Does classic doom have stereo?

[Skerbergs]

Does the classic doom executable actually have stereo (e.g., being able to hear what direction a sound came from) or is it a source port thing?

[Individualised]

Yes.

[Midway64]

It does have stereo!

But due to an oversight in the DMX code, it won't actually be spatial, rather, it will randomly sound from a side to the other because the order was switched between sound pitch and stereo.

Simply put, it won't actually come from where it actually should sound.

[Gez]

The sound library had the feature, but I'm not sure it was actually used:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Random_sound_pitch_removed

Quote

Sound effects are always played at a neutral pitch in later versions of DOS Doom

Since the value passed as the pitch is "always neutral", and that value is actually the stereo positioning value, that means the stereo positioning value is also "always neutral". If sound was positioned to the left or right properly, the pitch would change accordingly, with perhaps higher pitch on the left and lower on the right, or the opposite, but something. But nope.

 

What the game does have, though, is attenuation. Distant sounds are lowered in volume.  Except for the sounds of cyberdemons and spiderdemons.

[Darkcrafter07]

It doesn't just have a simple stereo sound but spatial, just like few modern games, yes.

You should select Pro Audio Spectrum as your sound card and before running Doom, set a dos variable like this:

set dmxoption=-phase