Mass Effect Legendary Edition – Surround Sound Fix

Because Bioware again shipped some broken, old OpenAL32.dll where surround is not working properly here are steps to fix it.

Surround Sound Fix: Steps

All credit goes to Juri!

• Download Openal Soft from https://openal-soft.org
• Put file from Win32/soft_oal.dll as OpenAL32.dll to Windows/SysWOW64 and file from Win64/soft_oal.dll as OpenAL32.dll to Windows/system32, override if necessary.
• Delete OpenAL32.dll from binaries in game directory.
• Put this:

[ISACTAudio.ISACTAudioDevice]
MaxChannels=128
UseEffectsProcessing=True
TimeBetweenHWUpdates=15
MinOggVorbisDurationGame=20
MinOggVorbisDurationEditor=4
DeviceName=
ReserveChannels=2
TotalAvailableChannels=128
UseEffectsProcessing=True

To BIOEngine.ini in config directory in path like Mass Effect Legendary EditionGameME1BioGameConfig, make it read-only so game doesn’t override it. There should be already section like ISACTAudio.ISACTAudioDevice so put it there.

• Run alsoft-config.exe from openal-soft-{version}-binalsoft-config and set your desired channels – in my case it’s 7.1 and click apply, you can try other options, whatever seem to be better for you.
• (Optionally) go to %appdata%, there should be file alsoft.ini and you can try adding two options there.

volume-adjust = 6
front-stablizer=true

Volume-Adjust increases overall sound volume -24 to 24 and Front-Stablizer mixes sound from left and right channel to center.

• Just run a game, you should have surround sound working fine now.
• If it doesn’t work try restarting your PC.
• Also it might work if you replace dll only in a binaries folder – but i didn’t try it.