{"id":91,"date":"2024-05-27T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T22:36:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-01-12T04:08:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T09:08:40","slug":"world-of-warcraft-wotlk-3-3-5-can-do-openal-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"World of Warcraft WotLK 3.3.5 can do OpenAL audio"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I recently set-up a private server for WoW, and have to tweak everything and anything, including an old game from back in 2010 that already runs relatively well :p<\/p>\n

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WoW by-default uses FMOD, and can’t do hardware-accelerated audio in Vista+. I was digging around some strings in Wow.exe and found references to OpenAL. Some more digging, I found the cvar “Sound_EnableOpenAL”.<\/p>\n

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Tossing that cvar into Config.wtf along with enabling Hardware acceleration allows OpenAL to be used in WoW! With the old Creative OpenAL implementation, WoW takes a few seconds longer to load to the log-in screen.<\/p>\n

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Turns out, dropping-in OpenAL Soft works no problem! SESound.log reports additional sound channels (126, but client only allows and resets to 64 max), and OpenAL Soft’s AL caps viewer reports a lot more functionality over the Creative implementation.<\/p>\n

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Process Explorer shows the dropped-in OpenAL Soft dll being loaded (no OpenAL dll is loaded without the cvar), and audio works in WoW.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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With about 5 minutes of playing with old desktop Stereo speakers, I didn’t notice anything sounding different. Stereo sound still worked (tested by rotating near the fire in Goldshire Inn). I don’t know if there’s any advantages going through OpenAL Soft vs dsound, but this sounds like a better option for operating systems Vista+ (including 10 LTSC 21H2).<\/p>\n

Interestingly there’s also strings mentions of ASIO, but I haven’t found a way to tangibly test or enable it. I doubt WoW 3.3.5 reasonably benefits from the lowest of low-latency audio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I recently set-up a private server for WoW, and have to tweak everything and anything, including an old game from back in 2010 that already runs relatively well :p WoW by-default uses FMOD, and can’t do hardware-accelerated audio in Vista+. I was digging around some strings in Wow.exe and found references to OpenAL. Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-windows-os","category-world-of-warcraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.realmofespionage.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}