Just been out and bought Unreal 2, installed it, and it runs like a dream.
Only problem I have is the sound.

On the first intro screen where it says company names, the sound is fine, but when I start a new game, the sound is really crackly and slightly distorted.
I've tried turning EAX on, but then the game just crashes.

I've got on-board AC97 sound, with latest drivers.

Anyone having this problem? or know how to fix it?
It just spoils the game for me at the moment..

If you go look in the Unreal II forums it's happening to a lot of people, including me. Legend says they are working on a patch to fix it, but until it comes out, we'll have to keep playing a buggy game. All I can say is save often, because it usually crashes at the worst time.

quite so, but meanwhile the fix arrived

but if you install it to your unreal2 folder, it won't place the dll into the system subfolder where it's supposed to be copied to. And the name of the dll is DefOpenAL321.dll, so it won't replace the original DefOpenAL32.dll. I think thats the second bug in this installer, cause the game wil still search for DefOpenAL32.dll, means it will use the old dll. I suggest deleting the original and rename the DefOpenAL321.dll to DefOpenAL32.dll.

I use an AC97 and mine doesnt support EAX - There goes a crash reason

Here's how I did get it to work without the crackly sound:

Open up the Unreal2.ini with the notepad.exe and go to the following area:

[ALAudio.ALAudioSubsystem]
UseEAX=False
CompatibilityMode=False <--- and change this into 'True'
UsePrecache=True
ReverseStereo=False
Channels=32
MusicVolume=0.800000
SoundVolume=0.800000
DopplerFactor=1.000000
Rolloff=0.500000
Use3DSound=False
UseDefaultDriver=True
TimeBetweenHWUpdates=15.000000

That fixed it for me. Hope it'll help some of you sound-on-board guys, too. 8)