Hi folks. I recently started playing this game and found that, for some reason, sound effects were playing at a very low volume - so low, that they were almost impossible to hear.

After some digging, I think I've isolated the cause. SteamWorld Dig 2 uses OpenAL to power its audio, and for some reason it's thinking that you are using a surround sound device. Sound effects are probably being sent to side or rear audio channels that don't actually exist, which is why you can't hear the sound effects (or why they're very, very quiet).

The reason I figured this out is because the issue went away when I swapped my default audio device in Windows from my speakers to my headset. If you would prefer not to follow the instructions in this guide, this is another workaround. I won't be covering instructions for this in depth here.

I was able to devise a way of forcing the game into stereo mode, which is what this guide will cover.

This guide is for Windows 10 only - you should be able to follow most of the instructions on other versions of Windows but your mileage may vary.

This step is a necessary prerequisite. If you can already see file extensions in Windows (for example, .txt, .docx, .html, .png, .jpg...), then you can skip to step 1.

These steps are for Windows 10 and may or may not apply to other versions of Windows (they should work for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, but Windows 11 is probably a little different).

1. Open Windows Explorer.
   
2. Open the View tab in the ribbon at the top of the window.
   
3. Click on the Options button at the right-side of the View tab.
   
4. In the Folder Options window, open the View tab.
   
5. In the Advanced settings, find the option for Hide extensions for known file types and make sure it is unchecked.
   
6. Click OK.

SteamWorld Dig 2 uses OpenAL to power its audio engine. We need to force OpenAL into stereo mode to bring sound effects back. To do this, we're going to replace the OpenAL library the game uses to give us that option.

1. Visit the OpenAL Soft[openal-soft.org] website.
   
2. Scroll down to the Download section and download the latest binaries. As of the time of writing this guide, that is openal-soft-1.21.1-bin.zip. If you end up with a file that ends in a .tar.bz2 extension, you've downloaded the source code instead.
   
3. Extract the folder inside the binary zip to an easy to access location like your Desktop.

Now that we've got OpenAL Soft downloaded, we need to replace the OpenAL32.dll file in the game folder with OpenAL Soft and then set it to output in stereo only.

1. Right-click on SteamWorld Dig 2 in your Steam library and hover over the Manage menu, then click Browse local files. This will open up the game folder. Keep this window handy.
   
2. Rename OpenAL32.dll to OpenAL32.dll.bak. This ensures you can swap back to the default audio library in future if you have any issues.
   
3. From the OpenAL Soft folder you extracted earlier, find the 32-bit soft_oal.dll file. This should be located in \bin\Win32\. Do not use the Win64 version, even if you're on 64-bit Windows!
   
4. Copy soft_oal.dll to the game folder.
   
5. Rename the soft_oal.dll in your game folder to OpenAL32.dll.
   
6. Right-click in a blank spot in the game folder and go to New > Text Document. Rename this file from New Text Document.txt to alsoft.ini.
   
7. Right-click on alsoft.ini and click Edit. This should open a blank Notepad.
   
8. Paste in the following:
   channels=stereo
9. Save and exit Notepad.

You can now close all the folders and windows you've opened and launch the game - you should hear sound effects at their normal volume.