Okay, well many of use have performance issues as well as VoIP issues. Now I can't promise this is the end all, be all for everyone BUT I was able to get my VoIP working with full hardware acceleration, settings on high, and EAX enabled!
While most of this has been posted previously (the .dll steps) I have added/tweaked and re-worded some things to hopefully cover up any gaps left open in the initial post as well as some things I just tried (stab in the dark) and worked for me.
So here is what I did:
http://www.creative.com/support/
First off, go to creatives website (above), and use the "software update" tool. It requires Internet Exploerer 5.5 or above, so if you use firefox, you will need to launch IE to do this. It will auto-update drivers and software found on your computer. I recommend getting all the updates that this program detects.
Now, because it doesn't install the drivers we need for BF2, we will need to grab these ourselfs. Get yourself back over to the website we were just on, only this time, goto the download sections and search for everything relative to the Audigy2 chip. If the auto update didn't install it, you may want to grab the EAX 4.0 drivers as well as the Beta Drivers, which support OpenAL. You can download and install these drivers now.
Next thing we want to do, is get the latest OpenAL wrapper from Creative. To do this go to this page:
And get the OpenAL.exe file located toward the bottom of the article. The latest is the one from July 22nd.
Once you have download it, run this program, it shouldn't take but 2 seconds to do its job, as it just places a single .dll file into our system folder.
Now we want to replace the crappy OpenAL file BF2 has with the one we just downloaded.
Open up C:/Windows/system32. Do a file search for "OpenAL32.dll". Once you find this file, copy it (but do NOT paste it).
Now open up C:/Program Files/EA Games/Battlefield 2/ (or wherever you chose to install BF2). Find the file named "BF2OpenAL.dll" and rename this file "BF2OpenAL.original" (ijust to be safe, always have a backup). Now, paste the file we copied in the previous step, and rename this file to "BF2OpenAL.dll".
Next open the game up, and reset the sound settings to "Hardware", "High", and EAX enabled. Try going in-game to see if you can stop here. Otherwise the next step(s) is(are) fairly simple. (note: if you get an error when you open the game about incompatible hardware, you mis-typed the file name, or something to that degree, so double check the spelling, and remember there is no 32 in the new file name!)
If VoIP does not work (I tested mine on a Trinity Games server "The Refuge") then you need to do the next few steps.
Go to C:/Program Files/EA Games/Battlefield 2/ and find the file "BF2VoiceSetup.exe" and run this. This will configure the VoIP for in-game use. Once again, after you have successfully tested this, launch the game, and see if VoIP works. (note: the sound during the BF2VoiceTestSetup, maybe a little faint, but don't worry its strong in-game).
If you VoIP still does not work you can try one last thing. Open up dxdiag by doing the following:
Start > Run > type "dxdiag" into the box that appears. If a dialog box comes up asking you about digital signatures, just hit yes. DxDiag willl now gather info on your systems configuration, this may take a few seconds depending upon your sytem. Once it is done, click on the Audio tab, and slide the "Hardware Accleration" slide (located on the left hand side, near the top) to "Basic Acceleration". Once again load the game and test VoIP.
**ADDED 8/9/2005**
This just for some reason, popped into my head just now (okay so what I'm a little slow to think of things! no comments from the peanut gallery!) but another issue could be causing poor performance. Most motherboards come with onboard audio. This could be conflicting with your Audigy2. To turn this off you need to enter your BIOs. Restart your computer and hit the designated number (usually says it in one of the corners of the screen, most commonly the 'del' butotn). Once you're inside, it will vary. Some will have onboard periphrals menus, others will have onboard chip controllers, it will vary. Basically you want to find an option about "Onboard Audio Controller" or "Onboard Audio" something simular to that. Once you find it, simple highlight it using the arrows keys, and disable it (using page down/up) if it is enabled.
Like I said, I'm not a super genius when it comes to the whole coding and wrapper files and things like that, but I'm just telling you what I did to get my Audigy2 working fully ingame. It gave me a boost of 5-10 FPS in-game and prevented and dropped frames I had been experiencing, as well as the "startup lag" alot of people have complained about.
Hopefully this helps alot of people out there solve their issues with this game's sound. Give me feed back as to what you experience when following my instructions! (or if you find any step confusing. I tried to word things as simple as possible, and explain what we were doing along the way).
