I've got a brand new, self built, super duper computer with on board 7.1 sound, yet can't play this game in 3D sound???

See a post here entitled Getting Tired of FPS issues in gog Games, I am really starting to get tired of issues period in GOG games.

Do they not test before release?

Anyone help with this issue, or do I have to listen to 2D sound on a nice, THX set of surround sound speakers?

Added in Edit: Reading that other thread I mentioned above, one commenter said "Well, to be fair, Windows 7 isn't supported."

And I looked on the game card, and s/he is right. However, is that going to be the meme moving forward? You can play good old games as long as you have old operating systems??

It's not that uncommon for an old game to fail to recognize newer hardware, particularly with "advanced" optional features like 3D sound - some even use fixed supported-card lists. In any case, this is an issue with Sacred, not the GOG release.

I don't think you're missing much in this case (unless you're getting 2.0 out and your audio setup isn't remapping that to fill you speakers, in which case that might be better fixed in your audio control panel), but someone might have a suggestion if you list what audio card you're using.

For example, for X-FI cards you apparently need to tell Creative Alchemy about it (link to the program).

I remember that the game was flaky with 3D sound when I had it installed on XP. On-board sound may have some options in BIOS but I'm not 100% certain that ANY on-board sound is really 3D capable.

The problem is, that I think the game needs hardware DirectSound support to be able to do 3D audio or that it needs EAX > 2.0.

But the most sound adapters (onboard) just dont have hardware acceleration, they do nearly everything in software via a driver (by using the CPU). Also they usually stuck at EAX 2.0. The only exception are Creative Soundcards, but I really doubt, that you have such a card, because you usually have to buy a separate card.

Another problem is, that Microsoft removed hardware accelerated DirectSound since Windows Vista (Windows 8 does support it again). So, all games that rely on it, wont be able to use it (not just Sacred)!

In case you really own a Creative Soundcard, there is a solution, that is called Alchemy. It is as far as I understand a wrapper, that enables hardware DirectSound (even on Windows Vista and 7) by translating all commands into OpenAL, which supports hardware accelerated 3D sound.

Because I have such a Creative Soundcard and use Alchemy I can turn this on, even on Windows 7, but for most others this just wont work (not just in Sacred).