am Scott Mayo wrote:
> The device comes back as Generic Software (it's the only device that shows
> up), and that's what I open.

That's Creative's software driver, which only does stereo output. You'll need 
to make sure OpenAL Soft's DLL is being found and used if you want it for 5.1 
output.

> I know I'm on a list run by Creative and that some folk here may be
> employees, but can anyone recommend a decent quality USB sound card that is
> known to work flawlessly with openAL and 5.1? I need reliable position
> control over a handful of sources. And where can I get the latest openAL
> dll?

The latest DLLs are available from
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/Forms/AllItems.aspx

As long as your sound card is capable of 5.1 output in DirectSound, OpenAL 
Soft should have no problems working with it. If you want hardware 
acceleration, you'll either need a hardware OpenAL driver (only Creative makes 
some, currently, AFAIK), or accelerated DirectSound3D (however Windows Vista/7 
don't allow this anymore).