Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
No surround sound in F.E.A.R. - advice?
mrmatteastwood Aug 9, 2022
Hey guys, has anybody had any luck playing F.E.A.R. in surround sound?

I have the Platinum Edition from GOG. Downloaded the installers and installed it in my system-wide Wine. I then tried both DSOAL and IndirectSound, but the surround options in the game remain greyed-out.

On the Wine side, everything is set up properly. DSOAL and IndirectSound work well with Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project.

Also, same result when I install the game through Lutris. Tried various Wine builds from there.

I played through the game on Win 10 a few years ago and IndirectSound worked without any further tweaking.
whizse Aug 10, 2022
It might be a problem with the game itself and not Wine specifically.

Some similar problems and discussion (for Windows) here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/21090/discussions/0/2872668471925965257/
https://github.com/kcat/dsoal/issues/11

Windows XP compatibility mode is mentioned, it might be worth a shot to play around with the Windows version reported by Wine and see if it helps.
mrmatteastwood Aug 12, 2022
Hey, thanks for your reply. It turns out F.E.A.R. will only load dsound.dll from the syswow64 directory. Once I put that file into syswow64 (making a backup of the original Win one), everything worked!

More info: https://github.com/kcat/dsoal/issues/67#issuecomment-1211908958
whizse Aug 12, 2022
Glad you got it working and thank you for sharing the solution!


Last edited by whizse on 12 August 2022 at 7:16 pm UTC
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register


Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.