Directional audio

[JDOGMcFUZZL]

This game has horrible audio in general but its particularly bad with directional. Like when someone is walking around you you have no idea if they are above, below, left right or anything..  Its just awful. Even with nice direction headsets you can hardly tell where any sound is coming from. If you even hear it at all.

[Wingmannedbro]

Yeah I think that's actually a you-problem with your ears.

[GRiPSViGiL]

Sound has been FUBAR for a while now.

[Wingmannedbro]

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@GRiPSViGiL wrote:

Sound has been FUBAR for a while now.

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I use €150,- headphones, and have experienced literally not a single issue in all these months.

[MandatoryIDtag]

I use £5 skull candys and i legit know I've got enemies near me but i can't work out where from for for the life of me, i can't properly pinpoint distant gunfire either lol. I have to just rely purely on instinct,experience and my reflexes. XD

Seem's we both need a better headset for this game lmao. ;p

[GRiPSViGiL]

@Wingmannedbro I use Studio Monitor headphones and occasionally get no sound for footsteps specifically. Hasn't always been that way. Plenty of people report the same. Nice to always blame users but again the things suffered in this game I do not suffer on another Origin title BFV.


I guess that needs to be my signature at this point I have to clarify it so much.

[SixthOTD]

@JDOGMcFUZZL Sounds like you need a new headset. I have a mid level logitech headset, nothing fancy, and I hear everything. It's always easy to pick out which direction the sounds are coming from.

[Biochemikas]

Randomly missing sounds has been a problem in Apex from the start, but 1) it's not consistent and pretty rare, 2) it has nothing to do with this topic about positioning of sounds. If OP can't tell direction of sounds even remotely correctly then that's definitely a problem on his end, since I have no problem telling at least general direction of sounds, even if it's not as precise as in PubG (but that one has it's own set of different problems).

Using 7.1 simulation can completely mask sound directionality. Using sound compression significantly hinders ability to tell distance from loudness. Those 2 options should always be turned off for BR games. Just a couple of potential errors on user side (apart from the obvious already mentioned terrible headhpone problem).

P.S. I use HyperX Cloud II's, which are really pretty bad headphones in terms of sound quality and the sound stage is not great, but still work well enough for sound positioning. They also have "7.1" option - tried that once - that was a horrible experience I don't want to even think about XD.

P.P.S. As weird as it sounds, I know some headphones are not even Stereo, but mono. Obviously telling sound direction on such headphones would be physically impossible. I guess there are windows setting that could also turn the output to mono and maybe broken headphones may (I dunno) fail to produce stereo output. If turning around near a constant sound makes absolutely no difference at all - a mono output may be the most likely source of problem.

[EA_Blueberry]

The team is aware of directional audio sound issues and it's being tracked on the Trello board.

Via Microsoft on Window update - KB4515384 (OS Build 18362.356)

"Microsoft has received reports that audio in certain games is quieter or different than expected after installing this update. At the request of some of our audio partners, we implemented a compatibility change that enabled certain games to query support and render multi-channel audio. Due to customer feedback, we are reverting this change as some games and some devices are not rendering multi-channel audio as expected. This may result in games sounding different than customers are used to and may have missing channels."

Workaround
To mitigate the issue, open settings in the impacted game and disable multi-channel audio, if this option is available. You can also search in the Windows Control Panel for third-party audio device control panels and disable Multi-channel audio or Virtual Surround Sound, if these options are available.

We are working on a resolution and estimate a solution will be available in late September.

Link
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4515384/windows-10-update-kb4515384

[Wingmannedbro]

@GRiPSViGiL 

From Blueberry's reply here.

"Microsoft has received reports that audio in certain games is quieter or different than expected after installing this update. At the request of some of our audio partners, we implemented a compatibility change that enabled certain games to query support and render multi-channel audio. Due to customer feedback, we are reverting this change as some games and some devices are not rendering multi-channel audio as expected. This may result in games sounding different than customers are used to and may have missing channels."

Sounds like you got ripped off by whoever sold you those "studio monitor" headphones.

I'm a sound engineer by profession, and any headphones that don't offer multi-channel compatibility are de-facto not professional headphones. If you actually paid $400 to $500 for those, you got scammed.