This post contains the list of games for which surround sound support has been identified so far, along with the maximum confirmed number of supported speakers:

• Aliens versus Predator - 7.0
• American McGee's Alice - 7.0
• Baldur's Gate - 5.1
• Baldur's Gate 2 - 5.1
• Battlefield 1942 - 7.0
• Battlefield Vietnam - 7.1
• Beyond Good & Evil - 7.0
• Blood II: The Chosen - 7.0
• BloodRayne - 7.0
• Call of Duty - 7.1
• Clive Barker's Undying - 7.0
• Colin McRae Rally 3 - 7.1
• Colin McRae Rally 04 - 7.1
• Command & Conquer: Renegade - 5.1
• Croc 2 - 5.1
• Descent 3 - 7.0
• Deus Ex - 7.0
• Diablo 2 - 5.1
• Drakan: Order of the Flame - 5.1
• Driver - 5.1
• Drome Racers - 5.1
• Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project - 7.0
• Dungeon Keeper 2 - 5.1
• Dungeon Siege - 5.1
• Enter The Matrix - 7.0
• Far Cry - 7.0
• Freelancer - 5.1
• Giants: Citizen Kabuto - 5.1
• Gothic - 5.1
• Gothic 2 - 7.1
• Grand Theft Auto 2 - 7.0
• Grand Theft Auto 3 - 7.0
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 7.0
• Gunman Chronicles - 7.0
• Half-Life - 5.1
• Half-Life 2 - 7.1
• Halo: Combat Evolved - 7.0
• Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 - 5.1
• Heretic II - 4.0
• Hitman: Codename 47 - 7.0
• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - 7.0
• Hitman: Contracts - 7.0
• Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine - 5.1
• Jurassic Park: Trespasser - 4.0
• Kiss: Psycho Circus - 5.1
• Max Payne - 7.0
• Max Payne 2 - 5.1
• Messiah - 5.1
• Motorhead - 5.1
• MDK - 4.0
• MDK 2 - 5.1
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - 5.1
• Moto Racer 2 - 5.1
• Moto Racer 3 - 5.1
• Need for Speed III - 5.1
• Need for Speed: High Stakes - 5.1
• Need for Hot Pursuit 2 - 5.1
• Neverwinter Nights - 7.1
• No One Lives Forever 2 - 7.0
• Outlaws - 4.0
• Peter Jackson's King Kong - 7.0
• Planescape: Torment - 5.1
• Powerslide - 5.1
• Prince of Persia 3D - 5.1
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - 5.1
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - 7.0
• Project Eden - 5.1
• Red Faction - 7.0
• Requiem: Avenging Angel - 7.0
• Rune - 7.0
• Sacrifice - 4.0
• Serious Sam: The First Encounter - 5.1
• SiN - 4.0
• Shogo: Mobile Armor Division - 7.0
• Slave Zero - 5.1
• Soldier of Fortune - 7.0
• Soldier of Fortune II - 7.0
• Splinter Cell - 5.1
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow - 7.1
• Star Trek DS9: The Fallen - 5.1
• Star Trek TNG: Klingon Honor Guard - 7.0
• Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force - 4.0
• Star Trek: Elite Force 2 - 7.1
• Star Wars: Episode I Racer - 5.1
• Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace - 7.0
• Star Wars: Jedi Knight Dark Forces II - 4.0
• Star Wars: Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast - 5.1
• Star Wars: Jedi Knight Jedi Academy - 5.1
• Star Wars KOTOR - 5.1
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D - 4.0
• System Shock 2 - 7.0
• TES3: Morrowind - 7.0
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 5.1
• Thief: The Dark Project - 5.1
• Thief Gold - 7.0
• Thief II - 7.0
• Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness - 5.1
• Total Annihilation - 4.0
• Tribes: Vengeance - 7.0
• Tron 2.0 - 5.1
• Unreal - 7.0
• Unreal Gold - 7.0
• Unreal Tournament '99 - 7.0
• Unreal II - 7.0
• Unreal Tournament 2004 - 7.0
• Uru: Ages Beyond Myst - 4.1
• Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption - 5.1
• Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines - 4.0
• WarCraft III - 5.1

Feel free to test other games and post your own findings here. Some of these games might also support 6.1 or even 7.1 surround, but I have no means of testing that since I only own a 5.1 speaker system. However, if 6.1 or 7.1 support is mentioned in the game's documentation or present in the audio options menu, I will of course list it as such. Furthermore, if the surround support has been listed either on the PC Gaming Surround Sound Round-up website or on the PC Gaming Wiki entry for the relevant game, I will defer to their testing results, unless ours say otherwise.

