I've been playing the gothic games for years so I know the music by heart. When I play now the adventure theme (when you're not in town) plays fine but some instruments aren't playing. It's like I'm missing some sound channels but the "force to use 16 channels for music" option in the ini is disabled. I have installed all patches/systempack/playerkit. I also have installed the L'Hiver Edition mod with dx11 plugin. Can anyone help?

My rig:
Windows 10 pro (maybe this is the culprit because this is the first time I play gothic 2 on w10)
AMD Phenom II x4 955 (oldest part of my pc now)
MSI R9 380 gaming 4g
8 gig ram

I suppose you already tried changing the in-game audio settings: number of speakers, sample rate, etc.

Since you think Windows 10 could be the cause of the issue, I'd check the sound card drivers configuration and then I'd try removing the DirectX 11 mod and running the game in compatibility mode for Windows Xp, if needed.

Yep I've tried every sound provider (even the ones only accesible with the ini change) and every speaker setting. The game has been running in xp comp mode and administrator since the beginning (sorry for not pointing that out). The dx11 mod doesn't influence sound in any way. I've also noticed that it happens at random. One time I played with music completely intact and the other time some instruments are again missing. I play sound using a Genesis hx66 headset if it helps.

I suggested to remove the mod because I thought the mod couldn't be run in compatibility mode. I mean, setting the game in Xp mode should force it to use DirectX 9.0c, not DirectX 11.
I am aware that the mod only readdress calls to Direct Draw, hence it has nothing to do with the sound issues, but I am still confuse about the contemporary use of both mod and compatibility mode, for the reason said above. Note I have never tried it, though.

About your headset... why don't you try to use different hardware? I see it has its own driver, with a built-in soundcard and many options such as virtual 7.1 surround. Maybe the issue is due to the relationship between Windows 10 and the driver. I suppose you have an integrated soundcard: try to use it instead.

I can't use integrated audio with my headset. It's either the builtin soundcard or back to my monitor stereo speakers which I really don't want to do. I'l try running it without the virtual 7.1 and Xear and see if that helps. I'd be surprised because only gothic2 suffers from it then. :p