Sound

OpenAL Soft

Patch 3374 for Unreal Tournament 2004 replaces the legacy DirectSound-based OpenAL with OpenAL Soft, modernizing the game’s audio backend for improved compatibility, stability, and 3D positional sound on current systems.

Audio Features & Options

• HRTF support – Enhanced 3D positional audio for headphones
• Selectable HRTF modes – Enable/disable and profile selection
• Playback device selection – Choose specific output devices
• Stereo / 5.1 / 7.1 support – Improved surround handling
• Sample rate & resampler settings – Quality/performance tuning
• Ambisonics support – B-Format decoding for advanced spatial audio workflows
• Configurable decoders & backends – Select output backends (e.g., WASAPI, PulseAudio, PipeWire) and decoder behavior

Audio Presets

Audio behavior can be customized system-wide, per-user and with game-specific configurations, through the OpenAL Soft configuration file:

Windows

Per-user configuration path

 C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\alsoft.ini

For UT2004-only

 C:\UT2004\System\alsoft.ini

Linux

System-wide configuration path

/etc/xdg/alsoft.conf

Per-user configuration path

~/.config/alsoft.conf

For UT2004-only customizations

$HOME/.ut2004/System/alsoft.conf

These files contain settings for different use cases (e.g., competitive HRTF headphones, high-quality surround, low-latency setup).

Common adjustable options include:

• hrtf = true/false
• frequency = <sample rate>
• channels = stereo / 5.1 / 7.1
• resampler = <type>
• period_size and periods (latency tuning)

Basic presets to get started: