5.1 surround inconsistency.

Flyingbox

I have a Creative X-Fi sound blaster running on a 5.1 stereo setting. The type of sound interface can be set through a console via desktop.
However, when changed in a game, it changes globally until I manually switch it back.
In this case, T2 keeps switching the speaker settings over to 2/2.1 which really does a number on driving the subwoofer crazy for no apparent reason.

Is there a way to make T2 stop and stay at 5.1 instead of changing it every time I open the game?
It's set on "Surround" in the options menu, but it insists on making the global setting 2/2.1

Flyingbox

I have managed to de-sync the sound card settings panel from the game, but the results weren't...complete.
By doing this a pseudo-surround environment was created in T2. So basically surround (while being named that in the settings) is not surround at all. You do get a few "3d" sounds from behind you...but really they are too muted and uncoordinated to tell whether the person is in front or behind. The rear and front speakers of the respective sound's side play at the same volume regardless of distance.
The only thing that went "Full" surround was my own jetpack and weapon switching and some weapon sounds at certain angles.
It's more of a 2.1. Your only benefit is a sub woofer. Admittedly, headphone settings are likely to produce better results.

I'm actually disappointed and wondering why "Surround" is even included as an option.

I'll try out the 4 speaker settings to see if that produces anything desirable.

Slayer1

At the time of the game's inception, "surround" was largely a derived effect. Creative's "3d" EAX was actually a method of using cues within steroe sound(doppler effect etc, look up EAX technology, I did back in 2000), and extrapolating positional and distance cues for reconstructing a pseudo- 4 channel effect. Please note that dolby ProLogic is similar, but uses inserted surround data in a limited audio range (200hz ish to 5KHz ish, iiirc) thatis de-synched by a specific amount with the primary audio (it is partially out of phase, relative to some given information at a given frequency point). The long and short of it is that few games were able to "talk" to the EAX algorithm purposefully back then, and until EAX 2.0, and later AC-3/DTS et al, were woefully incompatible. The vintage of the game audio engine, and available information to developers is largely why your surround extraction is so poor.

Don't bother with it.