GuyFawkesGaming wrote:If I remember correctly Windows 10 removed DirectSound, which no doubt broke many older games.
That's not true. DirectSound is implemented on top of WASAPI since Vista. Nothing changed in that regard on Windows 10. The biggest change in Vista was that the support for hardware acceleration was dropped, which does require driver support on Windows XP and earlier and was historically needed to be able to get 3D effect either through headphones using HRTF (again, handled by the sound card's drivers/software) or with surround sound system.
Vista+ on the other hand does support 3D sound mixing (in software), which actually works. You can request 3D sound mixing in software on XP and earlier, but it doesn't work (if you have surround system, nothing will come from most speakers). Extra software was always needed for HRTF through headphones though as there is no good native option for that. Well, it was supported on XP and presumably earlier versions too, but it sounds really poor and has to be specifically requested by the game. Windows 10's Sonic for Headphones probably only works for specific much newer software, maybe it's even exclusive to UWP apps, I've no idea, but it surely isn't universal.
A common problem with old games using DirectSound is that some of them check if hardware acceleration is supported and only do 3D sound if it is, because it only worked correctly back then if it was, an assumption that is incorrect since Vista. And then there are also games using EAX effects through DirectSound, a proprietary extension by Creative. EAX also only worked with hardware sound buffers and was handled by the sound card drivers. Vista removed HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) support for DirectSound, so EAX never works through Microsoft's DirectSound library on these systems, hence the need for wrappers, eg. Creative ALchemy and DSOAL.
Interstate '76 doesn't use EAX, but it does 3D mixing and isn't picky about whether hardware acceleration is supported or not. Nitro Pack's DirectSound code is just more broken than I76's I guess. Nitro adds A3D codepaths, which are less broken than DIrectSound ones. Though Activision messed up DirectSound code in of the two patches. A3D is an old sound library that can be used on systems with Aureal sound cards; they say they're really good at producing believable 3D sound.
I also tried different channel settings like turning it down, exit, reenter, yadda yadda, but it would seem it doesn't want to work. Maybe I've still got an old 98 box...