A lenghty and detailed update on this whole * situation.
Its not Apex Legends or even Respawns problem what so ever.
Important to note is that i have a setup that i have speekers which are connected to the motherboard running with Realtek audio drivers (for some testing i also plugged the speakers into my GPU, thus running on NVIDIAs audio drivers) and i have Cavimanus GX gaming headset, which is running on its own drivers. And the thing is, the headset with its drivers works fine, its the speakers that dont work. This also clears up the confusion of what i previously said that the issue occured randomly, it isnt. Its allways present if i run the game with speakers and works fine if i run with the headset. More about that confusion in the testing results
I did some testing in other games i have and they also have this issue, simply Apex and Titanfall 2 are the ones where the issue is the most noticable.
Testing results:
-In Apex and Titatanfall 2:
If i launch the game with speakers set up as the audio output, i have the said bug (only hear well in front of you). BUT if i change my audio device mid game to my headset, the audio output does change (instead of speekers sounding, the headset now does) now i still have the bug but now in the headset. Similarly if i start the game with headphones audio works fine, and if i switch the audio device midgame, now speakers work fine too. WTF...
Afterwards i tried plugging my speakers into my GPU (how? well i have HDMI to VGA adapter and it has an audio jack) to see what trouble i can get into. Excluding the fact that it sounded funky in general (dont know why, dont really care, its not important now) i got a reverse effect on the surround sound glitch. I would only hear things well if they are behind me and in front of me extremely muffled. And now the best part. So in the other 2 cases if i switch to another device the state of fuckuppery stays yet the audio output device changes. in this one? nope if i either switch to headphones or replug speekers into Realtek drivers now it works perfectly on either variants.
-Hitman and Warframe:
(Note when playing other games i tend to only play with speakers, i only use the headset when playing with someone... or want to enjoy music)
The bug is also present, but beeing third person games where listening to things arround you isnt so important i didnt notice them until testing now.
-Cyberdimension Neptunia 4 Goddesses online
Similarly to Hitman and Warframe, but far more noticable because rest of the party are usually behind you and not hearing them scream when attacking is noticable
-Rainbow Six Siege:
In this testing results where different than Titanfall and Apex. If in Titanfall and Apex the bug would appear whether or not im running the speakers when launching the game, then in R6Siege the bug would dissapear and reapear if i change the sound device midgame. So i launched the game on speakers, bug persists, if i swap to headset mid game, now audio works fine, if i switch back to speakers its bugged again.
Updating drivers:
Somewhere else i saw someone else discussing this issue, and someone responded in the comments that updating drivers helped him. So i tried that, 2 methods. Finding Realtek audio drivers in the device manager and using Windows automatic "find and update drivers" it said that i already have the newest and best drivers. Next up tried second method, downloading drivers from Realtek website. The installer uninstalled old drivers and installed new ones. No result, bug still persists.
Conclusion:
Its not Apexes fault, its most defenatelly Microsofts/Windows 10 update fault.
Since the issue is present in any game where surround sound is a thing, and there still hasnt been a huge outcry on the internet about the issue. My guess not many users have had this update pushed to them (for example my brother still doesnt have this update).
The only ways i can see this beeing fixed (well of course for yourself temporary you can switch to an older windows version) when more people get this windows update and start to notice this bug and riot for Microsoft to fix it. Or if some developer on these forums sees this issue tests/confirms it himself and presents the issue to higerups so someone more noticable than some bitching Windows Customers are complaining about the issue to Microsoft.
