Hires sound data consists of wav files. Their format must be 16 bit signed integers. You can download a package containing all Descent 2 sound resampled both to 22 khz and 44 khz from the general downloads page (see the side scrolling menu). Enable their usage by setting

• -sdl_mixer 1
• -hires_sound 1|2

in d2x.ini. Use '1' for sounds sampled at 22 KHz and '2' for sounds sampled at 44 KHz.

The hires sounds have to be placed in a subdirectory of the main Descent 2 folder named 'sounds/d2/22khz' (22 khz) and 'sounds/d2/44khz' (44khz). The sound archive does already contain the required subfolders, so you just need to extract it to your Descent main folder.

D2X-XL cannot mix standard and hires sounds, so if you enable hires sounds, game sounds for which there are no hires replacement sound available will not be played. It also cannot mix hires sounds of different quality, so if you want to use hires sounds, you either have to go with sounds sampled at 22 KHz or at 44 KHz.

It should be clear that D2X-XL can only use hires sounds if there are some present. You can also use this feature to replace Descent 2 sounds with those from Descent 3.