I remember playing bg2 on my late 90s altec lansing 4.1 speakers...it sounded great.

kolderman wrote on 2022-08-31, 07:40:

I remember playing bg2 on my late 90s altec lansing 4.1 speakers...it sounded great.

It does indeed! I have recently replayed it on WinME and it worked flawlessly. The 5.1 support is most evident when you use a spell which takes a long time to cast (such as Bless) and then pan the screen around the cleric until he finishes casting.

On a somewhat related note, Baldur's Gate 2 has a pretty nice EAX implementation as well. It's most evident in indoor areas like caves and tombs. In fact, I noticed that EAX sounds slightly better under Win9x when using VxD drivers, since you get some occlusion effects when enemies are behind walls and doors. Those occlusion effects seem to be missing under WinXP with WDM drivers.

In the games you tested, do the rear speakers play music, sound effects, or both?

In Unreal Tournament '99, the surround option is for sending 2-channel matrixed audio to a Dolby receiver connected to 4 or more speakers. If you disable the surround option in UT99/Deus Ex, do the rear speakers still play audio?

From Unreal Audio Subsystem

Dolby Surround Sound positioning (if UseSurround is enabled).

Dolby SurroundSound software encoding requires a Dolby decoder and four speakers, but it works on all stereo sound cards. It simply pans sound effects and ambient environment sounds between the four Dolby channels (center, rear, left, and right).

Stretch wrote on 2022-08-31, 10:56:

In the games you tested, do the rear speakers play music, sound effects, or both?

If we're talking about Unreal Tournament, music doesn't play through the rear speakers. Only sound effects do, specifically those that are supposed to be behind your character. For example, if you are standing with your back turned to a pool, you will hear the running water sound only on your rear speakers.

In Unreal Tournament '99, the surround option is for sending 2-channel matrixed audio to a Dolby receiver connected to 4 or more speakers. If you disable the surround option in UT99/Deus Ex, do the rear speakers still play audio?

If I disable the in-game surround sound option in Unreal Tournament, rear speakers will still play any appropriate sounds effects. However, if I also disable the Use 3D Hardware sound option, then rear speakers are no longer used.

I just noticed that Gothic 2 supports 7.1 surround in its options menu:

It's one of the few Win9x compatible games that explicitly states this. Neverwinter Nights is another.

Interesting info, thanks!
PS - btw, https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_ … _Shadows_of_Amn this page shows no surround support, maybe its time to change it..

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-31, 06:02:

I'm mostly interested in games released between 1995 and 2001

A lot of confusing terminology conflicting with Ensoniq'sCreative's speaker support and Dolby surround here. What you're looking for likely won't come earlier than the Live! (1998). It could also broadly cover DirectSound3D-supporting games through the Miles Sound System (which there are many, many of after 1999), and a lot of that correlates with "EAX support".

as for Dolby Surround Sound, some Novalogic games do come to mind, like Armored Fist 2. I think that opened up with a big ol Dolby Surround intro video - but that's a DOS game.

this should be a useful resource, because even though basically all titles were tested on vista and later, there's quite a few older games in there that will run on at least some win9x versions.

I quickly tested a couple games that I had installed. I also have an Audigy 2 ZS, configured to 5.1 with CMSS 3D disabled. I should note however that that when I run the Noise test in Speaker Settings, I hear the sub woofer test through my center channel. The Channel test sounds fine. I muted the sub just to be safe.

Half-Life - supports 4 speaker surround (requires the 1.0.0.8. patch)

Sin - supports 4 speaker surround (requires the 1.03 patch which added EAX support. 1.0 supports A3D but no sound at all was heard when enabled with the Audigy on my system)

KainXVIII wrote on 2022-08-31, 21:50:

Interesting info, thanks!
PS - btw, https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_ … _Shadows_of_Amn this page shows no surround support, maybe its time to change it..

Cheers! And yeah, that wiki is super useful, but occasionally some info is missing/incomplete.

I don't blame them for not noticing surround support in Baldur's Gate 2 since it's basically a 2D game. Maybe someone will see this thread and update it.

leileilol wrote on 2022-08-31, 23:34:

What you're looking for likely won't come earlier than the Live! (1998).

Yeah, I wasn't really expecting much before that. Not sure if sound cards before the Live even supported 4 speakers, except for the professional ones. But it would be a pleasant surprise if some old game somehow had surround though.

For now, I think the earliest games with surround support that I've tried are original versions of Unreal and Thief: The Dark Project, both from 1998. I'll have to re-test them to check if I'm getting full 5.1 support or just 4 speakers. Their respective "Gold" versions can definitively do 5.1.

auron wrote on 2022-09-01, 02:25:

this should be a useful resource, because even though basically all titles were tested on vista and later, there's quite a few older games in there that will run on at least some win9x versions.

