User's Guide

OpenAL-Soft should work out of the box if your application is using it right, but tinkering is always an option with ALSoft. Most of what you need is documented in alsoftrc.sample, others in env-vars.txt.

Common topics

Using ALSoft

If your tinkering does not work, you should make sure you are actually using ALSoft.

• On Linux, an ldd command and some LD_LIBRARY_PATH should tell you.
• On Windows, you may want to replace the OpenAL32.dll.
  • The binary is available from http://openal-soft.org.
  • On a 32-bit system, move the 32-bit oal_soft.dll into System32 and rename it to OpenAL32.dll.
  • On a 64-bit system, move the 64-bit oal_soft.dll into System32 and rename it to OpenAL32.dll. Then move the 32-bit oal_soft.dll into SysWow64 and rename it to OpenAL32.dll. Confusing, I know.
• On macOS, otool -L should tell you. Unfortunately, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH no longer works out of the box because of SIP. install_name_tool may help if otool mentions an rpath.

HRTF

HRTF should work out of the box on recent versions of ALSoft. Specifically, ALSoft tries to figure out if you are using a headphone and then turns on the HRTF. Not all backends support headphone detection and they can still be wrong. If that happens, make a alsoftrc section named after the device (use openal-info; make sure the info program is using OpenAL!) and set stereo-mode = headphones.

Sampling rate does not matter as long as it's higher than 32000. See issue 784 for lower rates.

You may want to use a custom HRTF. Read hrtf.txt for that.

Game-specific override

There's a bit in alsoftrc.sample about that.

Stereo upmixing

See issue #837. 5.1 is a mess, but the presets should help you.