While most of this has been posted previously (the .dll steps) I have added/tweaked and re-worded some things to hopefully cover up any gaps left open in the initial post as well as some things I just tried (stab in the dark) and worked for me.
So here is what I did:
http://www.creative.com/support/
First off, go to creatives website (above), and use the "software update" tool. It requires Internet Exploerer 5.5 or above, so if you use firefox, you will need to launch IE to do this. It will auto-update drivers and software found on your computer. I recommend getting all the updates that this program detects.
Now, because it doesn't install the drivers we need for BF2, we will need to grab these ourselfs. Get yourself back over to the website we were just on, only this time, goto the download sections and search for everything relative to the Audigy2 chip. If the auto update didn't install it, you may want to grab the EAX 4.0 drivers as well as the Beta Drivers, which support OpenAL. You can download and install these drivers now.
Next thing we want to do, is get the latest OpenAL wrapper from Creative. To do this go to this page:
And get the OpenAL.exe file located toward the bottom of the article. The latest is the one from July 22nd.
Once you have download it, run this program, it shouldn't take but 2 seconds to do its job, as it just places a single .dll file into our system folder.
Now we want to replace the crappy OpenAL file BF2 has with the one we just downloaded.
Open up C:/Windows/system32. Do a file search for "OpenAL32.dll". Once you find this file, copy it (but do NOT paste it).
Now open up C:/Program Files/EA Games/Battlefield 2/ (or wherever you chose to install BF2). Find the file named "BF2OpenAL.dll" and rename this file "BF2OpenAL.original" (ijust to be safe, always have a backup). Now, paste the file we copied in the previous step, and rename this file to "BF2OpenAL.dll".
Next open the game up, and reset the sound settings to "Hardware", "High", and EAX enabled. Try going in-game to see if you can stop here. Otherwise the next step(s) is(are) fairly simple. (note: if you get an error when you open the game about incompatible hardware, you mis-typed the file name, or something to that degree, so double check the spelling, and remember there is no 32 in the new file name!)
If VoIP does not work (I tested mine on a Trinity Games server "The Refuge") then you need to do the next few steps.
Go to C:/Program Files/EA Games/Battlefield 2/ and find the file "BF2VoiceSetup.exe" and run this. This will configure the VoIP for in-game use. Once again, after you have successfully tested this, launch the game, and see if VoIP works. (note: the sound during the BF2VoiceTestSetup, maybe a little faint, but don't worry its strong in-game).
If you VoIP still does not work you can try one last thing. Open up dxdiag by doing the following:
Start > Run > type "dxdiag" into the box that appears. If a dialog box comes up asking you about digital signatures, just hit yes. DxDiag willl now gather info on your systems configuration, this may take a few seconds depending upon your sytem. Once it is done, click on the Audio tab, and slide the "Hardware Accleration" slide (located on the left hand side, near the top) to "Basic Acceleration". Once again load the game and test VoIP.
**ADDED 8/9/2005**
This just for some reason, popped into my head just now (okay so what I'm a little slow to think of things! no comments from the peanut gallery!) but another issue could be causing poor performance. Most motherboards come with onboard audio. This could be conflicting with your Audigy2. To turn this off you need to enter your BIOs. Restart your computer and hit the designated number (usually says it in one of the corners of the screen, most commonly the 'del' butotn). Once you're inside, it will vary. Some will have onboard periphrals menus, others will have onboard chip controllers, it will vary. Basically you want to find an option about "Onboard Audio Controller" or "Onboard Audio" something simular to that. Once you find it, simple highlight it using the arrows keys, and disable it (using page down/up) if it is enabled.
Like I said, I'm not a super genius when it comes to the whole coding and wrapper files and things like that, but I'm just telling you what I did to get my Audigy2 working fully ingame. It gave me a boost of 5-10 FPS in-game and prevented and dropped frames I had been experiencing, as well as the "startup lag" alot of people have complained about.
Hopefully this helps alot of people out there solve their issues with this game's sound. Give me feed back as to what you experience when following my instructions! (or if you find any step confusing. I tried to word things as simple as possible, and explain what we were doing along the way).
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