Thanks! That page has some very detailed info.

I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to native LFE support during my testing, so I don't differentiate between say 4.0 and 4.1 as they do there. In such cases, I'll defer to the tests on that page.

Desomondo wrote on 2022-09-01, 03:28:

Half-Life - supports 4 speaker surround (requires the 1.0.0.8. patch)
Sin - supports 4 speaker surround (might require the 1.03 patch which added EAX support)

Cheers! I'll add those later today when I next update the list.

I tested a few more games. Thief: The Dark Project (retail) + latest official patch 1.33 delivers full 5.1 surround sound on my setup, when both Hardware Acceleration and EAX are turned on from the in-game audio options menu. Unreal (retail) + latest official patch 226f also delivers full 5.1 surround sound on my setup with the following set in Unreal.ini:

1UseSurround=True
2UseSpatial=True
3UseReverb=True
4Use3dHardware=True

Diablo 2 + LoD expansion + patch 1.10 also delivers full 5.1 surround sound on my setup when 3D sound is set to on and 3D Bias set to medium (default position) in the options menu. Since this is not a first-person game, I'll describe the steps for testing surround sound. When you start a new game, there is a bridge across the river which takes you out of the Rogue Encampment. As you walk across and around that bridge, you will eventually hear the running water sound from the front center and rear speakers, depending on the position of your character.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-09-01, 03:56:

Maybe someone will see this thread and update it.

Already done 😎

Added a few more games, based on the PC Gaming Wiki entries and PC Gaming Surround Sound Round-up tests. I was kind of surprised that so many games from 2004 still officially supported Win9x.

I have personally tested Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness and it delivers full 5.1 surround sound on my system. Additionally, that game does recognize and utilize EAX4 on compatible sound cards, so I will update the list of EAX games on the Vogons wiki to reflect this. Note that EAX Unified needs to be installed in order for this to work. I used version 4.0.0.1 from here.

I have also tested the original Baldur's Gate (1998) and it supports 5.1 surround sound, albeit in a more limited form than the sequel. Same testing method as before, cast a long spell and pan the screen around the caster.

The slightly newer (1999) Planescape Torment seems to support 5.1 since the front center and rear speakers all produce sounds during spell casting. However, I could not get surround sound to trigger in either of the Icewind Dale games. For clarity, all of these games were published by Interplay and use the same engine. Lastly, I noticed that the readme files and manuals of some of these games reference Dolby Surround technology.

EDIT - additional testing of Baldur's Gate + Tales of the Sword Coast expansion + patch 5512 + DirectX 8 fix revealed 5.1 surround support. It's more limited than in the sequel, but it does work.

I was testing surround sound in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 - The Fallen. Since this game is based on the Unreal engine, I figured it would support it. Interestingly, the game initially only offers software audio and you have to manually copy over some files in order to get any kind of hardware accelerated sound. Here's what the readme says:

DS9 help file wrote:

Additional 3D Providers
After installation, The Fallen only makes available the recommended base audio drivers. If you wish to use a specialty provider, such as EAX, you need to copy the relevant .m3d file from the /redist/win32/extras folder into the /redist/win32 folder. After copying the relevant .m3d file you can switch to the new provider from the Audio tab within options.

Be warned that changing audio driver from the default can result in slow downs, hangs or audio loss. If you experience audio loss, you may need to restart the game and maybe even restart your computer. Please see the fallen website for additional information.

This does work as advertised, and after copying the files I was able to get the full list of audio providers in the options menu. There's even explicit support for EAX2, something that I haven't seen mentioned before.

EDIT - I was finally able to get surround sound working using the EAX2 option. Here's what I had to do. I started the game, selected the EAX2 sound provider and then quit to desktop. Then, I edited DS9.ini to set UseSurround=True everywhere that it was set to False. Finally, I went to the Windows control panel changed the speakers back to 5.1 and then also went to the Creative Speaker Settings utility and also set the speakers to 5.1. Why was this necessary? Because the game reverts both speaker settings (independantly) to stereo when it first runs! This is what initially confused me. With all that set, I have confirmed that DS9 does deliver full 5.1 surround sound on my system.

I've tested the demos for Need for Speed III (1998) and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002). Both deliver full 5.1 surround sound on my system. You have to select D3D/EAX under audio options in Hot Pursuit 2 for this to work.

The NFS4: High Stakes and NFS5: Porsche Unleashed demos don't work on my Athlon64 system (GPU drivers too new probably) but I imagine they support surround sound as well.